the week of november 16-20, 2020
whiteness is a hell of a drug
Welcome to Nothing for the Group, the newsletter where one dramaturg rounds up one week in theatre news, reviews, and takes.
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virtual theatre
WP Theater/Ma-Yi’s reading of Stefani Kuo’s Final Boarding Call, directed by Mei Ann Teo, will broadcast on November 20th at 7 PM. The play follows seven interconnected characters enmeshed in the current Hong Kong protests and will be available to view until November 24th.
The interactive web series Read Subtitles Aloud from MAX Media Art XPloration and PlayCo is now streaming. Written and directed by Onur Karaoglu and Kathryn Hamilton, the viewer reads subtitles onscreen and “enters as character X into a crumbling theater collective, becoming the main character in a story—of camaraderie, sex, betrayal, and the digital theater of life in a pandemic—that’s unfolding across 13 episodes.”
The National Theatre will stream Clint Dyer and Roy Williams’ Death of England: Delroy for free on YouTube for 24 hours on November 27th. The production closed on November 4th due to the new UK COVID restrictions and tentatively plans to reopen in the spring.
Lila Rose Kaplan’s small enchantments — “part play, part art installation, part apocalyptic fairy tale for our times” — is now available on Vimeo.
Playing On Air will release Hamish Linklater’s Thanksgiving for One on November 22nd, starring the G.O.A.T. Jean Smart. The short audio comedy is directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson.
this week in debacles: mosaic theater
Mosaic Theater Company’s founding artistic director Ari Roth resigned this week, citing “restrictions imposed on his leadership.” His resignation comes after a summer-long, board-mandated sabbatical, the result of staff concerns about the “white supremacist behavior and management practices” of Roth and Managing Director Serge Seiden.
The Washington Post reports that in June, the Mosaic staff presented the Board with a 17-item list of grievances, including “micromanagement, tokenism, overwork, inadequate compensation and public fighting between Roth and Seiden.”
The Post also reports on the internal conflict surrounding Mosaic’s anti-racism commitments:
Last month, over Roth’s objections, the company posted on its website a sort of mea culpa in response to a list of demands from a national group of artists of color titled “We See You, White American Theater.” That 29-page document, released in July after the death in police custody of George Floyd, was directed at the white-dominated theater industry nationwide and was signed by dozens of prominent playwrights and actors of color.
“We have programmed without consistent cultural competency, leading to harm of audience members and artists,” Mosaic’s statement reads in part. “We have been complacent in validating a siloed and singular leadership style based on the comfort of routine. We have upheld white leadership to the detriment of BIPOC [Black, Indigenous and People of Color] artistry and expertise.”
“They’ve become enamored with a new ideologically driven structural model to run a company. That is in conflict with the artistic foundations of the company,” Roth said this week, referring to the 14-member staff and the board’s executive committee, a nine-member panel that conducted tense negotiations with Roth over the past few months.
Ari Roth also released a lengthy statement on his resignation, where he describes the charges against him as representing “a mix of legitimate concern and more specious aggressions run through a White Supremacy Culture template.” He also reflects on his “eye-opening and cathartic” sabbatical, and the subsequent reorganization of Mosaic that led to his departure:
Beyond the reorganizing, program dismantling, and non-inclusive manner in which important new values were formulated, I am resigning because I have concluded that I cannot be a generative artist in the very theater that I founded. The creative obstacles — that include a contractual requirement that I receive board approval and vetting for any script of mine I might produce to ensure no “possible conflict of interest” — pertain to realization that my artistic expression has no place in a rapidly-evolving ethos committed to “seeding intersectional equity and oppression; abolishing a colonialist lens,” and — for the moment — exclusive “centering of BIPOC-authored and focused narratives to the elimination of countervailing voices or representations of ally-ship, including my new play (My Brief Affair With The Minister, and the Downfall of Our Administration) which was originally scheduled for a reading this winter during the Voices Festival — the play I was working to complete over sabbatical — but was canceled by staff during the summer.
There’s a lot to unpack here, but I don’t want to lose sight of the true center of this story: the harm perpetuated against the Mosaic community, and the bravery of the staff to advocate for themselves. I hope there is a real opportunity for transformative justice.
Roth’s resistance to Mosaic’s public response to the We See You W.A.T. demands is jarring to read — especially considering how Mosaic touts itself as “a model of diversity and inclusion at every strata, on stage and off”, branded its last year of programming as “#WOKESEASON”, and received a massive amount of money from the Weissberg Foundation’s Diversity in Theater Fund. It’s jarring, but it’s not surprising: this is every failure and insufficiency of the EDI industrial complex laid bare.
