Andrew W. Mellon News

The Harris Theater for Music and Dance is pleased to announce the new details of the first commission by inaugural Choreographer in Residence, Brian Brooks; Terrain, for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago will see its world premiere as part of Hubbard Street's Season 39 Fall Series, November 17-20, 2016.

Director Yana Ross makes her BAM debut with Franz XaverKroetz's poignant cultural critique, Request Concert. The play consists only of stage directions, nodialogue. The sole character is a 50-year-old middle class woman who lives alone in an overly tidyapartment. She comes home from work, prepares dinner, does the laundry, watches TV, and listensto a radio program. Surrounded by Ikea furniture and brand-name appliances, acclaimed Polishactress Danuta Stenka infuses these actions with an increasing sense of loneliness and futility.Request Concert explores the devastating circumstances of life in a world that values objects overpeople. Staged in the round, the audience is invited to walk around the set and observe the production from all angles.

(The) National New Play Network, the country's alliance of nonprofit theaters that champions the development, production, and continued life of new plays, celebrates an October filled with NNPN Rolling World Premieres (RWP), including Bars and Measures by Idris Goodwin at The Theatre @ Boston Court (playing until October 23); Pulp by Joseph Zettelmaier at Williamston Theatre (playing until October 23) and Know Theatre of Cincinnati (playing until October 27); Not Medea by Allison Gregory at Perseverance Theatre (playing in Juneau until November 6 and Anchorage November 11-20); Into the Beautiful North by Karen Zacarias at Central Works (playing until November 13); and Church and State by Jason Odell Williams at JCC CenterStage (Oct 22 - Nov 6).

A Letter to My Nephew, MacArthur Genius Award and National Medal of Arts choreographer Bill T. Jones's latest work, makes its U.S. premiere at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) Boston. Performances are Friday, November 11, 8 PM; Saturday, November 12, 8 PM; Sunday, November 13, 2 PM at the Institute of Contemporary Art, 25 Harbor Shore Drive, Boston, MA. Tickets are $30 for ICA members and students, $40 for nonmembers. For tickets call 617.478.3103 or visit icaboston.org.

The digital revolution has changed the way that people work, create, and even the way they find love. Laura Eason's smart two-person comedy Sex With Strangers explores the internet's impact on writers Ethan and Olivia, and its effect on them both professionally and personally.

The Baryshnikov Arts Center will present two BAC Salon concerts in November, both in the intimate Howard Gilman Performance Space. On Tuesday, November 1, 2016 at 7:30pm, BAC and Composers Now co-present Dialogues with Margaret Brouwer, Esperanza Spalding, and Du Yun and performances by Amy Schwartz Moretti, Blair McMillen, Michael Lipsey, Du Yun,and String Noise, moderated by Composers Now founder, artistic director, and composer Tania Leon.

The six-member New York City-based ensemble yMusic, which has shown incredible virtuosity and versatility through genre-bending collaborations with both classical and mainstream artists, plays in Zankel Hall on Friday, December 2 at 7:30 p.m. Alongside works by alternative style pop musicians like Son Lux and Sufjan Stevens, and indie classical composers like Andrew Norman, Judd Greenstein, and Timo Andres, yMusic gives the world premiere performance of two works by MacArthur Fellow Chris Thile and Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Shaw, commissioned by Carnegie Hall as part of its 125 Commissions Project. The group's program also includes the US premiere of Missy Mazzoli's new work, Ecstatic Science.

"Th' time is rotten ripe for revolution." Set amidst the tumult of the Ireland's 1916 Easter Rising, Sean O'Casey's searing The Plough and the Stars is the story of ordinary lives ripped apart by idealism and revolution. The play opens with the domestic hum of a Dublin tenement and its residents just before the uprising's violence sweeps through the streets and dramatically impacts their lives.

Center for Performance Research (CPR), an artist-driven organization co- founded by Jonah Bokaer Choreography and John Jasperse & Thin Man Dance, Inc. to support the development of new works in contemporary dance, will present for North, a new work by the Median Movement, from December 1-3, 2016.

