Works by Dael Orlandersmith, Samuel D. Hunter and More Slated for Rattlestick's NEW VOICES / NEW WORKS Series
By: BWW News Desk Jun. 05, 2017
Rattlestick Playwrights Theater and Rosalind Productions Inc. have announced the New Voices/New Works summer reading series. The New Voices/New Works program was launched earlier this year and actively scouts and incubates new voices.
The readings taking place this summer were written by Rattlestick Alumni Playwrights Dael Orlandersmith and Samuel D. Hunter along with Broadway veteran Antonio Edwards Suarez and Australian phenom Lally Katz. All readings are free and open to the public and will take place at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater (224 Waverly Place).
SUMMER PUBLIC READINGS:
Antonio's Song by Antonio Edwards Suarez and Dael Orlandersmith
Directed by May Adrales
Thursday, June 8 at 5pm
A solo piece that explores a man's journey to be a better father. An investigation of who he is and where he comes from. An examination of the sins of his mother and father, race, class, education, pride, masculinity and forgiveness.
Antonio Edwards Suarez has appeared on Broadway in David Mamet's American Buffalo, directed by Robert Falls, which starred John Leguizamo, Cedric the Entertainer, and Haley Joel Osment; and John Guare's Chaucer in Rome, which starred Carrie Preston, Dick Latessa, and Polly Holiday.
Dael Orlandersmith's play Horsedreams was developed at New Dramatists and workshopped at New York Stage and Film Company in 2008, and was performed at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in 2011. Orlandersmith's 2002 Pulitzer Prize nominated play Yellowman was commissioned by and premiered at McCarter Theatre in a co-production with The Wilma Theater and Long Wharf Theatre. Orlandersmith was also a Drama Desk Award nominee for Outstanding Play and Outstanding Actress in a Play for Yellowman.
Neighborhood Watch by Lally Katz
Directed by Oliver Butler
Tuesday, June 20 at 3pm
Neighborhood Watch takes place in the year between Kevin Rudd's election as Australian Prime Minister and Barack Obama's as US President. Everything was changing in the Western World and for a brief time anything seemed possible. Ana is a battle hardened Hungarian immigrant veteran of the twentieth century. Catherine is her neighbor: twenty-something and waiting for a better world. Can their unlikely friendship outlive the colossal forces of history, the inevitability of death, and a trip to the mall to see Mamma Mia? Neighborhood Watch is a glorious comedy about hope, death and pets. It's a classic odd-couple story: opposites attract, and from each other they gain a new understanding. But as the domestic crises accumulate, Neighborhood Watch takes on a sense of enormity in the midst of the ordinary.
Lally Katz is one of Australia's most produced playwrights and she writes for film and television. Lally has received many awards and nominations for her work. Neighborhood Watch was nominated for four Sydney Theatre Awards, including Best New Australian Work and Best Mainstage Production. The play was also nominated for an AWGIE, a Helpmann Award and a NSW Premier's Literary Award. A Golem Story and Goodbye Vaudeville Charlie Mudd both won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award and Return to Earth was nominated for a NSW Premier's Literary Award.
Two New Plays By Samuel D. Hunter
Directed by Davis McCallum
Wednesday, June 28
Lewiston at 3pm
Clarkston at 7pm
At a failing fireworks stand in Lewiston, Idaho, and across the river at a Costco in Clarkston, Washington, two modern day descendants of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark struggle to find a way forward in a world where there's nothing left to discover.
Samuel D. Hunter's plays include The Whale (Drama Desk Award, Lucille Lortel Award, GLAAD Media Award, Drama League and Outer Critics Circle nominations), A Bright New Boise (Obie Award, Drama Desk nomination), The Few (at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater), A Great Wilderness, Rest, Pocatello, Lewiston, Clarkston, and most recently, The Healing and The Harvest. He is the recipient of a 2014 MacArthur "Genius Grant" Fellowship, a 2012 Whiting Writers Award, the 2008 PONY/Lark Fellowship, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Idaho. His plays have been produced around the country at such theaters as Playwrights Horizons, Lincoln Center Theatre, Seattle Rep, The Denver Center, South Coast Rep, Williamstown, Victory Gardens, Dallas Theater Center, The Old Globe, and elsewhere. A native of northern Idaho, Sam lives in NYC. He holds degrees in playwriting from NYU, The Iowa Playwrights Workshop, and Juilliard.