You can count on two hands the number of theatre companies that have both released comprehensive anti-racist measures and instituted actual policy changes, and it’s not a surprise that the first theatres to meaningfully respond were BIPOC-led institutions. How many theaters have released half-assed statements and taken zero tangible action? How many theatres are writing grant applications right now trumpeting their EDI accomplishments, while simultaneously laying off their community engagement and education staffs? How many theaters have appointed BIPOC artists in secondary leadership positions to white artistic directors? (Will they actually empower those artists with the resources and agency to enact meaningful change? I sure hope so, but a lot of them probably won’t!) How many theaters have been completely and utterly silent for the last six months?
2021-22 season updates
The Public’s Under the Radar Festival revealed its January 2021 line-up. The digital festival will feature 600 Highwaymen’s A Thousand Ways (Part One): A Phone Call; Whitney White and Peter Mark Kendall’s Capsule, directed and produced by Taibi Magar and Tyler Dobrowsky; Teatro Anónimo’s Espíritu, written and directed by Trinidad González; Javaad Alipoor’s Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran; Inua Ellams’s Borders & Crossings; Piehole’s Disclaimer; Alicia Hall Moran’s the motown project; and the Devised Theater Working Group’s INCOMING!.
Signature Theatre announced its 2021-22 season. The line-up includes the rescheduled productions of Anna Deavere Smith’s Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992; Dominique Morisseau’s Confederates, directed by Kamilah Forbes; and the world premieres of On the Uses of Pain for Life, written and directed by Annie Baker; A Case for the Existence of God by Samuel D. Hunter, directed by David Cromer; and Grass, written and directed by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.
Manhattan Theatre Club announced upcoming 2021-22 productions. The company will present the world premiere of Simon Stephens’ Morning Sun (directed by Lila Neugebauer), the US premiere of Anchuli Felicia King’s Golden Shield (directed by Danya Taymor), and the Broadway premiere of Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s Lackawanna Blues. The planned revival of Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive will be postponed to spring 2022.
Center Theatre Group plans to reopen in August 2021. The Ahmanson Theatre season line-up includes the recent Broadway revival of Oklahoma! and the Jack Thorne adaptation of A Christmas Carol, plus previously announced productions of The Lehman Trilogy, Hadestown, Dear Evan Hansen, and The Prom.
Tracy Letts’ The Minutes will play Broadway in March 2022. The production’s original venue is undergoing renovation, and the producer’s aim to open in 16 months “pending cast and theatre availability”.
Roundabout Theatre Company announced is 2021-22 season. The slate features Broadway productions of Alice Childress’ Trouble in Mind, directed by Charles Randolph-Wright; Jeanine Tesori and Tony Kushner’s Caroline, or Change, directed by Michael Longhurst; 1776, directed by Diane Paulus. The Off-Broadway season includes Mansa Ra’s (formerly Jiréh Breon Holder) …what theendwillbe, directed by Margot Bordelon and Dave Harris’ Exception to the Rule, directed by Miranda Haymon. The theatre hasn’t announced dates, but remains committed to producing Noah Haidle’s Birthday Candles, directed by Vivienne Benesch; Anna Ziegler’s The Wanderers, directed by Barry Edelstein; and Sanaz Toossi’s English, directed by Knud Adams.
The Kennedy Center canceled all scheduled programming through April 2021. These most recent cancellations represent 384 ticketed events and a financial loss of $24.1 million for the institution, plus an additional $7 to $8 million of revenue from programs that had not yet been announced.
assorted news
Dominique Morisseau is the new Executive Artistic Producer of Detroit Public Theatre. She has played a central role in building the company since its inception, and DPT has produced four of her plays in five seasons. Her new responsibilities will focus on “artistic partnerships, audience engagement and community engagement, donor engagement, and equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility leadership.”
Equity and SAG-AFTRA reached an agreement on jurisdiction over streaming theatrical productions during the pandemic. The two unions resolved that “Equity will cover work recorded for digital distribution that replaces, or supplements, a live audience.” There are, naturally, many restrictions: “Equity-covered work is supposed to be distributed to ticketholders or subscribers, and not broadcast to the general public. The audience, over the course of the streaming run, must not exceed twice the theater’s seating capacity over that time period, or three times the capacity for theaters with fewer than 350 seats.”
A fire completely destroyed the 216-seat theatre at the Berkshires dance festival Jacob’s Pillow. The cause is still undetermined.
The Traverse is accepting applications from playwrights and theatre-makers for next year’s IASH/Traverse Creative Fellowships, specializing in new work for digital platforms. You know you want to live in Edinburgh for three months next summer.
things I read this week
Helen Shaw on Celine Song’s The Seagull on Sims 4: “[The Seagull is] a play that shifts as you watch it over a lifetime…the Sims version eases you back from identifying with specific characters and asks you instead to identify with their maker — the puzzled and gentle God on her headset, nudging her people toward cooking or dancing or death. Chekhov’s own humanism is in that attitude of detached kindness. Song conveyed it beautifully.”