Monthly Archives: July 2015

‘LES MISERABLES’ WELCOMES YOUNGEST AND FIRST AFRICAN-AMERICAN JEAN VALJEAN IN BROADWAY HISTORY · Jul 31st

(from Broadwayworld, 7/26; via Pam Green.)

LES MISERABLES history was made this week when a 21-year-old African-American actor went on as Jean Valjean.

Jean Valjean understudy Kyle Jean-Baptiste, who usually plays Constable and Courfeyrac, is not only the youngest Jean Valjean to appear on Broadway, but he is also the first African American one to do so. Besides making history, Jean-Baptiste fulfilled a personal goal.

"Today I go on as my dream role," he tweetedon Thursday. "No words. Guna remember this night."

http://www.broadwayworld.com/article/LES-MISERABLES-Welcomes-Youngest-and-First-African-American-Jean-Valjean-in-Broadway-History-20150726

Stage Voices Publishing for archived posts and sign up for free e-mail updates: http 2015:// www.stagevoices.com/ . If you would like to contribute a review, monologue, or other work related to theatre, please write to Bob Shuman at Bobjshuman@gmail.com.

MICHAEL FEINGOLD ON SMARTPHONES, LUPONES, AND UNANTICIPATED INTERACTIVITY · Jul 31st

(Feingold’s article appeared on Theatermania, 7/24,7/31.)

Does the Audience Need an Outlet?

PART I

I don't know if this actually happened, though I've been assured it did. Back in the ancient time when cellphones were still clamshells, an excellent actor whom I'll call T. was performing a one-character play, with a densely written and extremely convoluted text, in a small downtown theater that required him to work at close quarters with the audience. At one performance, the cellphone of a woman in the front row rang and she answered it. T. reached down, took the phone away from her, and said into it, "She can't talk to you now, she's watching a play." He then snapped the phone shut and tossed it to the house manager, receiving a hearty round of applause from the rest of the audience.

Part 1: http://www.theatermania.com/new-york-city-theater/news/michael-feingold-on-cellphones-in-theaters_73611.html

PART II

"There is another world," said the mystical poet and playwright W.B. Yeats, "but it is in this one."

Yeats, who died in 1939, probably wasn't foreseeing the multifaceted Internet world that smartphones and other handheld electronic devices open up for us, nor was Patti LuPone pondering the expansiveness and variety of that world when, in early July, she sparked a minor media sensation by gently removing a cellphone from the hands of an audience member who'd been busily scrolling during a key scene of LuPone's performance in the current Shows for Days at Lincoln Center's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater. LuPone, who has expressed herself strongly on the subject of intrusive cellphones on previous occasions, was simply trying to do what any actress worth her salt would do: make the audience pay attention.

Part II: http://www.theatermania.com/new-york-city-theater/news/michael-feingold-on-history-of-rowdy-audiences_73658.html

STRINDBERG: ‘MISS JULIE’ FROM THOMAS OSTERMEIER (REVIEW PICK, NY) · Jul 30th

(Charles Isherwood’s article appeared in The New York Times, 7/29; via Pam Green.)

Our global age of income inequality certainly cannot be guaranteed to add a jolt of relevance to any classic play, but it definitely serves as an illuminating backdrop to Thomas Ostermeier’s stark and penetrating production of “Miss Julie,” August Strindberg’s celebrated 1888 drama about the turbulent war of wills between a well-to-do young woman and her father’s servant.

For his first visit to the Lincoln Center Festival, Mr. Ostermeier has brought a Russian-language production of the play originally staged in 2011 at the Theater of Nations in Moscow. Like his versions of Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House,” “Hedda Gabler” and “An Enemy of the People,” all seen at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Mr. Ostermeier’s “Miss Julie” takes place in the here and now, in this case the here and now of Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia, where globe-trotting billionaires minted after the collapse of the Soviet Union live in extreme luxury while much of the population merely subsists.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/29/theater/review-miss-julie-resets-a-celebrated-drama-in-putins-russia.html?em_pos=small&emc=edit_cu_20150729&nl=theater&nlid=68469194&ref=headline&_r=0

BOOK: “PLAYING SCARED: A HISTORY AND MEMOIR OF STAGE FRIGHT” · Jul 30th

(Joan Acocella’s article appeared in the New Yorker, 8/3.)

