Monthly Archives: September 2017

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN ON BROADWAY: A SPIRIT IN THE NIGHT SPOILER ALERT · Sep 30th

(Christ Jordan’s article appeared on app., 9/28; via the Drudge Report.)

So Bruce Springsteen of Freehold, whose “Springsteen on Broadway” begins previews Tuesday, Oct. 3, and opens Thursday, Oct. 12, at the Walter Kerr Theatre, should feel right at home.

“He’s the greatest living storyteller because of how he connected with everyone at his shows, all the way to the last row” said Matt Pinfield, former host of MTV’s “120 Minutes” and author of the new book “All These Things That I’ve Done: My Insane, Improbable Rock Life.” “There’s such a human element with his storytelling and his songs. He’s always been able to tell stories in between songs, that in itself is an art form.

KEITH HAMILTON COBB’S ‘AMERICAN MOOR’–SENOVVA, INC. AND PHOENIX THEATRE ENSEMBLE ANNOUNCE INVITATION-ONLY PERFORMANCES · Sep 29th

AWARD-WINNING PLAY AT THE PERSHING SQUARE SIGNATURE CENTER OCTOBER 2^ND@ 2PM & 6PM FOLLOW-UP TO HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL RUN AT BOSTON CENTER FOR THE ARTS

Phoenix Theatre Ensemble and SenovvA, Inc. announce that Keith Hamilton Cobb’s explosive American Moor will play for two invitation-only performances at The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre, The Pershing Square Signature Center at 480 West 42ndStreet on Monday, October 2^nd at 2:00 pm and 6:00 pm.

-A black actor auditioning for the role of Othello, finds himself torn between wanting the role of a lifetime and having to engage an age-old process that invariably ends up with a large black man on stage responding to white decision makers who presume to understand, and ultimately dictate, how a charismatic, intelligent, black man should behave in society. Things can get a little tense… –

Shakespeare, race, and America…not necessarily in that order are explored in AMERICAN MOOR directed by Drama Desk nominee Kim Weild.

Josh Tyson joins Mr. Cobb in the cast, Caleb Spivey is production stage manager.

Powerful, dynamic, humorous, confrontational and ironic, yet truthful throughout,

American Moor played in Boston for 4 weeks to rapturous reviews:

“Spellbinding…A Must See… some plays, and some performances, take the idea of necessary to a deeper level. In those rare cases, the critic’s adjectival exhortation “must-see’’ can almost border on the literal. “American Moor’’ is one such play and one such performance.”” – Don Aucoin, The Boston Globe;

“This is a rare example of a play about which you can say, without hyperbole, that it’s riveting: You hang on every well-chosen, robustly presented word. “American Moor” is both urgent art and an important political statement.” –Edge Media Network

“Our highest recommendation!“ -Boston Examiner

“This piece discusses race relations in theatre, and in the United States, like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It expresses the anger, the rage, the joy, the triumph, and the utter frustration of the black male performer explicitly and humanly.” –New England Theatre Geek

The script was honored by being inducted in the permanent collection of The Folger Shakespeare Library. Michael Witmore, Director of the Library, stated “Keith Hamilton Cobb’s American Moor is incredible…I have spent my life thinking about Shakespeare, but that did not prepare me for the depth of thinking and feeling that his performance provoked.”

What: AMERICAN MOOR by Keith Hamilton Cobb

When: Monday, October 2 at 2:00 pm and 6:00 pm

Where: The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre, The Pershing Square Signature Center at 480 West on 42Street.

Information: Craig@PhoenixTheatreEnsemble.org; 212-465-3446

SenovvA,Inc. SenovvA, Producers — Founded in 2005, SenovvA has produced, general managed, supervised, developed and/or designed over 200 theatrical productions internationally. With the latest addition of Production Core, more recent projects include (partial list): (Broadway) Hedwig, Sideshow, Lucky Guy, American Idiot, Bring it On, Tuck Everlasting and [title of show] – (Off-Broadway) Jersey Boys (opens November 2017), Red Roses, Green Gold (opens October 2017), In and of Itself, Curvy Widow, Trip of Love, Fellowship! The Musical Parody, Queen of Wyoming and Peter and the Starcatcher. In Television, SenovvA is well known for its work on live broadcast productions that include The Academy Awards, Kennedy Center Honors, Emmy Awards, Billboard Awards, Kids Choice Awards, to name just a few. Beyond live production, SenovvA’s client list includes Silicon Valley giants for ongoing architectural projects worldwide. In NY, SenovvA is currently a proud participant at the largest real estate development project in North America, Hudson Yards. Find out more about the 400+ projects a year at SenovvA.com

