American Playwrights News

Obie Award winner Melia Bensussen (Luck of the Irish, Circle Mirror Transformation) returns to the Huntington Theatre Company to direct Awake and Sing!, Clifford Odets' stirring American classic about a working-class Jewish family striving for a better future. Performances at the Avenue of the Arts / BU Theatre begin tonight, November 7 and continue through Sunday, December 7, 2014.

The Night Thoreau Spent In Jail by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee is a poignant drama that explores Henry David Thoreau's historic act of civil disobedience. The show runs tonight, November 7-23, 2014 in the Young Theatre on CSUF's campus.

The monologues will be read at a public reading tonight, November 6, 2014 following the 8:00 p.m. performance. The writers will also receive a session with American Voices New Play Institute Dramaturg Jocelyn Clarke, a listing in the Our War program and an award certificate. The finished monologues along with video clips of the performed monologues will be posted on Arena Stage's website and shared via social media. Directed by Anita Maynard-Losh, Our War runs October 21 - November 9, 2014 in the Arlene and Robert Kogod Cradle.

Playwrights Horizons today announced several major initiatives that will expand the ways in which theater writers are compensated. As a writer's theater dedicated to the support and development of contemporary American playwrights, composers and lyricists and to the production of their new work, Playwrights Horizons is committed to establishing new standards in compensation that will directly benefit all of its writers and taking a leadership position in responding to the reality that theater writers are among the lowest-compensated creative artists in America.

Luna Stage and StrangeDog Theatre Company are proud to present the world premiere of Tilt the Unlit Candle, a brand new holiday play by Ben Clawson. Tilt the Unlit Candle opens to previews on Thursday Decemeber 4, 2014 and runs Thursdays through Sundays through December 21st. Opening night is Friday December 5th at 8pm. Select performances followed by Talkbacks with the creative team.

ASCAP Award-winning writer/director Chip Deffaa will be joined by special guests, including noted showbiz biographer Herb Goldman, writer/entertainer Brian Gari, and actor Michael Townsend Wright, for special audience 'talkback' sessions, following select performances of Deffaa's shows 'One Night with Fanny Brice' and 'The Irving Berlin Ragtime Revue,' which are playing in repertory this fall at the 13th Street Theater (50 W. 13th Street, NYC).

Lincoln Center Theater's production of of Sarah Ruhl's new play The Oldest Boy, directed by Rebecca Taichman, opens tonight, November 3 in the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater. Let's see what the critics had to say...

This December, Marin Theatre Company continues its 48th Season with a presentation of Reduced Shakespeare Company performing their The Complete History of Comedy (abridged), starring writer/directors Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor, with Dominic Conti. The "Bad Boys of Abridgement" will leave no joke untold as they deconstruct the entire history of comedy in a dizzying night's entertainment.

When ASCAP Award-winning writer/director Chip Deffaa's "The Irving Berlin Ragtime Revue" opens November 9th at the 13th Street Repertory Theater (50 W. 13th Street, NYC), it will include some Berlin rarities and rediscoveries unheard in a century, including some never-recorded Berlin numbers.

The Sunday Series at Abingdon will present MOONLIGHT IN GREENWICH VILLAGE, a one night only workshop performance on NOVEMBER 16th of three new one acts by New York-based playwright Charles Messina.

And so South Florida's Island City Stage - winner of six Carbonell Awards last season including Best Production of a Play - will kick off its third season with the world premiere of Michael Aman's new comedy POZ. The production will begin with previews today, October 23and open officially on Saturday, October 25.

The Night Thoreau Spent In Jail by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee is a poignant drama that explores Henry David Thoreau's historic act of civil disobedience. The show runs November 7-23, 2014 in the Young Theatre on CSUF's campus.

Harvey Weinstein will team with MSG Entertainment and creatives Warren Carlyle, Diane Paulus and Randy Weiner to create a new springtime perennial ROCKETTES spectacular at New York's famed Radio City Music Hall.

From today, October 21 to November 8, August Strindberg Repertory will transport Strindberg's 'Miss Julie' to an antebellum Louisiana plantation in a new interpretation conceived by Artistic Director Robert Greer and adapted by Edgar Chisholm from a translation by Greer. The production will include a ballet sequence, which Strindberg specified in the original manuscript and which has never been performed before. The piece will be directed by Robert Greer and choreographed by Ja' Malik.

Rehearsals begin tomorrow, Tuesday, October 21 for the Playwrights Horizons production of POCATELLO, the world premiere of a new play by Obie, Drama Desk and Lortel awards winner and 2014 MacArthur Foundation 'Genius' grantee Samuel D. Hunter (The Whale at PH, The Few, A Bright New Boise). Directed by Davis McCallum (The Whale at PH, The Few, London Wall, A Bright New Boise, Water by the Spoonful), the play will be the third production of the theater company's 2014/2015 Season.

Obie Award winner Melia Bensussen (Luck of the Irish, Circle Mirror Transformation) returns to the Huntington Theatre Company to direct Awake and Sing!, Clifford Odets' stirring American classic about a working-class Jewish family striving for a better future. Performances at the Avenue of the Arts / BU Theatre begin Friday, November 7 and continue through Sunday, December 7, 2014.

Abingdon Theatre Company - which has produced more than 83 new American plays in its 22-year history - is set to celebrate its 2014-2015 Season with ABINGDON: WHERE THE STARS ALIGN, its annual benefit gala and dinner, tonight, October 20 at Espace (635 West 42nd Street in Manhattan). Emmy and OBIE award-winning actor John Cunningham, whose credits include 19 Broadway productions (Titanic, Love Letters), is set to emcee the event, which begins at 6:00pm.

Previews begin tomorrow, Friday, October 17 at 7:30 PM for the Playwrights Horizons' world premiere production of GRAND CONCOURSE, a new play by playwright and two-time Obie Award-winning actress Heidi Schreck (author of There Are No More Big Secrets, Creature, Showtime's 'Nurse Jackie'). Directed by Kip Fagan (The Revisionist, Asuncion), the play is the second production of the acclaimed theater company's 2014/2015 Season. It follows the critically-acclaimed Bootycandy, a new play written and directed by Robert O'Hara, which concludes its extended run this Sunday evening on the Mainstage.

American Indian Artists Inc. (AMERINDA) will present the World Premiere of POWWOW HIGHWAY, a stage adaptation of David Seals novel turned cult classic film by William S. Yellow Robe, Jr. Directed by Madeline Sayet, previews begin tonight, October 10 at HERE

Marin Theatre Company continues its 48th Season with the Bay Area premiere of Samuel D. Hunter's The Whale, which won MTC's 2011 Sky Cooper New American Play Prize and has gone on to become one of the most critically acclaimed new plays in America since its premiere in 2012.