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Identity Design: Elizabeth Haley Morton || Editorial Support: Rebecca Adelsheim
in-person theatre
Kimber Lee’s to the yellow house starts performances at La Jolla Playhouse on November 16th. The 1880s Parisian-set world premiere is directed by Neel Keller and follows Vincent Van Gogh on the verge of artistic greatness.
Sylvia Khoury’s Selling Kabul runs November 17 - December 23 at Playwrights Horizons. Directed by Tyne Rafaeli, the “tense drama traces the human cost of U.S. immigration policy and the legacy of our longest war.”
The world premiere of The Anthropologists’ No Pants in Tucson plays until November 14th at A.R.T./New York Theatres. The subversive devised comedy “blends time and form to untangle the generational impact of gender oppressive laws.”
digital theatre
Thaddeus Phillips and Steven Dufala’s Zoo Motel streams November 16 - 21 at ArtsEmerson. The live digital performance “transports viewers into a magical hotel room where time stops, objects come to life, and stories begin to emerge from across the globe that all illuminate themes of human existence.”
Brittany K. Allen’s The Wayfarer’s Code is now available from Playing On Air. The world premiere audio play about two couples who cross paths at a Texas RV park is directed by Marchánt Davis and features actors Frankie Faison, Caitlin O’Connell, Robin de Jesús, and Calvin Leon Smith.
Solas Nua’s Digital Theatre Festival of Prime Cut Productions runs November 18 - 21. The streaming festival includes four US premieres — Gilly Campbell’s Father the Father, Michael Patrick and Oisin Kearney’s My Left Nut, Fionnoala Kennedy’s Removed, and Fintan Brady’s East Belfast Boy — and is the first North American showcase of the award-winning Belfast theatre company.
assorted news
The Civilians announced its latest R&D Group. The collective is comprised of playwrights, composers, and directors who work together as a writing group for nine months to develop new plays and musicals. The new group members are Calley N. Anderson, Lila Rachel Becker, Phillip Gregory Burke, Aeneas Sagar Hemphill, Denmo Ibrahim, Eric Marlin, and Liba Vaynberg.
the regional theatre game of thrones
Reginald L. Douglas is the new artistic director of Mosaic Theatre Company. Douglas was most recently associate artistic director at Studio Theatre. He succeeds founder Ari Roth, who resigned last year citing “restrictions imposed on his leadership” after a summer-long, board-mandated sabbatical, which was the result of staff concerns about the “white supremacist behavior and management practices” of the theatre’s leadership. I only worked with Reg for three months (mostly on Zoom) before I got laid off from Studio but if there’s anyone who can remake Mosaic into the institution it aspires to be, it’s him.
that’s not a living wage
Here are this week’s featured underpaid job listings, paired with the living wage for a 40-hour work week for one adult with no children in that area. (You can read more about the methodology here.)
Individual Giving and Special Events Manager, Olney Theatre Center: $40,000
Living Wage for Montgomery County, MD: $53,385Development Manager, Imagination Stage: $40,000
Living Wage for Montgomery County, MD: $53,385Marketing Associate, The New Group: $40,000 - $45,000
Living Wage for NYC: $51,323Program Assistant, National Alliance for Musical Theatre : “mid-30,000s”
Living Wage for NYC: $51,323
This section of the newsletter received a shout-out from the San Francisco Chronicle’s Lily Janiak in her excellent piece on theater workers leaving the field. It nicely summarized why I comb the depressing dregs of ArtSearch every week:
Explicit and implicit in Halvorsen’s work are pointed questions for theatrical hiring entities: If your workers are going to have to rely on supplemental income from a family member to survive, who can you hire? And if you think it’s acceptable to pay your workers less than a modest yet adequate standard of living, how much do you value them?