Dorothy Heyward News

In her third production at JACK, playwright Amina Henry shares a ghost story (with songs) about a homeless man who is approached in the park by the ghost of a murdered prostitute.  The ghost enlists him on a quest to find her remains so that her grieving mother can finally bury her and move past her mourning. Hunter John and Jane approaches trauma, mental illness and violence towards women in a whimsical way, giving the audience the opportunity to engage with difficult topics through poetic language as well as through a rich musical and visual landscape. With this work, Henry re-imagines what a love story can be, re-imagines what a musical can be, and proposes a world in which all lost or missing individuals are worthy of being found.

National Alliance for Musical Theatre (Betsy King Militello, Executive Director) is thrilled to announce the line-up of new musicals for their 30th Annual FESTIVAL OF NEW MUSICALS, which takes place on Thursday, October 25 and Friday, October 26, 2018 at New World Stages (340 West 50th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues). The Festival events will kick off on Monday, October 22 with Thank You, 30!, a gala event to celebrate the 30th Annual Festival.

Today, Marie decides to leave her husband: 'Let me tell you something. I find my husband so God damned irritating that I'm planning to leave him. And that's a fact.' But in Wallace Shawn's 1978 American masterpiece, facts are slippery things. In this radical re-imagining at JACK, two multi-disciplinary artists play the combative titular couple and head up the design team. Joined by an ensemble of some of Brooklyn's sharpest comedic voices, Gordon Landenberger (Bruce) and trans actress Theda Hammel (Marie) double as the set and sound designers, respectively, for this hilarious and timely new production. 

Today, Marie decides to leave her husband: 'Let me tell you something. I find my husband so God damned irritating that I'm planning to leave him. And that's a fact.' But in Wallace Shawn's 1978 American masterpiece, facts are slippery things. In this radical re-imagining at JACK, two multi-disciplinary artists play the combative titular couple and head up the design team. Joined by an ensemble of some of Brooklyn's sharpest comedic voices, Gordon Landenberger (Bruce) and trans actress Theda Hammel (Marie) double as the set and sound designers, respectively, for this hilarious and timely new production.

JACK doesn't go slack in the summer.  From a festival of experimental music to a revival of a Wallace Shawn scorcher to poets and rappers reflecting on reparations, JACK brings action to the steamy months. This season features artists we feel are bringing life to our mission of fueling experiments in art and activism, including theater company Sister Sylvester, poet and writer collective Oye Group, director Knud Adams, playwright Amina Henry and burgeoning theater ensemble TV.

The National Alliance for Musical Theatre (NAMT) announces 18 awards granted from their National Fund for New Musicals, and five awards granted from their Innovation & Exploration Grant program. The National Fund for New Musicals (NFNM) is a major funding program to support NAMT member not-for-profit theatres in their collaborations with writers to create, develop and produce new musicals. Now in its tenth year, this year the Fund is providing grants totaling $58,000 to organizations across the country.

National Alliance for Musical Theatre (Betsy King Militello, Executive Director) is thrilled to announce the creation and inaugural year of NAMT's Festival Observership for Early-Career Directors. In line with NAMT's strategic plan, and in celebration of the 30th Annual Festival of New Musicals, NAMT will launch a directing observership program, dedicated to providing professional development and networking opportunities to early-career directors by exposing them to the Festival process and the NAMT membership.

Writer Alex Borinsky reunites with the creative team behind Clubbed Thumb's Of Government - director Jeremy Bloom and composer Joe White - for this new piece by their inventive company Rady&Bloom. An arts collective gathers to celebrate their director's birthday; fueled by Moscow Mules, the partygoers sprawl across the apartment, decompressing from their ongoing rehearsal process. They speculate about the end of the world.

Writer/performer Kirya Yvonne Traber presents a theatrical mixtape at JACK, sharing songs of necessity and stories of longing. For this mix of concert and theater piece, Traber is backed by a four-piece band, with musical arrangements by Emma Alabaster. Featured musicians include Kala Brame (percussion), Alex Marcelo (piano), Emma Alabaster (bass), and Gwen Laster (viola), with a scenic installation by Jacqui Martinez and lighting design by Marika Kent. What We Needed features original music and text by Traber, and was created, in part, through the Lincoln Center Education Community Artist in Residence Program.

