Actors Theatre of Louisville's current production of The Wolves has an embarrassment of riches, onstage and off. Sarah DeLappe's Pulitzer Prize nominated, soccer-centric play is an important script that features 10 girls and femmes who pass the Bechdel Test as easily as the ball. They probably only spent about five minutes of the hour and a half run time talking about boys, and even those five minutes were really more about girls, friendship, and betrayal. The Wolves also has a production staff that is 90% women. That offstage commitment to forwarding gender parity at the industry-wide level is even more rare than the onstage corollary, and includes director Pirronne Yousefzadeh, and movement director Rocia??o Mendez, both of whom are clearly functioning at the height of their game.
Ghost, a faithful adaptation of the novel by Jason Reynolds, tells the story of Castle 'Ghost' Crenshaw (played by the always-excellent Crystian Wiltshire), an earnest seventh grader who finds himself unexpectedly recruited onto the track team thanks to the encouragement of Coach (Louis Robert Thompson). Ghost is haunted by the memories of an abusive father, and a large part of this play's journey is watching how the discipline of sports and the support of friends and mentors help Ghost keep his life moving in a positive direction.
Off the heels of producing its festival nationally in the Bronx, Detroit, and Winston-Salem, Harlem9 presents the Obie Award-Winning a?oe48Hours in... Harlema??.
Everybody Black is a play. On a stage. But it actually comes off like a series of television programs that one might come across channel surfing in a fit of insomnia; a fever dream of sorts in which the sleepless viewer has mysteriously slipped into a different world than they remember.
I keep finding that theatre, even revivals of classic plays, is more often than not, about the moment. Whatever side of the aisle you find yourself, we all seem to agree that America is as divided as it has ever been, and each side has taken to viewing the other with collective disbelief. 'How can they THINK that?' has become a daily reaction.
Who decides what art is and where it belongs, and what is the role of race, class, and pedigree? THIS IS MODERN ART, the acclaimed and controversial 2014 play by Idris Goodwin and Kevin Coval, based on the 2010 "bombing" of the Art Institute of Chicago by an underground graffiti crew, is making its New York debut. The production by Blessed Unrest is directed by Jessica Burr and performing as part of the inaugural season of Next Door at New York Theatre Workshop (79 East 4th Street between Bowery & 2nd Ave., New York, NY 10003.)
After 7 years, the producing collaborative Harlem9 has played to packed houses, picking up an OBIE award along the way in 2014. This April, Harlem9 collaborates with Pregones Theater PRTT, a Latino arts organization in the Bronx for the 2nd time to present "48HOURS IN… EL BRONX". The two organizations first collaborated in December 2016. This year, the theme takes a tour of some of the most memorable dance clubs in Bronx history.
