Theatre has always been a lens through which to view the current world. Productions such as RENT, illuminated issues like the AIDS crisis in ways that hadn't been seen before on a stage. Audiences confronted these issues in a very real way, and one would hope that they learned and grew from the experience. We're in another turning point in time right now, in the midst of the #MeToo and Time's Up movements. Women are standing up and resisting in droves. It's a powerful statement on the endurance and the drive of women. So it seems only fitting, that for the third year, Everyman Theatre is producing a SALON SERIES of readings of plays written by women, and directed by women, allowing the women of the company to "stretch that directing muscle" and take a step outside of their comfort zone.
Everyman Theatre's enormously popular Salon Series, celebrating the work of women playwrights, returns for its third edition with five powerful new plays, curated and directed by the women of Everyman Theatre's Resident Acting Company (Dawn Ursula, Beth Hylton, Deborah Hazlett and Megan Anderson), and hosted in the social setting of Everyman's second-floor rehearsal hall on select Monday evenings: February 5, February 19, March 5, March 19 and April 2, from 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM.
Playwright Lauren Gunderson, who marches boldly where political correctness fears to tread, delivers a stylized rendition of female revolutionaries, one famous, two obscure, one invented, reminding us that history is not only written by the victors, it's written by men. Director Casey Stangl presents a snappy, suspenseful, tense drama that is curiously chock-full of comedy. Everyman's resident actors and supporting artists are gifted in their range and variety.
Erich Hatch, Director of Programming for the SNF Parkway Theater and the Maryland Film Festival hopes this program will enhance the enjoyment of its plays at the Everyman Theatre.
Ready, aim, spitfire! Everyman Theatre prepares for audiences (and heads) to be rolling in the aisles with the astutely timed arrival of The Revolutionists (December 6, 2017 through January 7, 2018) from playwright Lauren Gunderson aka the most-produced playwright in the country (The New Yorker).
Ready, aim, spitfire! Everyman Theatre prepares for audiences (and heads) to be rolling in the aisles with the astutely timed arrival of The Revolutionists (December 6, 2017 through January 7, 2018) from playwright Lauren Gunderson aka the most-produced playwright in the country (The New Yorker).
Everyman Theatre's production of INTIMATE APPAREL has been gaining rave reviews over the past few weeks. Their production of the Lynn Nottage work is not only wonderful, but also beautifully performed by a small cast of extremely talented actors. Dawn Ursula, who plays Esther whom the play revolves around gives a powerhouse performance. She's run through a gamut of emotions throughout the play and she does so flawlessly.
There seems to be a constant in Lynn Nottage's plays: the reality that people of color and women do not get many breaks or many chances for happiness or fulfillment. Whatever they do achieve along these lines is both hard-won and partial. In fact, that constant reality of limits on the available economic opportunity and on the available happiness is precisely the theme of Intimate Apparel. Heroine Esther (Dawn Ursula), being both black and female, looks for fulfillment in love, in friendship, and in work (as a seamstress and lingerie maker), and it seems at the end that she has obtained about all of any of these that is on offer.
As though tailor-made for the locally-commissioned play's Baltimore audience, Intimate Apparel stirs with substance, style and sincerity at Everyman Theatre October 18 through November 19, 2017 in a quietly commanding production that radiates with powerful performances on-stage and profound local partnerships off-stage, bringing the play's delicate themes affectingly to life.
Take a trip in time as you revisit the 1950's to the 1980's with the music of each era to help with the journey (thank you Sound Designer Sarah O'Halloran) with THE HEIDI CHRONICLES at Rep Stage.
The play has aged well. Women are, of course, still grappling with some of the issues that Heidi confronts. But it is not the specific issues that make the play last and lead me to predict that there will be revivals a century hence. One thing is for sure: the pop culture time-stamps like specific songs redolent of particular years will surely almost certainly elude our grandchildren. But the interplay between bright, somewhat idealistic people and their times is bound to continue, and stories about that interplay are bound to go on holding the attention.
Everyone in the theater community of Baltimore seems to be talking about the mad-cap, truly hilarious production of NOISES OFF happening at Everyman Theatre this month. After reading a few glowing reviews, I was finally lucky enough to see it this week. And honestly, I'm not sure the reviews did the show justice. It was spectacular! The time and energy that I'm sure it took the actors to learn and master the choreography alone truly showed in their performances. The entire production was a master class in farce, and I'm not sure I've ever laughed so much in a theater before.
Everyman Theatre pays exquisite attention to detail and creates an astounding feat of comedy in its production of NOISES OFF. The cast demonstrates comedic chops and executes pratfalls and buffoonery with commitment and perfect timing. Do yourself, your lungs and your liver a favor and laugh at the raucous riot. Don't be surprised if you find yourself craving sardines afterwards.
Everyman Theatre's Resident Company of actors transforms into a British company of actors during the 1970s in this hotly anticipated revival of Tony Award-Winner Michael Frayn's side-splitting farce to end all farces, Noises Off, directed by Founding Artistic Director Vincent M. Lancisi and running from May 17 through June 18, 2017.
Watch as actor Beth Hylton goes from rehearsal at Baltimore's Everyman Theatre to performances at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, DC in two different plays written by Jen Silverman: 'The Roommate' and 'Collective Rage: A Play in Five Boops.'
This is not a show about big issues; the pathos comes from the human condition, to the basic facts of which the play is usually true, even when operating as a well-tooled laughter-delivery-vehicle. If there can be said to be a moral to Silverman's story, it is simply that it is extremely hard to become close to someone, and even harder to stay close. A good thing to be reminded of, and especially in such an amusing way.
Hot off of the heels of its successful Humana Festival premiere, Jen Silverman's hilarious hit play The Roommate will make its East Coast debut at Baltimore's Everyman Theatre starting October 26th.
Hot off of the heels of its successful Humana Festival premiere, Jen Silverman's hilarious hit play The Roommate will make its East Coast debut at Baltimore's Everyman Theatre starting October 26th.