American Lyric Theater (ALT) and Merkin Concert Hall at Kaufman Music Center, in partnership with MasterVoices (formerly The Collegiate Chorale), presents The Halloween Tree on October 30, 2016 at 3pm in the Merkin Concert Hall at Kaufman Music Center, 129 W 67th Street, New York City.  Based on Ray Bradbury's classic novel that explores the origins of Halloween, composer Theo Popov and librettist Tony Asaro take us on an epic journey as a group of children search for their friend Pipkin, who has mysteriously disappeared on Halloween night. Conductor: Adam Turner. Featuring Mark S. Doss as Moundshroud; with Emma Grimsley, Shirin Eskandani, Spencer Viator, Brian Wallin, Michael Kelly, and Jarrett Porter with members of MasterVoices.  

In celebration of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibition Jerusalem 1000-1400: Every People Under Heaven, Schola Antiqua of Chicago will perform a program of sacred music that is inspired by the diverse religions existing within the city of Jerusalem. On Sunday, October 23, at 1:00 and 3:00 pm, The Suspended Harp: Sounds of Faith in Medieval Jerusalem will be staged in the Fuentidueña Chapel at The Met Cloisters, as part of the 2016-17 MetLiveArts season.

Theatre for a New Audience and The New York Public Library mark the close of 2016 - the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare's death - with a free public conversation on Shakespeare's pervasive and perennial role in American culture.

At an evening reception and screening hosted by the Howard and Abby Milstein Foundation at the Times Center in Midtown Manhattan last night, major civic and civil rights figures celebrated the newest PBS series by Emmy and Peabody-award winning Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise.

Berkeley Repertory Theatre today announced the world premiere production of The Last Tiger in Haiti by playwright Jeff Augustin and directed by Joshua Kahan Brody. A co-production with La Jolla Playhouse, where the play had its world premiere in June, The Last Tiger in Haiti begins previews Today, October 14 and the show runs through Sunday, November 27. Individual tickets start at $29 and can be purchased online at berkeleyrep.org or by phone, 510 647-2949. Press night will be on Today, October 21.

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.

The acclaimed Dance Theatre of Harlem (DTH) gives three performances at the Auditorium Theatre on November 18, 19, and 20 with a program that includes System, a major new work by choreographer Francesca Harper. The work is supported by the New England Foundation for the Arts, and is inspired by the current social, political, and economic climate in the United States.System was choreographed in collaboration with Dance Theatre of Harlem dancers who used their own experiences as people of color for inspiration.  DTH Artistic Director Virginia Johnson told the Washington Post that System "addresses social justice issues in the Black Lives Matter era" and is "a very contemporary piece, but also very beautiful and uplifting.' A live string quartet performs composer John Adams' original music for the piece.

The University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) today announced that Lehti Keelmann has been appointed the institution's Assistant Curator of Western Art, overseeing UMMA's collection of European art spanning the medieval period through the 20th century.

"Th' time is rotten ripe for revolution." Set amidst the tumult of the Ireland's 1916 Easter Rising, Sean O'Casey's searing The Plough and the Stars is the story of ordinary lives ripped apart by idealism and revolution. The play opens with the domestic hum of a Dublin tenement and its residents just before the uprising's violence sweeps through the streets and dramatically impacts their lives.

Playwrights Horizons (Tim Sanford, Artistic Director; Leslie Marcus, Managing Director) has announced complete casting for RANCHO VIEJO, the world premiere of a new play by Dan LeFranc (The Big Meal at Playwrights, Sixty Miles to Silver Lake, In the Labyrinth) and directed by three-time Obie Award winner Daniel Aukin (Placebo, This at Playwrights; Fool For Love; Bad Jews; 4000 Miles; [sic]).  Commissioned by Playwrights Horizons, RANCHO VIEJO will be the third production of the theater company's 2016/2017 Season.   

The digital revolution has changed the way that people work, create, and even the way they find love. Laura Eason's smart two-person comedy Sex With Strangers explores the internet's impact on writers Ethan and Olivia, and its effect on them both professionally and personally.