In the tradition of Facing Our Truth: Short Plays on Trayvon, Race and Privilege and HANDS UP: 6 Playwrights, 6 Testaments, The New Black Fest (guest curator playwright Dominique Morisseau) will commission five black women playwrights to write short plays entitled UN-TAMED: HAIR BODY ATTITUDE - Short Plays by Black Women. The playwrights include Cori Thomas, Nikkole Salter, Chisa Hutchinson, Lenelle Moise and Jocelyn Bioh.
City Theatre announces the lineup for this year's two-day Momentum festival, featuring new works by returning favorites Jessica Dickey and Keith Reddin.
Playwrights Theatre has announced that is will host a plethora of new play reading events on the Campus of Fairleigh Dickinson University. All readings will begin promptly at 7:00pm. Admission is free; however, reservations are required and can be made online at www.ptnj.org
Working Theater, the Off-Broadway company under the direction of Artistic Producing Director Mark Plesent, will continue celebrating its 30th Anniversary season by presenting 'work in progress' showings of the FIVE BOROUGHS / ONE CITY plays that five teams of critically acclaimed playwrights and directors have developed in collaboration with communities and residents in each of the five boroughs in New York City. Showings will be held May 6 - May 10 at the Abingdon Theatre Arts Complex, 312 West 36th Street, first floor.
Midtown Direct Rep (MDR), the ensemble-based theater company based in South Orange/Maplewood, NJ, announces A CONVERSATION WITH BILLY PORTER, on Monday, June 15, 2015 at 7:30 PM at the South Orange Performing Arts Center (SOPAC) in a one-night-only benefit appearance hosted by NY1's Budd Mishkin.
Working Theater, the Off-Broadway company under the direction of Artistic Producing Director Mark Plesent, will continue celebrating its 30th Anniversary season by presenting "work in progress" showings of the FIVE BOROUGHS / ONE CITY plays that five teams of critically acclaimed playwrights and directors have developed in collaboration with communities and residents in each of the five boroughs in New York City. Showings will be held May 6 - May 10 at the Abingdon Theatre Arts Complex, 312 West 36th Street, first floor.
The One-Minute Play Festival (Dominic D'Andrea, Producing Artistic Director & Caitlin Wees, Associate Producer) and Luna Stage have created a dynamic partnership for The 5th New Jersey One-minute Play Festival with part of the proceeds to benefit new play programming at Luna Stage.
The Dramatists Guild of America has announced the recipients of their annual awards, which will be presented at an awards ceremony hosted by David Henry Hwang on Monday, February 23, 2015, at The Harvard Club in New York.
Playwrights Theatre's roundtable reading series FORUM will present "Soundings" at Fairleigh Dickinson University, The Barn Theatre, 285 Madison Avenue, Madison. Readings will begin promptly at 7:00pm each evening, January 12 - January 25, 2015 (no reading on January 20, 2015).
Midtown Direct Rep (MDR), the company that brought New Jersey the award-winning Rated P for Parenthood and Listen to Your Mother: North Jersey, returns to the South Orange Performing Arts Center (SOPAC) with Theatre in the Loft, a series of staged readings of new plays and musicals. Chisa Hutchinson's The Subject, directed by Jade King Carroll, premieres on Sunday, October 12 at 7 pm at SOPAC (One Sopac Way, South Orange, NJ, 07079).
MIDTOWN DIRECT REP (MDR), the company that brought New Jersey the award-winning Rated P for Parenthood and Listen to Your Mother: North Jersey, returns to the South Orange Performing Arts Center (SOPAC) with Theatre in the Loft, a series of staged readings of new plays and musicals. Chisa Hutchinson?s The Subject, directed by Jade King Carroll, premieres on Sunday, October 12 at 7 pm at SOPAC (One Sopac Way, South Orange, NJ, 07079). The reading is $15 and open to the public. Tickets can be purchased online http://www.sopacnow.org/504/mdr or by calling 973-313-ARTS (2787).
