Dorothy Heyward News

At a Virginia university established by a founding father, TJ is a university dean and Sally his work-study student. But TJ's power has limits and Sally knows it. In TJ Loves Sally 4 Ever, playwright James Ijames hotwires a ride that leaves history's burdens in the dust and off-roads a trail for the future.

One of America's favorite operas returns to the Met for the first time in nearly 30 years! The 2019-2020 season of The Met: Live in HD will continue Saturday, February 1 with The Gershwins' PORGY AND BESS at 12:55 pm in the Nancy Marine Studio Theatre.

Red Mountain Theatre Company is mounting an unforgettable production of The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess at the RMTC Cabaret Theatre, February 7-23.

Downtown Music Publishing has signed a publishing administration and catalog marketing agreement for the George Gershwin catalog with the Godowsky family and Heyward Memorial Fund, respective successors to the historic American songwriter and Porgy and Bess authors DuBose and Dorothy Heyward. In addition to many of Gershwin's preeminent works, the agreement includes management of more than 300 previously unpublished songs by Gershwin that have been largely unavailable since their discovery in the 1980s.

Baryshnikov Arts Center presents Estado Vegetal (Vegetative State), an exuberant and polyphonic one-woman show written and directed by Manuela Infante,one of the most prolific voices in contemporary Chilean and Latin American theater (May 2-3).

According to The Guardian, there is a production of Porgy and Bess happening in Hungary, featuring white actors, and the company is going to extreme lengths to get around the issue.

Amas Musical Theatre and The Amas Musical Theatre Lab, in association with LaVie Productions, will present staged readings of Victory Train, a new musical, with book, music and lyrics by David Buskin and Jake Holmes.

The South Florida Symphony Orchestra's production of the Gershwin's great American opera Porgy and Bess opens tonight.

The South Florida Symphony Orchestra has announced three performances of a groundbreaking new production of the Gershwin's great American opera Porgy and Bess.

In this solo show, Kareem M. Lucas reanimates the memory of a never-ending NYC night - a wild roller coaster ride through alcohol, drugs, sex, joy, loss, and self-discovery. He weaves together his past and present to interrogate our desperate need for significance, in life and after death, and mythologizes the everyday experience of a common Black man in America. Directed by Zoey Martinson, with music composed and performed by Emily Gardner Xu Hall, Black Is Beautiful, But It Ain't Always Pretty is an epic poem about fulfilling one's purpose-if there is any-before time runs out. The clock is ticking.

With an enduring legacy of violence, injustice, and white supremacy in America, what happens when Black people just can't take it anymore? Told through a series of snapshot-like moments along the course of the revolution, audiences follow the fight for Black liberation in America through eyes of would-be revolutionaries and the surprising personalities they encounter in the fight.

The Danger: A Homage to Strange Fruit is a theatrical symphony in four movements that contemplates the legacy of violence against Black bodies in America. Inspired by the mysterious hanging death of 17-year-old Lennon Lacy in 2014 in Bladenboro, NC, this dystopic ghost play follows the interracial couple He and She into the world of The Station, a long ago abandoned rail station waiting room, an in-between place that houses Black souls who left the earth in violent ways and who constantly seek their way home. In 2015, Rose received NYU's Rita Goldberg Prize for The Danger -- an award recognizing the best play by a graduate or undergraduate student.

The Danger: A Homage to Strange Fruit is a theatrical symphony in four movements that contemplates the legacy of violence against Black bodies in America. Inspired by the mysterious hanging death of 17-year-old Lennon Lacy in 2014 in Bladenboro, NC, this dystopic ghost play follows the interracial couple He and She into the world of The Station, a long ago abandoned rail station waiting room, an in-between place that houses Black souls who left the earth in violent ways and who constantly seek their way home. In 2015, Rose received NYU's Rita Goldberg Prize for The Danger -- an award recognizing the best play by a graduate or undergraduate student.

Now in its fourth year, Oye Group's annual showcase features radical artists turning up the volume on revolutionary imagination. This year, Cristina Pitter, Jaime Sunwoo, Drew Weinstein, Haleh Roshan, Teddy Tedholm and Animal Engine explore 'The Other,' with performances tackling queerness, colorism, body image, immigration, national and cultural identity, military invasions, colonialism and mental wellness. Led by Oye Group Artistic Director & Founder Modesto Flako Jimenez, and curated by Artem Yatsunov, OYE Avant Garde Night! connects emerging artists with community around the critical issues of our day.

The National Alliance for Musical Theatre (Betsy King Militello, Executive Director) is celebrating its 30th Annual Festival of New Musicals this year, and in recognition of that milestone, NAMT will host a month-long new musicals celebration this September. During New Musicals Month, NAMT will celebrate and honor the groundbreaking work their members do year-round to develop new work.

A mix of emerging and established artists fills the fall roster at multi-disciplinary performance venue JACK, with acknowledged masters Toshi Reagon and trumpeter Peter Evans sharing a season with up-and-comers, including playwright Stacey Rose, solo performer Kareem M. Lucas, playwright Robert Quillen Camp and Bessie-nominated dancer Shamar Wayne Watt, among others. Special highlights are the return of the acclaimed Gracie Gardner play, ATHENA, Korean choreographer In Kyung Lee with Vogel, a poetic piece focused on the female gaze, Black Revolutionary Theater Workshop with the premiere of Sheyenne Javonne Brown's Summoned, in which Orpheus and Eurydice meet the Black Lives Matter movement, and irreverent dancer/choreographer Greg Zuccolo with his "danced play," Busy White People, Goodnight.

In this collaboratively-created play by blossoming theater company TV, the ensemble unpacks the longing one can feel for another time and place, whether real or imagined: childhood, years without war, early human history, a time when everyone enjoyed the outdoors and raised chickens and heard gossip from the neighbors, when strawberries were tiny and sour. With choral odes by Deepali Gupta, this whimsical show hops millennia in its exploration of what once was or never was at all.

Cincinnati Opera, today announced the repertoire and casting for Cincinnati Opera's 2019 Summer Festival, which will run from June 13 to July 28. The company's 99th season begins with a charming production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro in Music Hall's Springer Auditorium.

Fort Worth Opera (FWOpera) announced today the casts and creative teams for the 2019 Festival season, including the world premiere of composer-librettist Rachel J. Peters's delightfully wicked opera, Companionship. Adapted from the short story by internationally bestselling author Arthur Phillips, this delicious dark comedy about an obsession with dough, mirrors our modern world, where what we consume becomes all-consuming. Selected as a winner of the 2018 FWOpera Frontiers showcase, the work will receive a fully staged production next spring at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden, as part of FWOpera's alternative venue series, Opera Unbound.