NEW SONGS NOW
Sunday, July 23 through Thursday, July 27 at 8:30pm
In association with New Neighborhood
An unplugged concert series. Two different songwriters share new music in an open-studio environment each night. New Songs Now is a chance to drink beer, eat popcorn, and listen to music and speak with the songwriters afterwards about the work. Songwriters include: Aya Azziz, Heather Christian, Ty Defoe and Tidtaya Sinutoke, Greg Felden, Emily Gardner Hall, Ben Wexler, and more to come. Lineup subject to change.
All tickets are free and open to the public. For reservations, visit www.rattlestick.org or call 212-627-2556.
Since 1994, RATTLESTICK PLAYWRIGHTS THEATER has created, developed and produced many of the nation's greatest playwrights and their works. Our mission is to provide a positive, nurturing experience for emerging playwrights, to present diverse and challenging plays that otherwise might not be produced, and to foster the future voices of American theater. When we take on a playwright, we guarantee him or her a second production, regardless of the reception of the first. We have produced the first plays and early works of some of today's leading voices, including Annie Baker (The Aliens), Sheila Callaghan (That Pretty, Pretty), Jesse Eisenberg (The Revisionist), Martyna Majok (Ironbound), Adam Rapp (The Hallway Trilogy), Lucy Thurber (The Hilltown Plays), and Craig Wright (The Pavilion). They have also produced works by some of our nation's most important playwrights, including Charles Fuller (One Night...), Craig Lucas (Ode to Joy), Dael Orlandersmith (Horsedreams), and José Rivera (Massacre, Sing to Your Children), whose risky and challenging works other theaters are unwilling to produce. For more information, go to www.rattlestick.org.
ROSALIND PRODUCTIONS INC. is a co-producer of the new Broadway musical War Paint, starring Patti LuPone as Helena Rubinstein and Christine Ebersole as Elizabeth Arden, both nominated for Tony Awards. Past Broadway shows include If/Then and The Miracle Worker. Off-Broadway we produced the New York Premiere of The Last Seder, the New York Premiere of A Splintered Soul and John Patrick Shanley's Savage in Limbo. In Los Angeles, we producedMisalliance, Proof, As You Like It and the World Premiere of Stages. Our mission is to explore stories in which the female characters are as vital, complex and influential as the male characters. Our hope is that our audiences will take with them a sense of recognition and a better understanding of their own humanity. Founder and Executive Producer: Abigail Rose Solomon. Visit www.RosalindProductions.com.
NEW NEIGHBORHOOD is a theater/TV/music company whose sincerity and authenticity are so combustible they cannot be housed under one roof for too long without doing severe structural damage. With new work, bruised work, all-singing, all-dancing, foul-mouthed musical work, New Neighborhood finds a show, produces the shit outta it, and disappears into a cloud of train smoke. Recent projects include the world premiere of Suzanne Heathcote's I Saw My Neighbor on the Train and I Didn't Even Smile (co-produced with Berkshire Theatre Group), the west coast and New York premieres of Rolin Jones's These Paper Bullets! (produced in association with Geffen Playhouse and Atlantic Theater Company), and simultaneous productions of Chekhov's Three Sisters and the world premiere of Aaron Posner's No Sisters (co-produced with Studio Theatre); Season One of Fox Television's "The Exorcist" (produced in association with Morgan Creek Productions and 20th Century Fox Television); and the debut album of Honus Honus, Use Your Delusion. Upcoming: One Night Only (running as long as we can), Fall 2017 (co-produced by WP Theater and Monica Bill Barnes & Company). Visit newneighborhood.net.
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