Phoenix Theatre Ensemble: A non-profit 501(C)3 company now in its 13^th season. Under the leadership of Elise Stone, Artistic Director, and Craig Smith, Producing Artistic Director, Phoenix Theatre Ensemble presents 3-5 mainstage productions annually, a reading series, a new play development program, and an arts-in-education program in NYC Public Schools. Mainstage productions this season include Tartuffe by Moliere, The Cult Play by Topher Cusumano, and Klaus Mann’s Mephisto. PTE is the recipient of NYIT Award Nominations, 3 NYIT Awards, and an Audelco Award. The company is a constituent of Network of Ensemble Theatres, ART/NY, Theatre Communications Group, and League of Independent Theatres.

Photo Credit: Chris Lang

ALBERT INNAURATO INTERVIEW WITH STAGE VOICES (SUMMER, 2015) · Sep 28th

Albert Innaurato Gives an Exclusive Interview with SV’s Bob Shuman: Part I appeared 8/26/15 and Part II appeared 9/2/15

Innaurato’s short play Doubtless, produced by John McCormack, appeared at 59E59’s Summer Shorts series in 2014. Gemini, winner of the Obie Award, became the fifth longest-running play to appear on Broadway: premiering Off-Off-Broadway in 1976, and moving to Broadway in 1977, it ran for four years (1, 819 performances). The Transfiguration of Benno Blimpie won a second Obie in 1977. Other plays include Passione, Magda and Callas, Coming of Age in Soho, Gus and Al, and Dreading Thekla. While attending the Yale School of Drama Innaurato wrote The Idiots Karamazov, I Don’t Normally Like Poetry but Have You Read Trees, and Gyp, the Real-Life Story of Mitzi Gaynor with Christopher Durang. He was also nominated for an Emmy Award for Vera: U.S.O. Girl; additional television credits are: The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd and short plays for PBS, including Death and Taxes. Innaurato has directed many operas, premiering new work as well as interpreting classics, for a small company in Philadelphia, where he moved to work at the Prince Music Theater. Adjunct at Columbia, Princeton, Yale, and Temple University, essayist, and cultural critic in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and very frequently in Opera News, Innaurato blogs about serious music and opera at: http://mrsjohnclaggartssadlife.blogspot.com/.

What’s the nicest thing that someone ever said to you about a play you don’t want to be remembered for?

I am so amazed when people remember that I wrote plays that I’m thrilled for a minute or two. I don’t expect to be remembered as a person, let alone as a playwright. I’ve written some lousy plays, God knows, but really, people who remember the good or the bad, are so rare and so sincere, I’m grateful.

Read Part I of the Stage Voices interview: http://stagevoices.com/2015/08/26/two-time-obie-winner-albert-innauratos-exclusive-interview-with-bob-shumanpart-ii-will-be-published-september-2-inn/

Read Park II of the Stage Voices interview: https://stagevoices.com/2015/09/02/albert-innauratos-transfiguration-the-two-time-obie-winner-on-arts-police-the-transsexual-movement-b/

Photo: The New York Times–Albert Innaurato is (l).

ALBERT INNAURATO, REST IN PEACE (1947-2017) · Sep 28th

(Neil Genzlinger’s article appeared in The New York Times, 9/27; via Pam Green.)

Albert Innaurato, a playwright who enjoyed spectacular success for a time in the late 1970s, including having a play run on Broadway for more than four years, has died in Philadelphia. He was 70.

His cousin Stephen Paesani said Mr. Innaurato was found dead in his bed on Tuesday, and had probably been dead for two days. The cause was not clear, Mr. Paesani said, but Mr. Innaurato had had heart problems recently.

Mr. Innaurato’s biggest hit, written while he was still in his 20s, was “Gemini,” a comic drama about a Harvard student who returns to his blue-collar Philadelphia neighborhood for his 21st birthday and has to confront, among other things, his sexual orientation. It opened on May 21, 1977, at the Little Theater on Broadway and ran for 1,819 performances.

A few months before that, another of his plays, “The Transfiguration of Benno Blimpie,” had an acclaimed Off Broadway run at the Astor Place Theater.