I Can’t Go On! What’s behind stagefright?

Sara Solovitch, in “Playing Scared: A History and Memoir of Stage Fright” (Bloomsbury), says that while she was a good pianist as a child, she fell apart—sweating, trembling—when she had to play for an audience. She got through the Eastman School of Music’s preparatory program. Then she quit studying piano, grew up, got married, had children, and became a journalist. In her late forties, though, she drifted back to the piano, taking a course at a community college. By this point, she had no professional ambitions. Surely, she thought, she would now be able to perform calmly. But when her teacher asked her, one night, to play in front of the class, her hands began shaking so hard that she could barely strike the keyboard: “I gazed down at myself from a distance high above the keys, watching a body that was no longer in charge. My fear was at the controls, like an independent organism emerging from inside me, my own Rosemary’s baby.”

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/03/i-cant-go-on

View Playing Scared on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Playing-Scared-History-Memoir-Fright/dp/162040091X/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1438268488&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=Playing+Scared%3A+A+History+and+Memoir+of+Stage+Fright%E2%80%9D

PETER BROOK TO RETURN TO THE MAHABHARATA FOR NEW PLAY, ‘BATTLEFIELD’ · Jul 30th

(Mark Brown’s article appeared in the Guardian, 7/28.)

Peter Brook is to return to one of his most celebrated productions with a new play drawing on a section of the ancient Sanskrit epic the Mahabharata.

The director’s nine-hour production of the Mahabharata 30 years ago has gone down in theatre history as one of the greatest and, if you were there, memorable productions of all time.

Marie-Hélène Estienne, a long-time collaborator who worked as Brook’s assistant on the Mahabharata in the 1980s, said it would be impossible to stage in its entirety again.

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/jul/29/peter-brook-mahabharata-battlefield

BECKETT/MARIN: ‘MAY B’ (REVIEW PICK, IE) · Jul 29th

(Judith Mackrell’s article appeared in the Guardian, 7/28.)

Back in 1981, when Maguy Marin was a young and unknown choreographer, she wrote to Samuel Beckett asking for permission to adapt his work. She had no expectation of a reply, but the great man not only approved the project but also invited Marin to meet him and discuss it. The result was May B, a scrupulously moving, clever and funny homage, which has just been given a well-deserved revival at the Happy Days festival in Enniskillen.

Only a fragment of Beckett is actually spoken in May B – the opening line from Endgame “Finished, it’s finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished.” But that one line is key to Marin’s choreographic choice. All of Beckett’s language has a musical pulse and pattern, but the more minimalist his works become, the closer they also veer towards choreography, to a dance of words and silence. It’s that near-abstract Beckett which Marin evokes during the opening section of May B.

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/jul/28/maguy-marin-may-b-review-beckett

IF SHAKESPEARE PLAYS WERE FAST FOOD CHAINS · Jul 29th

(Brenna Clarke Gray’s article appeared in Book Riot, 7/24; via Pam Green.)

I have a theory that every Shakespeare play has a close cousin in the fast food industry. No, really — hear me out. In the literary canon, Shakespeare’s plays are ubiquitous: you’ve read them, or you’ve watched a staging, or you’ve read or watched a modern adaptation. Likewise, fast food is ubiquitous in our lives: you’ve eaten fast food, or you’ve scolded someone for eating fast food, and even in a food desert where you can’t get an apple, you can usually get a Big Mac.

Speaking of Big Macs, that takes me to my first proof of concept.

Macbeth = McDonald’s: First, we’ve got name similarity. Second, we’ve got market coverage: there’s probably a Macbeth adaptation somewhere in the world every day, and someone is eating a McChicken sandwich in the world every minute. Finally, the reaction people have if you say “Macbeth” in a theatre is identical to the reaction people have if you say “McDonald’s” in a Whole Foods.

But it works beyond Macbeth. Let me take you on a magical journey of the fast food analogs for a sampling of Shakespeare’s body of work

http://bookriot.com/2015/07/24/shakespeare-plays-fast-food/?utm_source=Book+Riot+Subscriptions&utm_campaign=b5dbc3d10c-RIOTRUNDOWN_SUNDAY&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_ffcca77bbb-b5dbc3d10c-320277521&mc_cid=b5dbc3d10c&mc_eid=4c597c11e4

CAMILLE PAGILIA: “NO TRULY MAJOR STARS LEFT” · Jul 29th

(David Daley’s article appeared in Salon, 7/29; via the Drudge Report.)

