At an SRO ceremony held at Zion Lutheran Church in Pittsfield, the Board of the Berkshire Theatre Critics Association (BTCA) presented the Berkshire Theatre Awards on the evening of Monday, November 11, 2019. This was the fourth year the awards have been presented to honor and celebrate the excellence and diversity of theatre in the greater Berkshire region.
Page 73 (Michael Walkup, Artistic Director; Amanda Feldman, Managing Director; Rebecca Yaggy, Director of Development; Liz Jones and Asher Richelli, Founding Directors) is proud to announce the world premiere of STEW, written by Zora Howard (Premature, IFC Films) and directed by Colette Robert (Behind the Sheet). As with every Page 73 production, including last season's A STRANGE LOOP by Michael R. Jackson and CATCH AS CATCH CAN by Mia Chung, STEW marks Howard's professional debut as a playwright Off Broadway. Performances of STEW begin on Monday, January 20 at the Walkerspace Theatre for a limited run through Saturday, February 22. Opening night is set for Saturday, February 1.
Chester Theatre Company (CTC) presents Martín Zimmerman's On the Exhale July 25-August 4. First preview is July 25 at 2:00pm, and the opening is July 25 at 8:00pm. Written in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting, the play takes a unique look at the issues surrounding guns and gun violence in America. The production stars CTC Associate Artistic Director and Berkshire native Tara Franklin.
New Ohio Theatre annual Obie Award-winning Ice Factory Festival officially opens tonight. The festival will feature seven new works over seven weeks, June 26 - August 10, at New Ohio Theatre (154 Christopher St.) in New York City
Corkscrew Theater Festival, which runs July 10-August 3, inaugurates its Corkscrew Downstairs series of workshop productions this summer in the lower level theater at the Paradise Factory (64 East 4th Street, Manhattan). The four projects all take classic texts as a starting point, including A Doll's House, Twelfth Night, the poetry of Walt Whitman, and Leslie Feinberg's 1993 novel Stone Butch Blues. The Downstairs series shares one team of designers -Dan Daly (sets), Christina Tang (lights), and Cinthia Chen (props)-and one flexible repertory set, deepening the festival's focus on exploring collaboration in different forms.
Corkscrew Theater Festival is pleased to announce the mainstage casts for its third annual festival, which runs July 10-August 3 at the Paradise Factory (64 East 4th Street, Manhattan). The festival features four world premieres, four workshop productions, and four readings performed in repertory over four weeks, with 80 performances in all. As in past years, special attention has been given to theater makers who are developing work through tight-knit collaborations. Tickets are now on sale.
New Ohio Theatre's Artistic Director Robert Lyons proudly presents the 26th annual Obie Award-winning Ice Factory Festival, featuring seven new works over seven weeks, June 26 - August 10, at New Ohio Theatre, located at 154 Christopher Street between Greenwich and Washington Streets in New York City.
ENSEMBLE STUDIO THEATRE (EST) recently celebrated its 50th Birthday Gala honoring the people and legacy of EST's Marathon of One-Act Plays. The 50th Birthday Gala took place on Monday, May 13, 2019 at 6:30PM at the New York Museum of Contemporary Art (528 West 39th Street, 3rd Fl.).
Co-founded by Vincent Dowling and H. Newman Marsh in 1990 with the belief that every town should have a professional theatre, Chester Theatre Company (formerly The Miniature Theatre of Chester) prepares to celebrate its landmark 30th Season with four works, each a New England Premiere.
Ensemble Studio Theatre (EST) (William Carden, Artistic Director, Sarah McLellan, Executive Director) and the Radio Drama Network (Melina Brown, President) announced today the lineup for the 37th Marathon of One-Act Plays. This year's selection of fifteen plays were chosen from 1120 submissions. They will be presented across three different series from Sunday, May 12, 2019 through Saturday, June 29, 2019.'
Today, The 24 Hour Plays, in partnership with The New School for Drama, announced that the annual application for The 24 Hour Plays: Nationals will be available starting March 11, 2019 and will run through April 1, 2019. The 24 Hour Plays: Nationals will take place in August in New York City.
