Branden Jacobs-Jenkins News

The Fountain Theatre will inaugurate their new outdoor stage with Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ 2014 Obie Award-winning AN OCTOROON, with previews beginning June 11, 2021. Judith Moreland directs the cast of Leea Ayers, Matthew Hancock, Mara Klein, Hazel Lozano, Rob Nagle, Kacie Rogers, Vanessa Claire Stewart and Pam Trotter. Between final rehearsals, Matthew, who plays the playwright’s alter-ego among other characters, made some time to answer a few of my inquiries.

The Fountain Theatre commemorates the emancipation of enslaved women and men in Texas on June 19, 1865 — the last state to abolish slavery in the U.S. following the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 — with a special event at the Fountain's new Covid-safe outdoor venue in East Hollywood. The Fountain's Juneteenth Celebration will take place on Saturday, June 19 beginning at 7:30 p.m. Admission is free and open to the public.

4th Wall Theatre Company has announced its return to in-person theatre for the 2021-2022 season. This landmark season is completely comprised of Houston Premiere productions and features four of the most exciting plays 4th Wall has ever assembled.

The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre today announced its plans to reopen for Season 37 (2021-22) with a five-play lineup beginning at the end of September 2021. The season includes an Obie award-winner, a premiere of a late 19th century classic re-invented for our pandemic year, the regional premiere of a contemporary critically acclaimed look at working class America, and the first Shakespeare production in The Gamm’s Warwick home.

The FSU/Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training has announced, alongside Asolo Repertory Theatre, their 2021-22 season today in a virtual event broadcast on asolorep.org and Facebook. The FSU/Asolo Conservatory opens its season with the play EVERYBODY (November 2-21, 2021) that was nominated for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize.

Casting is complete and rehearsals begin this week for the Los Angeles premiere of a radical, incendiary and subversively funny Obie award-winning play by MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” recipient Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.

SEGAL TALKS: Week 35 to feature Chris Myers on Wednesday, May 5, 2021, 12 noon EDT. Join a conversation about curating, producing and presenting theatre and performance in the Time of Corona.

The LCT SPOTLIGHT SERIES, Lincoln Center Theater’s free program of digital events, will continue on Thursday, April 29 with an audio performance of Bill Gunn’s 1989 play, THE FORBIDDEN CITY.  Directed by Seret Scott, THE FORBIDDEN CITY’s cast of 11 will feature James T. Alfred, Spencer Scott Barros, Derrick Baskin, Kyle Beltran, and more.

New York Theatre Workshop announced today that Artistic Director James C. Nicola will depart the theater on June 30, 2022. Nicola has been the Artistic Director of New York Theatre Workshop since 1988.

The Dramatists Guild of America has announced that Amanda Green has been elected to be their incoming Council President succeeding outgoing President Doug Wright. She will be the first woman president in the Guild’s 100-year history.

Playwrights Horizons is continuing their new Public Art Series with an installation of two works by Dread Scott on the theater’s 42nd Street facade (April 12-May 9). One work engages passersby in considering what a world unburdened from America’s imperialism and often-destructive exceptionalism—a world without America itself—might look like.

The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize will present a virtual presentation to announce the 2021 winner of one of the most prestigious playwriting awards, and the oldest and largest prize awarded to women+ playwrights, today, April 7, 2021 at 3pm EST/ 8pm BST. Tune in right here at BroadwayWorld to watch the presentation, hosted by Pulitzer Prize-winning Playwright and Susan Smith Blackburn Prize winner (1983) Marsha Norman.

Sean Cercone (CEO/President, Broadway Licensing) and David J. Moore (Acting President, Dramatists Play Service, Inc.) jointly announced today that their respective companies have entered into a landmark agreement under which Dramatists Play Service, Inc. has been acquired by Broadway Licensing.

Seven years after its world premiere in Chicago, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Obie Award winning APPROPRIATE is presented as part of Sydney Theatre Company’s 2021 season. 

Emily Simoness, the Co-Founder and Executive Director of SPACE on Ryder Farm, has made the decision to step down from the executive leadership role in September 2021. For 11 years, her visionary leadership has grown the organization into one of the most sought-after residency programs in the country.

The Los Angeles premiere of An Octoroon by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins will inaugurate the new outdoor stage at the Fountain Theatre later this spring. Judith Moreland will direct.

In 'Kindred,' Dana, a young Black woman and aspiring writer who has uprooted her life of familial obligation and relocated to Los Angeles, ready to claim a future that, for once, feels all her own.

Theatre Communications Group has announced the second iteration of TCG Books' First Fridays, featuring Dael Orlandersmith, author of Until the Flood, in conversation on Facebook Live, Friday, March 5, 2021 at 7:00pm ET. TCG Books' First Fridays series features authors from TCG Books' roster in conversation about their work on the first Friday of every month.

Texas Theatre and Dance presents Year of the Tiger, a newly-developed work that explores our shared reality of the past year. On the eve of the anniversary of the COVID-19 global pandemic, a news anchor is preparing for a special transmission commemorating the year that has gone by when she is visited by a tiger who really wants her to get the story straight, no matter what the cost. 

Playwrights Horizons is continuing their new Public Art Series—the inaugural initiative in the organization’s Lighthouse Project—with an installation of images by Ken Gonzales-Day, whose photography illuminates how difference, otherness, and identity emerge through acts of seeing.