In part one of our three-day conversation with Camille Paglia, the brilliant cultural critic talked Bill Cosby, Bill Clinton and the odd, persistent return of ’90s political correctness. Today she takes on even hotter-button topics: Religion and atheism, Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” legacy, liberals and Fox News, and presidential candidates Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.

You’re an atheist, and yet I don’t ever see you sneer at religion in the way that the very aggressive atheist class right now often will. What do you make of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and the religion critics who seem not to have respect for religions for faith?

http://www.salon.com/2015/07/29/camille_paglia_takes_on_jon_stewart_trump_sanders_liberals_think_of_themselves_as_very_open_minded_but_that%E2%80%99s_simply_not_true/

EMMA WISNIEWSKI (HEADSHOT AND RESUME; SV ACTOR OF THE WEEK) · Jul 29th

EMMA WISNIEWSKI AT SOUTH BROOKLYN SHAKESPEARE, SUMMER 2015: http://www.southbrooklynshakespeare.com/

OFF-BROADWAY

You Never Can Tell Dolly Clandon Pearl Theatre Co – David Staller

OFF-OFF BROADWAY

Romeo and Juliet Juliet South Brooklyn Shakespeare – Paul Molnar

Hide and Seek: A Musical (AEA workshop) Young Jenny Emerging Artists Theatre – Sarah Krohn

The School for Lies Arsinoe Boxed Wine Productions – Lauren Erwin

The Importance of Being Earnest Cecily Cardew Studio Tisch – Shana Solomon

Antigone Unearthed Fury NYC Fringe 2012 – Rachel Broderick

Off the Map Isis Access Theater – Daniel Johnsen

King Lear Regan TheaterLAB – Lauren Erwin

Lysistrata Female Chorus Secret Theater – Rich Ferraioli

REGIONAL

Soups, Stews and Casseroles: 1976 Kelly St. Louis Rep, MO – Seth Gordon

The Nest Thief Daughter New World Symphony, FL – Mary Birnbaum

Download Resume for Emma Wisniewski

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THE LIT FUND ANNOUNCES FIVE $1000 GRANTS FOR DEDICATED ARTIST PAY · Jul 28th

(via Emily Owens)

In response to feedback from its participants, the LIT Fund, the only charitable organization exclusively dedicated to the independent theater sector of New York City, will be giving away five $1000 grants this year to help companies and individuals pay artists fees.

“Actors, writers, directors and designers always seem last in line when the money gets handed out. This new funding initiative will directly address and change that for five of our participants this year.” says the Fund’s Executive Director, Randi Berry.

In its first two years the Fund has annually given a $5000 Community Resource Grant to a project that benefits the entire independent theater sector. After surveying the 135 participants, the need and desire to pay artists emerged as a clear priority.

“We strive to listen and respond to our participants and let them tell us where the money should go.” says Fund Board Chair, John Clancy.

In keeping with the Fund’s core ethos of “radical transparency” the grantees will be chosen by lottery, giving all eligible applicants an equal chance. Any participant of the Fund putting up a show in a 99-seat theater or less in New York City during the 2015-16 season is eligible for a grant. This continues the Fund’s tradition of creating a simple, transparent and fair granting process. Lots will be drawn and money will be given on Tuesday, October 6at 6:30pm at Parkside Lounge, 317 Houston Street on the Lower East Side.

The LIT Fund is designed to financially and otherwise assist organizations and individual artists creating independent theater in the five boroughs of New York City. The intent of the Fund is to protect, sustain and strengthen this vital segment of American theater, in any economic environment and to further enhance its positive impact on the cultural landscape of the city. At the core of the Fund is the simple idea of theater people helping theater people. Money for the Fund comes from organizations, companies, venues and individual artists donating five cents (0.05 $) per ticket sold to their performances. Additional donations are solicited from patrons of the arts. All money collected goes solely to the independent theater territory.

For more information contact Randi Berry, 917-626-1369, randi.berry@litfund.org