Branden Jacobs-Jenkins News

Stage West is pleased to announces the lineup for its 40th season!   The new season will offer six plays plus two season extras, and patrons purchasing season tickets before October 1 will be offered a discount on the season extras. It's an exciting mix of shows, featuring seven regional premieres.  Here it is:

Tickets are now on sale for Brown Paper Box Co.'s regional premiere of EVERYBODY! This modern riff on the medieval morality play Everyman follows Everybody (chosen from the cast via lottery at each performance) as they question and explore life's most basic and universal elements of death, love, friendship, family, God. etc. Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Gloria, An Octoroon) bases EVERYBODY on the 15th century morality play that instructs sinners on how to repent and seek redemption.

Vineyard Theatre Artistic Directors Douglas Aibel and Sarah Stern have announced the upcoming 2018-2019 Season.

The National Theatre announces new information, and recaps its upcoming season.

In response to popular demand, Soho Rep. (Sarah Benson, Artistic Director; Cynthia Flowers, Executive Director) extends the world premiere of Jackie Sibblies Drury's Fairview, directed by Sarah Benson, through July 22. In Fairview, the Frasier family (MaYaa Boateng, Charles Browning, Roslyn Ruff, and Heather Alicia Simms) is gearing up for Grandma's birthday, and Beverly needs this dinner to be perfect. But the silverware's wrong, the radio's on the fritz, her sister Jasmine is drinking, her husband Dayton isn't helping, her daughter Keisha is a typical teenager, and her brother Tyrone might not show up at all!

California Shakespeare Theater continues its 44th Season with the West Coast Premiere of Everybody, a sparkling new riff on the 15th-century morality play The Summoning of Everyman by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, whom the New York Times calls "one of this country's most original and illuminating writers.' A finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Drama, Everybody is Cal Shakes' second official offering under the New Classics Initiative (NCI), exploring what it means to be a classical theater in the 21st century, and to allow living writers to expand our classical canon. Directed by Nataki Garrett making her Cal Shakes debut, Everybody plays July 18 - August 5 at the Bruns Amphitheater in Orinda. Low-priced previews take place July 18-20; Opening Night is July 21. Tickets (ranging from $20?$92) are available through the Cal Shakes Box Office at 510.548.9666 or by visiting www.calshakes.org. Ticket prices are subject to change without notice.

California Shakespeare Theater (Cal Shakes) today announced the launch of the New Classics Initiative (NCI), and the support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation with a $300,000 three-year grant. NCI has also garnered support from the Walter & Elise Haas Fund and the MCJ Amelior Foundation.

Mixed Blood Theatre is pleased to announce its 2018-19 Season, Transforming the Impossible to the Probable. Speaking truth to power and upending the status quo through theater via provocative programming in which comedy, drama, satire, and extravaganza take on Me Too, automation, Black Lives Matter, abortion, climate change, gender identity, NFL player protests, and, throughout everything, race. The season will put on display Mixed Blood's core value to be predictably unpredictable.

Ned Bennett's production is a gruelling watch, and has contained within it many moments that shock, enlighten, provoke and surprise. Despite its transfer to the National Theatre, the production is still, as Ken Nwosu states to the audience, 'surrounded by white people.'

Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA; Jeffrey Horowitz, Founding Artistic Director) announces additional casting for a public reading of Obie and Drama Desk Award-winning playwright Will Eno's Gnit, directed by Oliver Butler (The Open House, 2014).

Victory Gardens Theater announces the lineup for the 10th Anniversary IGNITION Festival of New Plays, including Prosthesis by Robert Askins; Untitled Road Trip Play byLauren Yee; White History by Dave Harris; How to Defend Yourself by Lily Padilla; Seeing Eye by Nick Malakhow; and The First Deep Breath by Lee Edward Colston II. The 2018 Festival runs August 3 -5, 2018 at Victory Gardens Theater, located at 2433 N Lincoln Avenue.

Described by the New York Times as 'this decade's most eloquent statement on race in America today', Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' extraordinary and provocative play An Octoroon comes to the National Theatre after a sold out run at the Orange Tree Theatre. In 1859, white Irish playwright Dion Boucicault writes a hit play about America. Today, a black American playwright attempts to do the same.

Oliver K. Olsen, chair of the Board of Directors of the Weston Playhouse Theatre, announces today that Susanna Gellert has been chosen by the Board of Directors to be the company's new Executive Artistic Director. Gellert, currently Associate Producer and Director of the Studio at New York's acclaimed Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA), comes to Weston with fifteen years of experience in New York and regional theatre and a long-standing relationship with Vermont, which has been her second home for the past seven years. Ms. Gellert's appointment is the result of a 9-month national search led by Management Consultants for the Arts (www.mcaonline.us).

Described by the New York Times as 'this decade's most eloquent statement on race in America today', Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' extraordinary and provocative play comes to the National Theatre after a sold out run at the Orange Tree Theatre. In 1859, white Irish playwright Dion Boucicault writes a hit play about America. Today, a black American playwright attempts to do the same.

Soho Rep. (Sarah Benson, Artistic Director; Cynthia Flowers, Executive Director) today announced that actor Charles Browning will take over for Lance Coadie Williams in the world premiere of Jackie Sibblies Drury's Fairview, which Soho Rep. Artistic Director Sarah Benson directs, and which the downtown Manhattan theater presents in association with Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Due to unforeseen personal circumstances, Williams is unable to continue.The production now runs at Soho Rep. June 2 - July 8, with opening now set for Sunday, June 17. 

Vineyard Theatre announces the second extension of the world-premiere production of THE BEAST IN THE JUNGLE.  This original dance play by legendary composer and four-time Tony Award winner John Kander, Tony-nominated playwright David Thompson, and five-time Tony Award-winning director and choreographer Susan Stroman will extend until through Sunday, June 24.

Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA; Jeffrey Horowitz, Founding Artistic Director) announces a public reading of Obie and Drama Desk Award-winning playwright Will Eno's Gnit, directed by Oliver Butler (The Open House, 2014), and starring acclaimed stage and screen actor Michael C. Hall (stage: Hedwig and the Angry Inch on Broadway, David Bowie's Lazarus at NYTW; screen: Six Feet Under, Dexter). The reading will take place June 18 at 7pm at Polonsky Shakespeare Center (262 Ashland Place, Brooklyn, NY).

Ars Nova, 'one of the most adventurous Off-Broadway companies' (New York Times), under the leadership of Founding Artistic Director Jason Eagan and Managing Director Renee Blinkwolt, is pleased to announce programming for its 2018-2019 season, which marks a rich expansion of the non-profit's unique role as both an exciting hub for new talent and a hands-on producer of genre-bending Off-Broadway productions.

BroadwayWorld has a first look at Vineyard Theatre's world-premiere of THE BEAST IN THE JUNGLE, check them out below! 

Playing On Air announced today the names of the three celebrity guests joining sponsor Josie Merck on the jury for their inaugural James Stevenson Prize, which will award three monetary prizes for new short comedic plays that honor and perpetuate the spirit and wit of Mr. Stevenson.