Dorothy Heyward News

A year-long series running February 2017 - January 2018 Inspired by Ta-Nehisi Coates' 2014 article, "A Case for Reparations," the Brooklyn-based cultural hub JACK launches Reparations365: From Memory To Movement, a year-long series of performances, workshops and discussions around the topic of distributive justice for Black Americans.

The Composers Now Festival empowers living composers, celebrates the diversity of their voices, and honors the significance of their contributions to our society. On February 1, the eighth annual festival begins with a celebratory event at the DiMenna Center. Hosted by founder/artistic director Tania Leon, a diverse group of composer and performers including Muhal Richard Abrams, Edmar Castenada, Jessie Montgomery, Nkeiru Okoye, and Tyshawn Sorey will present and discuss recent works.

The Composers Now Festival empowers living composers, celebrates the diversity of their voices, and honors the significance of their contributions to our society. On February 1, the eighth annual festival begins with a celebratory event at the DiMenna Center. Hosted by founder/artistic director Tania Leon, a diverse group of composer and performers including Muhal Richard Abrams, Edmar Castenada, Jessie Montgomery, Nkeiru Okoye, and Tyshawn Sorey will present and discuss recent works.

Amas Musical Theatre and The Amas Musical Theatre Lab will present further staged readings of Gotta Getta Girl, a 1930s musical romp with book and lyrics by Peter Charles Morris and music by David Caldwell.

Brooklyn Gypsies presents the second-annual One Catches Light Festival, celebrating new solo work of five writers associated with the company, with stand-up comic Olander 'Big O' Wilson presiding over the evenings. Icarus in the L.E.S. is a kaleidoscopic performance-poem by Nic Adams, with the wax-winged hero chasing his destiny and scouting out the divide between artistic achievement and personal happiness. I Have No Room for the Broken, written by Angela Abreu, is a play about a cascade towards romantic ruin.

Amas Musical Theatre and The Amas Musical Theatre Lab will present further staged readings of Gotta Getta Girl, a 1930s musical romp with book and lyrics by Peter Charles Morris and music by David Caldwell.

The rarely performed 1930's American Opera, PORGY AND BESS is given a Staged Concert treatment by Director Mitchell Butel with the support of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs.

New Orleans-based collaborative theater company Goat in the Road brings their award-winning play Numb to New York audiences. 

In the year of the thaw between Cuba and the U.S., singer/performer Jadele McPherson creates a musical and theatrical bridge connecting the Cuban-American experience of today with black liberation figures, conjurers and spiritual leaders from two hundred years ago.

In a magnificent finale to the Sydney Symphony Orchestra's 2016 season, Chief Conductor David Robertson will reveal his latest Opera in the Concert Hall presentation - arguably the greatest American opera of all time: The Gershwins®' Porgy and Bess ® by George Gershwin, DuBose and Dorothy Heyward and Ira Gershwin. 

New York, New York: National Alliance for Musical Theatre (Betsy King Militello, Executive Director) is thrilled to announce the first round of casting for the 28th Annual FESTIVAL OF NEW MUSICALS, which takes place on Today, October 27 and Friday, October 28, 2016 at New World Stages (340 West 50th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues). The Festival will kick off on Wednesday, October 26 with its celebrated concert, The 46th Minute, which features songs from Festival shows you will not get to hear in the 45-minute presentation.

Gender/Power Composition IV is an in-process collaborative project led by video artist Maya Ciarrocchi and performance artist Kris Grey in which performers and co-creators Keke Brown, Shawn Escarciga, Ray Ferreira, Massima Lei, Elena Rose Light, Marissa Pereland Pamela Sneed share personal feminist, trans and queer narratives within a framework that blurs authorship.

New York, New York: National Alliance for Musical Theatre (Betsy King Militello, Executive Director) is thrilled to announce the first round of casting for the 28th Annual FESTIVAL OF NEW MUSICALS, which takes place on Thursday, October 27 and Friday, October 28, 2016 at New World Stages (340 West 50th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues). The Festival will kick off on Wednesday, October 26 with its celebrated concert, The 46th Minute, which features songs from Festival shows you will not get to hear in the 45-minute presentation.

Gender/Power Composition IV is an in-process collaborative project led by video artist Maya Ciarrocchi and performance artist Kris Grey in which performers and co-creators Keke Brown, Shawn Escarciga, Ray Ferreira, Massima Lei, Elena Rose Light, Marissa Pereland Pamela Sneed share personal feminist, trans and queer narratives within a framework that blurs authorship.

OBIE-winning theater company Hoi Polloi (Three Pianos, Shadows) presents Quiet, Comfort, a newly-commissioned text by Japanese phenomenon playwright Toshiki Okada.

OBIE-winning theater company Hoi Polloi (Three Pianos, Shadows) presents Quiet, Comfort, a newly-commissioned text by Japanese phenomenon playwright Toshiki Okada. For the piece, director Alec Duffy fashions a dream world in which the audience joins the actors on a giant bed that fills the entire stage of JACK for a piece about travel, first-world privilege and the danger of a life lived alone. With choreography by Stacy Grossfield, Hoi Polloi offers a mysterious experience that aims for the subconscious.

OBIE-winning theater company Hoi Polloi (Three Pianos, Shadows) presents Quiet, Comfort, a newly-commissioned text by Japanese phenomenon playwright Toshiki Okada.

National Alliance for Musical Theatre (Betsy King Militello, Executive Director) has announced the line-up of new musicals for their 28th Annual FESTIVAL OF NEW MUSICALS, which takes place on Thursday, October 27 and Friday, October 28, 2016 at New World Stages (340 West 50th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues).

This summer, JACK presents the premiere of Toshiki Okada's Quiet, Comfort, commissioned by Hoi Polloi and directed by Alec Duffy, a duo of singer/performer Helga Davis and choreographer/dancer Ji?i Bartovanec (of the Sasha Waltz Dance Company), the premiere of the play The Animals, by Amina Henry, a new piece by choreographer Biba Bell, the second annual Brooklyn Experimental Song Carnival, curated by Valerie Kuehne, plus several concerts throughout the season.

Today in 1942, the first revival of Porgy and Bess opened at the Majestic Theatre, where it ran for 286 performances. First performed in 1935, with music by George Gershwin, libretto by DuBose Heyward, and lyrics by Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward, it was based on DuBose Heyward's novel Porgy and subsequent play of the same title, which he co-wrote with his wife Dorothy Heyward. All three works deal with African-American life in the fictitious Catfish Row in Charleston, South Carolina, in the early 1920s. Originally conceived by George Gershwin as an 'American folk opera', Porgy and Bess premiered in New York in the fall of 1935 and featured an entire cast of classically trained African-American singers-a daring artistic choice at the time.