Philly favorite choreographer/performer Annie Wilson returns to JACK with At Home with the Humorless Bastard: an exploration of personal and collective grief that shifts the audience's perspective by bringing them onstage and casting them in the dance. Through the piece, she asks whether immediate and deep intimacy with a stranger is possible, and, if not, whether adding nudity, glitter, or amateur renditions of Charles Manson songs would help. Wilson takes aim at social structures that both allow and inhibit the deep connection many are aching for, constantly, relentlessly, like a low-frequency hum that's a little unsettling in the bowels. The Humorless Bastard pokes at those structures, letting them fill up with water, turning the volume up on that hum.

One would assume that any company of Porgy and Bess, a 1935 folk opera set in an African American tenement in Charleston, South Carolina, would be made up of a black cast. It ain't necessarily so.

Playwright/performer Stacey Karen Robinson shares her new solo exploration mixing song, movement and her distinctive storytelling style. A seeker at the crossroads wrestles to be free; she shape shifts through the body, through the memory of many selves in a dynamic sojourn of heart & spirit.

National Alliance for Musical Theatre kicks off the 29th Annual Festival of New Musicals with its celebrated The 46th Minute concert tonight, October 18th, at 6:30 pm directed by Branden Huldeen and produced for NAMT by Ciera Iveson with Karin Nilo.

Part of JACK's year-long series, Reparations365 The performance collective RAKIA!, led by choreographer and dancer Rakia Seaborn, inverts playground routines into the language with which a trio of dancers communicates with the black women who died too soon. This highly-stylized immortality ritual hearkens back to a care-free time of middle school talent shows, Blue Magic hair grease & 'CrazySexyCool.' Part of JACK's Reparations365 series, myeyesdontcrynomore positions reparations as freedom from a never-ending fear of another black death. What if there were something else? Endless life, endless joy.

National Alliance for Musical Theatre (Betsy King Militello, Executive Director) is thrilled to announce this year's line-up for the MIDDAY CABARETS and SONGWRITERS SHOWCASE hosted byCome From Away's Caesar Samayoa, which are part of the 29th annual FESTIVAL OF NEW MUSICALS. The Festival will take place on Thursday, October 19 and Friday, October 20, 2017 at New World Stages (340 West 50th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues).

National Alliance for Musical Theatre will kick off the 29th Annual Festival of New Musicals with its celebrated The 46th Minute concert on October 18th at 6:30 pm directed by Branden Huldeen and produced for NAMT by Ciera Iveson with Karin Nilo.

JACK presents 'Your Healing is Killing Me: A Performance Manifesto' by Virginia Grise, running October 5 - 7, 2017.

Rarely has the lowly and much-maligned post-show talkback received as much attention as it has since it was revealed that David Mamet was prohibiting them during productions of his plays. Inspired by Mr. Mamet's decision while honoring his prohibition, in this series of public discussions critic and journalist Jeremy M. Barker and director Patrice Miller bring together diverse practitioners to explore issues raised by Mr. Mamet's long career through their own experiences. The guests for this second session in the series, on Sunday, Oct. 15, are writer Leonard Jacobs (The Clyde Fitch Report), writer Colleen Werthman and playwright Amina Henry. Each will explore artists' powers, limitations, and challenges in defining the experience of their works.

Amas Musical Theatre and The Amas Musical Theatre Lab will present staged readings of Love and Other Fables, a screwball romantic musical comedy, with a book by John McMahon and music and lyrics by Jay Jeffries.

Black Girl Magic Show! is an absurdist dance theatre lecture by playwright/performer nicHi douglas on Black female identity. Utilizing African Diasporan histories, Black feminist theory, and a lot of stuff douglas made up, she attempts to unpack, re-pack, and de-pack the Black female experience in America as witnessed by one Black woman - The Professor. As the audience follows The Professor, they discover what might happen if the one Black girl without 'Black Girl Magic' takes matters into her own hands. Before the show ends, the audience experiences a TED-type talk, modern dance, a magic routine, and a concert, often simultaneously. And they probably see at least 20 wigs.