*****SONDHEIM/GOLDMAN: ‘FOLLIES’–SHOWBIZ STUNNER RETURNS IN BREATHTAKING STYLE · Sep 28th

(Michael Billington’s article appeared in the Guardian, 9/6.)

Although it has legions of admirers, Follies has often seemed a problematic show. Stephen Sondheim’s music and lyrics combine emotional pain and witty pastiche with a deftness that James Goldman’s book never quite seems to match. But Dominic Cooke’s superb revival, reverting to the structure of the 1971 original and ditching the optimistic conclusion that marred the 1987 West End production, gives this bleakly festive musical a poetic unity I didn’t realise it possessed.

The paradox is that Cooke achieves unity by stretching, to the limit, the show’s obsession with duality. That idea of doubleness is built into the Sondheim-Goldman concept. We are invited to witness a grand reunion of veteran Follies showgirls in a Broadway theatre on the verge of demolition; in the background we see the ostrich-plumed incarnations of their younger selves. At the same time we are privy to a double marital crisis. Well-heeled New Yorkers Ben and Phyllis are in as much trouble as their old Phoenix-based chums, Buddy and Sally. What brings the crisis to a head is that Sally has a lifelong yen for Ben that has never been resolved.

FOLLIES by Goldman ;
Directed by Dominic Cooke ;
Designed by Vicki Mortimer ;
at the National Theatre, London, UK ;
21 August 2017 ;
Credit : Johan Persson

The intermingling of past and present is an idea many dramatists have used, notably Tom Stoppard in The Invention of Love, where the older AE Housman views the sexual hesitancy of his younger self with a rueful regret. Here, Cooke’s production lends the idea extra poignancy by making this interaction a two-way process: at one point, Zizi Strallen as the young Phyllis seems about to dissolve in tears as she gazes at the dyspeptic solitude of Janie Dee as her older but no wiser self.

THEY CAN ACT. BUT CAN THEY SERVE? · Sep 27th

(Alexis Soloski’s article appeared in The New York Times, 9/22; via Pam Green.)

On a practice court at the U.S.T.A. Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens, two men were playing some pretty ugly tennis. It was the Monday morning after the United States Open and as the subway rumbled by and workers unstrung banners and logos, Wilson Bethel and Alex Mickiewicz faced each other across the sunstruck acrylic turf.

Mr. Bethel, wearing maroon warm-up gear and a backward baseball cap, lolloped easy volleys to Mr. Mickiewicz, who was dressed all in black like a sporty supervillain. Mr. Mickiewicz sent some of those balls back over the net. Others thudded straight into it.

“These courts have never really seen play like this before,” his castmate, the actress Zoë Winters, deadpanned.

The actors had gathered at the foot of Arthur Ashe Stadium as part of rehearsals for “The Last Match,” a play by Anna Ziegler that begins previews at the Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theater on Sept. 28.

BARRY EDELSTEIN: THINKING SHAKESPEARE · Sep 26th

(from the Folger Shakespeare Library; via Pam Green.)

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 82

How do actors breathe life into Shakespeare’s texts? How do they take language that’s centuries old and make it sound so real and immediate?

Barry Edelstein, the Erna Finci Viterbi Artistic Director at The Old Globe in San Diego, is one of the nation’s most experienced Shakespeare directors. Twice a year, The Old Globe holds an event called Thinking Shakespeare Live! – a master class where you get to watch actors act and Edelstein direct – in essence, pulling back the curtain on the rehearsal room.

In this podcast episode, Edelstein works with Barbara Bogaev to go through a very abbreviated version of Thinking Shakespeare Live!

Photo: La Times

‘SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE’ TOPS AMERICAN THEATRE’S MOST-PRODUCED PLAYS LIST/ LAUREN GUNDERSON IS THE MOST-PRODUCED PLAYWRIGHT · Sep 25th

(via Gus Schulenburg, TCG)

American Theatre’s Top 10 Most-Produced Plays of 2017-18:

Shakespeare in Love, adapted for the stage by Lee Hall, based on the screenplay by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard: 15
Fun Home, adapted by Lisa Kron, based on the graphic novel by Alison Bechdel, lyrics by Kron, and music by Jeanine Tesori: 12
Skeleton Crew by Dominique Morisseau: 11
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, adapted by Simon Stephens from the novel by Mark Haddon: 9
Marjorie Prime by Jordan Harrison: 9
The Humansby Stephen Karam: 8
A Raisin in the Sunby Lorraine Hansberry: 8
Heisenbergby Simon Stephens: 8
Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberleyby Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon: 8
Sense and Sensibility(all adaptations): 8

adapted by Kate Hamill from Jane Austen: 7

adapted by Emma Whipday and Brian McMahon: 1

“This is a breathtaking landmark for me, because it is a testament to long-standing friendships and creative partnerships throughout our diverse and inspiring national theatre community,” said Lauren