The United States premiere of the internationally acclaimed new work written and directed by Peter Brook and Marie-Helene Estienne, The Valley of Astonishment, featuring Kathryn Hunter (A Midsummer Night's Dream, Kafka's Monkey), Marcello Magni (Fragments), and Jared McNeill (The Suit), begins previews Sunday, September 14, at 7:30pm for an opening Thursday, September 18,at 7:30pm and a run through Sunday, October 5, at Theatre for a New Audience, Polonsky Shakespeare Center, 262 Ashland Place.
The Lark Play Development Center named five New York City-based playwrights as Playwrights' Workshop Fellows for the 2014-15 season. The group spans a wide range of backgrounds and professional experiences and will meet regularly throughout the year to develop new plays.
New York Madness (NYM) is about to start its Fifth Season. With a focus on emerging artists, NYM hosts a hot night of short plays based on a theme proposed by the more established Featured Guest. The Theme is announced one week prior to the event. NYM has been hosted by the Cherry Lane Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre, ESPA/Primary Stages, INTAR Theatre, IATI Theater and they will be at The COW (Former home of The Living Theatre) for their Season Launch on September 21st at 8pm. The Season Launch will include Featured Guest Chisa Hutchinson (Blue Man Group, New York NeoFuturists, Partial Comfort, Atlantic Theater Company, Rattlestick Theater, New Dramatists) along with playwrights Cecilia Copeland*, Judith Leora*, Shaun Bennet Fountleroy, Jeffrey James Keyes, and more TBA. (*denotes Founding Member)
Hospice care and cancer are not generally topics which leave audiences roaring with laughter. However, in the world-premiere comedy Dead and Breathing, written by Chisa Hutchinson and directed by Kristin Horton, audiences are left in stitches as a sharp tongued and sickly elderly woman cajoles, bribes, threatens and tries any possible way to force her in-home nurse to comply with assisted suicide.
The duel of these two characters is so absorbing and funny that I have to rate her black (in all senses) comedy as the strongest in this year's Contemporary American Theatre Festival. This is not just a duel of characters, but of actors. Lizan Mitchell, a face most viewers are probably familiar with from quality television like The Wire, is powerful and dignified, even with no clothes on - and delivers sharp-tongued zingers with scornful abandon. And N.L. Graham, a sassier sister of Laverne Cox of Orange Is The New Black (another great exponent of the art of making femininity issue from an originally male frame), mines every delicious wisecrack for all it might possibly be worth.
The Contemporary American Theater Festival at Shepherd University has announced its 2014 Humanities events. The events, produced in tandem with CATF's July 11-August 3 repertory season, will feature playwrights Christina Anderson, Charles Fuller (winner of the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for Drama), Thomas Gibbons, Bruce Graham, and Chisa Hutchinson; CATF will also host guest speakers Miranda Petersen (Protect Our Defenders Foundation), Bruce Duncan and the Bina48 Artificial Intelligence unit (Terasem Movement Foundation), Theresa M. Davis (University of Virginia), Dr. Julia Sandy-Bailey (Shepherd University), and David Leong (Theatre VCU).
Expanded this year! CATF's Pay-What-You-Can Preview series allows you to experience the 2014 repertory of plays before they open at whatever price you care to pay. While the playwrights, directors, and designers are still working and changing the plays (you might even still see them in the theater!), the performances are fully produced with all sets, lights, video, sound, and costumes. In many ways, the Preview audiences are the final important piece in the the decision-making of these NEW plays. Come join us in shaping the FUTURE of American theater!
The Contemporary American Theater Festival at Shepherd University (CATF) begins preview performances on Sunday, July 6th. All five plays that make up the 2014 repertory will receive at least two preview performances before the Festival officially opens on Friday, July 11th.
The 8th Annual One-Minute Play Festival will take place Wednesday, April 2, 2014 for two performances only, at 6PM and 9PM at Primary Stages at 59E59 Theaters. The One-Minute Play Festival (#1MPF) and Primary Stages continue their dynamic partnership with a portion of the event's proceeds benefitting Primary Stages Einhorn School of Performing Arts (ESPA).
