the week of october 26 - 30, 2020
spooky, scary, theatres suing states
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
The Roustabouts released Ike Holter’s Put Your House in Order as an audio thriller. In Ike’s words: “Everything right now is scary as hell. There’s an election right around the corner and this awful virus is climbing in numbers every single damn day. Put Your House in Order is a story about people in a pretty intense time confronting fears for 90 minutes; it’s a fun, weird, wild ass ride.”
Just in time for next week’s clown car of voter suppression tactics and electoral college nightmares, Studio Theatre released a new audio adaptation of Sarah Burgess’ Kings, which the theatre produced in 2018. (FYI: I dramaturged that production of Kings and I have great affection for these actors, but I also think any artistic collaboration between director Marti Lyons and sound designer Mikhail Fiksel, two actual geniuses, is worth your time.)
This weekend, St. Ann’s Warehouse is airing a marathon of Phyllida Lloyd’s all-female Shakespeare trilogy, filmed at the Donmar Warehouse in London.
DC’s Theater Alliance launched Strategize, Organize, Mobilize: A Protest in Eight, a series of short filmed plays commissioned from eight Black playwrights and written in response to the demands of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Raleigh’s Women’s Theatre Festival will present a 40-play, 48-hour virtual staged reading marathon of plays by “women and all marginalized genders” on November 6-8.
It feels like everyone on the internet watched Fake Friends’ Circle Jerk last week. The production is available to stream on demand until November 7th, and the team will host Tea Time, a series of live-streamed critical conversations with the creators and other cultural commentators, this weekend.
the myth of “a safe reopening”
A collective of eight small New York theatres and comedy clubs sued Governor Cuomo and Mayor De Blasio over pandemic closures and restrictions. The theatres argue that like restaurants, gyms, casinos, television sets, schools, and other businesses, they could safely reopen with social distancing and masks.
I’d argue that gyms, college campuses, and indoor dining shouldn’t be open either because they’re not "safely reopening", they're risking their employees’ and patrons’ health to make money due to the inaction of our incompetent government, but I’m just a pesky out-of-work dramaturg daydreaming about maybe seeing my parents again in 2022.
contagion: the musical
A Dallas theatre production shut down due to a massive COVID-19 outbreak among the cast and crew, and it sounds like The Firehouse Theatre didn’t even attempt to follow Equity safety protocols:
One of the production members of Back to the '80s! confirmed that there are currently 17 cases of coronavirus among the the cast, band, crew, and Firehouse staff, with more results pending.
The source, who wishes to remain anonymous, says that regular testing was never suggested by the directing team or anyone from Firehouse, and that social distancing or masks/PPE were not required during the rehearsal process or performances.
"The original idea was to keep the show blocked with social distancing in mind, and then let the cast come together for the finale (the prom) and have them wear masks and gloves," says the source. "The problem then was that over time, there was more and more blocking that was taught without social distancing in mind, with the knowledge and intention that the cast would not be wearing a mask or gloves for those scenes."
AEA stated that The Firehouse Theatre is no longer an Equity producer, having "abandoned their commitment to Actors' Equity workplace safety rules that protect the audience and actors and stage managers."
2021 season updates
MCC Theatre announced their 2021 digital and in-person programming, available on MCC On Demand, the company’s new streaming platform. The line-up includes a new slate of LiveLab digital one-acts, the six-part podcast play This Is Where We Go, Van Hughes and Nick Blaemire’s new musical Space Dogs, and in-person stagings of Jocelyn Bioh’s Nollywood Dreams and Donja R. Love’s new play, soft.
things I read this week
Fiona Gruber on the slow reopening of Australian theatres, and the dueling enthusiasm and reluctance to attend cultural events
A Q&A with Soyica Colbert, the new associate director of Shakespeare Theatre Company, on the possibilities of a Black theatrical canon, the importance of diversifying leadership, and why a racist theatre cannot survive
Ramona Rose King on the necessity of investing in artists, and how institutions need to figure out how to move from project-based, transactional relationships with playwrights to more holistic, sustainable ones
That’s all for this week! Take care of yourselves in these last few days before the election: make a plan to vote if you haven’t yet, text-bank, send pizza to the polls, double-check the status of your mail-in ballot, and figure out how to stay sane and healthy. (Today that meant I took a four-hour nap in the middle of the afternoon.) It’s going to be a long week/month/rest of the year.