American Theatre’s Top 20 Most-Produced Playwrights of 2017-18:

Lauren Gunderson: 27 (including 8 co-writing credits)
2.         Simon Stephens : 19
3.         Lee Hall: 15
4.         Lisa Kron: 15 (including 13 co-writing credits)
5.         Dominique Morisseau: 15
6.         Arthur Miller: 14
7.         Ayad Akhtar: 13
8.         Quiara Alegría Hudes: 10 (including 5 co-writing credits)
9..        Jordan Harrison: 10
10.        Ken Ludwig: 9
Tennessee Williams: 9
12.        August Wilson: 9 (not including UniSonby the UNIVERSES, which uses Wilson’s poetry)
13.        Branden Jacobs-Jenkins: 9
14.        Kate Hamill: 9
15.        Lucas Hnath: 9
16.        Aaron Posner: 8
17.        Eugene O’Neill: 8
18.        Lorraine Hansberry: 8
19.        Mark St. Germain: 8
20.        Oscar Wilde: 8

For more information about the American Theatre Top 10 Most-Produced Plays and Top 20 Most-Produced Playwrights lists, visit: http://www.americantheatre.org.

Photo: Lauren Gunderson, Olney Theatre Center

MOISÉS KAUFMAN ON MARRYING ART AND LIFE · Sep 23rd

(Joanne Kaufman’s article appeared in The New York Times, 9/15; via Pam Green.)

The playwright and director Moisés Kaufman lives with his husband, Jeffrey LaHoste, in what Mr. LaHoste puckishly calls the smoked fish belt. Murray’s Sturgeon Shop, Barney Greengrass and Zabar’s are all just a cherry stone’s throw away from the rental the men have shared since 1989, soon after meeting in a political theater class at New York University.

The couple, who married three years ago, got the apartment, a Classic Six with crown moldings, hardwood floors and a windowed kitchen, in that time-honored New York way — through somebody who knew somebody who had very good connections.

At the time it felt a little far away,” said Mr. Kaufman, 53, a founder with Mr. LaHoste of Tectonic Theater Project, a company whose productions include “Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde” and “The Laramie Project,” an account of the reaction to the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student, both written by Mr. Kaufman.

Photo: Lambda Literary

‘THE CLIMBERS’ BY CLYDE FITCH (METROPOLITAN PLAYHOUSE–9/8-10/8)—NEXT ON THE STAGE VOICES CALENDAR · Sep 22nd

‘THE CLIMBERS’ BY CLYDE FITCH (METROPOLITAN PLAYHOUSE)

ABOUT:

ARE WE THERE, YET?

By Alex Roe

In the land of opportunity, no star is beyond our grasp. No aspiration is too high, if only we will reach for it. But is the invitation to continually strive a gift, or a curse? Is opportunity-worship devotion to a jealous idol? Is it, in fact, a goblin haunting the American dream?

Farcical and heartbreaking by turns, Clyde Fitch’s 1901 The Climbers defies easy categorization, but by changing its own tone, this long-overlooked play captures an elusive quarry and an essential conundrum for the American social animal. At the dawn of the 20th century, the altruistic and esteemed head of the Hunter family has died before his time, leaving his wife and three daughters with an unwelcome surprise. Desperate in his final months to keep up with the demands of their extravagant social life, he made a risky investment and lost the family’s once substantial fortune, leaving them with no assets or income at all.

If the fires of adversity prove one’s mettle, the various members of this family seem to be made of different stuff. Mr. Hunter’s widow, youngest daughter, and son-in-law scheme to dupe others into making up their losses. Meanwhile, his sister and two elder daughters vow to care for themselves and their families whatever the personal costs. From these different campaigns spring both the wicked comedy and tender pathos of the play.

and Read more….The Clyde Fitch Report

Photo: L to R: Levi Adkins, Becca Ballenger, Margaret Catov, Matt McAllister
Alexandra Anne, Erin Leigh Schmoyer, Marc LeVasseur, David Licht,
Erin Beirnard (concealed), Alyssa Simonb
photo: Tanya Parks