With a picnic hosted by the Board of Trustees, the Contemporary American Theater Festival at Shepherd University welcomes 2019 company members. Attended by CATF partners, donors, and community members, this annual event is the first time CATF's 2019 company comes to celebrate the six new plays they are about to create. These artists, from around the country, including cities such as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, gather in historic Shepherdstown to create the future of American theater.
Cleveland Public Theatre (CPT) Executive Artistic Director Raymond Bobgan is proud to present the return of NYC-based Conni's Avant Garde Restaurant, one of CPT's most celebrated holiday entertainments. The production is onstage from November 29 - December 22, 2018, in CPT's historic Gordon Square Theatre. Conni's Avant Garde Restaurant earned accolades in TimeOut NYC and The Village Voice, was a winner of a New York Innovative Theater Award in 2012, and was selected as a "10 Best of the Year" pick by The Plain Dealer in 2011.
Cleveland Public Theatre (CPT) presents the return of NYC-based Conni's Avant Garde Restaurant, one of CPT's most celebrated holiday entertainments. The production is onstage from November 29 - December 22, 2018, in CPT's historic Gordon Square Theatre. Conni's Avant Garde Restaurant earned accolades in TimeOut NYC and The Village Voice, was a winner of a New York Innovative Theater Award in 2012, and was selected as a "10 Best of the Year" pick by The Plain Dealer in 2011.
If you come to this show, do not expect to participate in a truly topical think piece about memory in a time of tyranny. You will witness instead a pair of entwined tales about rare mental abnormality and a somewhat overexposed aspect of totalitarianism. It is the telling of the tales, the acting and the scenery and, the evocations of synesthesia, by which Memoirs will work for you, or not.
Known nationally and internationally for its professional cultivation of vibrant new plays, the Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF) at Shepherd University welcomes the 2018 company to Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Each July, artists from around the country, including cities such as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, gather in historic Shepherdstown to create the future of American theater.
What our schoolbooks lack in historical accuracy, art can sometimes pick up the slack by being a reliable, more enthusiastic source to fill in those gaps. This becomes abundantly clear immediately upon experiencing the haunting yet beautifully-dramatized world premiere play LITTLE BLACK SHADOWS, Kemp Powers' captivating new drama under the astute direction of May Adrales, that is now continuing its final set of performances at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa through April 29. Visually striking and richly layered, the play piques the audience's curiosity with its riveting storytelling while educating them on a side of American slavery that most probably didn't know too much about before.
Playwright Kemp Powers knew he'd found something incredible in the personal recollections of former slaves documented by a federal writers project during the Great Depression. Discovering the different voices and views in those first-person histories inspired him to learn more and write Little Black Shadows, which has its world premiere at South Coast Repertory, April 8-29, on the Julianne Argyros Stage. Directed by May Adrales, the show is part of the Pacific Playwrights Festival. Tickets are available now at www.scr.org.
The virtue of Byhalia, Mississippi lies precisely in its modesty. It prescribes no rules, apart from loving one another and telling the truth, for getting through a marital and race-inflected social crisis in a small town; it simply shows how one not-overwhelmingly admirable couple does it. And at that, the true secret here may just be the jokes. Those, and the blackout line at the very end of the play, which just may bring a lump to the throat.
Eugene O'Neill's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece ANNA CHRISTIE, a gripping drama of a woman torn between the expectations of men and the secrets of her past, gets a timely retelling in Working Barn Productions' staging, directed by Peter Richards.
Eugene O'Neill's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece ANNA CHRISTIE, a gripping drama of a woman torn between the expectations of men and the secrets of her past, gets a timely retelling under the direction of Peter Richards.
At its basic essence, a play tells a story. But when the audience has difficulty understanding the story and the language, the message, no matter how poignant or powerful, is lost. The Wedding Gift, a world premiere play at the Contemporary American Theater Festival, is a visual feast for audience members, but due to the storytelling method, many audience members are unable to understand the imaginative story.
We watch as Doug takes stock of his situation, recognizes the failure of vision on the part of his captors, their inability to see him as a fellow-human, and recognizes what this means in terms of his power and his lack of power. It is a humbling lesson, but one he needs to learn to survive.
Perhaps most important, 20th Century Blues (notwithstanding its title) addresses, from the inside and the outside, the universal experience of aging, an experience common to all times and places.
A show about older women celebrating and commiserating aging has been done countless times in entertainment, from Steel Magnolias on stage to The Golden Girls on television. However, 20th Century Blues, a world premiere play at the Contemporary American Theater Festival written by Susan Miller and directed by Ed Herendeen, breaks the mold when it comes to the female ensemble dramedy.
?Pittsburgh Public Theater presents the Pittsburgh premiere of David Ives' Broadway hit, Venus in Fur. Directed by Jesse Berger, Artistic Director of New York's Red Bull Theater, Venus in Fur runs June 2 - 26, 2016 at the O'Reilly Theater, Pittsburgh Public Theater's home in the heart of Downtown's Cultural District. For tickets call 412.316.1600 or visit ppt.org.
Born Yesterday, first performed in 1946, is a story that focuses on political corruption, corporate interests twisting the democratic process for their own ends, agenda-driven journalists, and a call to shed one's apathy and take control of a government that, ideally, exists to serve us all. The more things change.
The action, from the shadowy world of religious cults and deprogrammers, takes place in the ruins of a derelict motel, where distraught mother Kate (Tasha Lawrence) has been brought by Stine (Lee Sellars), a supposed specialist in reuniting abandoned parents with cult-brainwashed youngsters. Stine intends (so he says) to abduct Kate's daughter from the cult's commune and work with her here. The shockingly scuzzy room tells us immediately is that something is terribly wrong with Kate and Stine's scheme. So does a financial fact revealed in the early going. In the course of the play, we find out what that something and several other somethings are.
Trip needs to get himself and his family 'up north of the Boulevard' to a more civilized neighborhood. Then an unexpected circumstance dumps an opportunity in Trip's lap. The only problem is that, to take it, Trip would need to leave his integrity behind and possibly risk going to jail. Is getting north of the Boulevard worth it for Trip and his buddies? Does Trip even have a meaningful choice?