Ensemble Studio Theatre (EST) (William Carden, Artistic Director, Sarah McLellan, Executive Director) and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (Doron Weber, Vice-President, Programs) announced today that due to unprecedented and overwhelming response, the World Premiere of Behind the Sheet has been extended for a third time. Part of the EST/Sloan Science & Technology Project (Graeme Gillis, Program Director; Linsay Firman, Associate Director), Behind the Sheet is written by Charly Evon Simpson (Jump) and directed by Colette Robert (Mary's Wedding).
FEINSTEIN'S/54 BELOW, Broadway's Supper Club, presents The Empress Arias: songs from the ICONS/IDOLS plays, on February 8. ICONS/IDOLS is a tetralogy of choral plays for over a dozen women+ singers. Mixing music, movement and text, the four plays recover the secret history of Byzantine Purple Empresses as they ascend in a society with deep animosity towards female rule. Deeply committed to religious icons, these powerful empresses sacrifice personal relationships in an attempt to gain enough power to re-introduce them into an empire that fiercely and violently opposes iconography. The Empress Arias pair powerful multi-part harmonies with glittering ballads, commanding chants and soaring operatic solos to form a unique and beautiful evening of song. The development of ICONS/IDOLS received funding from OPERA America's Opera Grants for Female Composers program, supported by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation, and has been developed in The Jam, New Georges' performance lab for early career female artists, as well as The Tank, a home for emerging artists. The project is currently supported by the IRT/New Ohio Archive Residency for its 2018-2020 cycle.
Ensemble Studio Theatre (EST) (William Carden, Artistic Director, Sarah McLellan, Executive Director) and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (Doron Weber, Vice-President, Programs) announced today a second extension for the World Premiere of Behind the Sheet, written by Charly Evon Simpson (Jump) and directed by Colette Robert (Mary's Wedding). Part of the EST/Sloan Science & Technology Project (Graeme Gillis, Program Director; Linsay Firman, Associate Director), Behind the Sheet began previews at EST's Curt Dempster Theatre (549 W. 52nd Street, New York, NY 10019) on January 9, 2019, and opened January 17. Originally set to close on February 3, the play will now run through February 17, 2019.
Ensemble Studio Theatre (EST) and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation announced today an extension for the World Premiere of Behind the Sheet, written by Charly Evon Simpson (Jump) and directed by Colette Robert (Mary's Wedding).
Today, influencer and talent manager ChiChi Anyanwu of the NYC Black Theater Network, Marcia Pendelton, President of Walk Tall Girl Productions/Black Theater Online, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (Kevin Young, Director, Schomburg Center) announced BLACK PLAYWRIGHTS: THEY SPEAK. WHO LISTENS? A Black Theater Winter Preview: Broadway and Off-Broadway Edition. The event is scheduled at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (515 Malcolm X Blvd) on Monday, January 28, 2019 at 6:30 p.m. Four-time Tony Award-winning producer Ron Simons of SimonSays Entertainment (A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, Porgy & Bess, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Jitney) will host the program whose purpose is to bring attention to the unprecedented number of plays by black playwrights being produced on Broadway and Off-Broadway this season.
FEINSTEIN'S/54 BELOW, Broadway's Supper Club, presents The Empress Arias: songs from the ICONS/IDOLS plays, on February 8. ICONS/IDOLS is a tetralogy of choral plays for over a dozen women+ singers. Mixing music, movement and text, the four plays recover the secret history of Byzantine Purple Empresses as they ascend in a society with deep animosity towards female rule. Deeply committed to religious icons, these powerful empresses sacrifice personal relationships in an attempt to gain enough power to re-introduce them into an empire that fiercely and violently opposes iconography. The Empress Arias pair powerful multi-part harmonies with glittering ballads, commanding chants and soaring operatic solos to form a unique and beautiful evening of song. The development of ICONS/IDOLS received funding from OPERA America's Opera Grants for Female Composers program, supported by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation, and has been developed in The Jam, New Georges' performance lab for early career female artists, as well as The Tank, a home for emerging artists. The project is currently supported by the IRT/New Ohio Archive Residency for its 2018-2020 cycle.
The Drama League (Gabriel Stelian-Shanks, Executive Artistic Director) has announced the theater directors chosen to develop new plays and musicals as part of the 2019 Drama League Artist Residency Program. Public work-in-progress presentations of each residency will be held periodically throughout the year at The Drama League Theater Center, 32 Avenue of the Americas, in Tribeca. Schedules for the presentations, which are open to the public, will be available throughout 2019 at www.dramaleague.org or by calling (212) 244-9494.