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quick notes
I’m taking next week off! I’m traveling around New England to see my family for the first time in almost two years and I’m looking forward to spending as little time online as possible. I’ll be back with the usual round-up on September 24th.
I feel guilty that we’re almost two months into paid subscriptions and I haven’t delivered any bonus content, but I got asked to teach at American University two weeks before the semester started. Designing a course from scratch (did I include five plays I’ve dramaturged before on syllabus? Yes, what of it), navigating the byzantine university system of resources and technology, teaching 30 students twice a week, and still working full-time has completely vaporized any pre-existing free time, but I’m really enjoying it and I’m glad I have to wear a mask so my class doesn’t see my face contort in disbelief every time someone calls me Professor Halvorsen. I will eventually write long, weird subscriber-only essays about Maxwell Sheffield’s producorial aptitude and why the entire internet periodically thirsts over that picture of Anton Chekhov.
digital theatre
Third Rail Projects’ Return the Moon is now streaming on Zoom. The participatory live performance, conceived and directed by Zach Morris and co-created with the performers, “invites audience members to collectively construct a shared experience that is one part toast, one part ritual, and one part retelling of a very old story of how the Moon was lost and found again.”
Steve H. Broadnax III and Charles Dumas’s Me and the Devil streams on demand through October 17th for Lantern Theater Company. The world premiere with music about the blues musician Robert Johnson is also directed by Broadnax.
Walt McGough’s The Whisperer’s Apprentice streams September 17th as part of - Sideshow Theatre Company’s House Party series. Directed by Sydney Charles, the play is “a magical, theatrical story about stories themselves, focused on who wields narrative power, and what it costs them to keep it.” McGough will also host “a weekly, live-streamed and completely ridiculous campaign of Dungeons & Dragons” as a companion event to the reading.
Ruth Tang and Sarah Blush’s Future Wife: Party in a Spreadsheet plays September 17-20 for New Georges. The participatory production/dance party/Very Heterosexual Wedding/vast and terrifying landscape is performed entirely in Google Sheets.
The world premiere of Daniel Alexander Jones’ ALTAR NO. 1 - ATEN releases its first weekly installment on September 22nd for the Public Theater. The immersive journey features “a new album of 15 original songs by Jones and Josh Quat; connected music videos; a series of probing podcast conversations with special guests; and invitations for visitors to engage on and offline.”
Playwrights Realm announced its upcoming free digital community programming. Events include a 5th anniversary reunion panel with original cast members from Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves (September 14), a roundtable conversation on anti-racist producing led by Hope Chavez (September 23), and a discussion for aspiring playwrights on receiving script feedback, moderated by Corey Atkins and featuring some of my fave dramaturgs (September 30).
Roy Williams’ audio play History streams September 24 - 26. The project is part of the Sound Stage series by Pitlochry Festival Theatre and the Royal Lyceum. Told through a series of monologues and duologues, History depicts “a kaleidoscopic portrait of Black Britain over the last 40 years.”
in-person theatre
Pig Iron’s reprisal of Love Unpunished plays at Philly’s FringeArts through September 11th. The mostly worldless 2006 piece, staged on twenty feet of stairs, is “starkly unsentimental, hypnotic movement-theater work about the moments just before the collapse of the World Trade Center.”
Elevator Repair Service’s Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge also plays at FringeArts through September 11th. The project is a verbatim staging of James Baldwin and William F. Buckley, Jr.’s 1965 debate of the proposition “The American Dream is at the Expense of The American Negro.”
José Cruz González’s American Mariachi starts performances September 18th at the Goodman. The 1970s-set comedy about two cousins forming an all-girl mariachi band is directed by Henry Godinez.
Mike Lew’s Teenage Dick runs September 20 - October 17 at Woolly Mammoth. Directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel, the high school-set adaptation of Richard III is a co-pro with the Huntington and Pasadena Playhouse.
Patrick Gabridge’s Moonlight Abolitionists plays Mount Auburn Cemetery September 20-22. The outdoor reading, designed to performed under a full moon, is directed by Megan Sandberg-Zakian and produced by Plays in Place, a site-specific theatre company that partners with museums and historic spaces.
Rebecca Martinez’s Welcome Home, or Ten Tiny Snapshots of WP starts performances on September 24th. The intimate audio tour/installation invites “up to four audience members at a time to explore what makes them feel at home” in public and backstage areas of WP Theater’s space.
Inua Ellams’ Search Party — “a chaotic audience-led poetry show” — plays September 21 - 25 at the Donmar Warehouse. Prompted by audience suggestions, poet and playwright Ellams will search through his archive of work and perform a reactive and spontaneous selection.
2021-22 season updates
Victory Gardens announced its 2021-22 season. The line-up includes travis tate’s Queen of the Night (directed by Ken-Matt Martin), Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s cullud wattah (directed by Lili-Anne Brown), and the world premiere of Ali Viterbi’s In Every Generation (directed by Devon de Mayo). The company’s revamped Ignition New Play Program will present the yearlong reading series Ignite Chicago and the 20/50 Festival, featuring readings of new works from playwrights over 50 directed by emerging directors.
Punchdrunk will premiere The Burnt City, its largest immersive show to date, in March 2022. The project is a “future noir retelling of the fall of Troy” will be staged in three historical buildings in Woolwich Works, the company’s new permanent home in southeast London, and accommodate 600 theatregoers at a time.
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.)
Education Assistant, People’s Light: $30,000
Living Wage for Chester County, PA: $44,098Guest Services Associate, 5th Ave Theatre: $35,000 - $42,500
Living Wage for Seattle, WA: $43,555
Saying this again for the institutions in the back: if your job postings include anti-racism commitments and land acknowledgements, right before a below-living wage salary, you’re doing this all wrong.