Don Nigro News

Be transported to the cornfields of Iowa with Dead Fly Productions' Sydney Fringe showing of Scarecrow. The director of New Theatre's 2018 hit Nell Gwynn, Deborah Jones, brings you this dark and obscure Don Nigro play that will be at the Blood Moon Theatre from September 25th to September 29th.

It was inevitable, perhaps, that our post-truth politics would seep into 21st century absurdist theater. One sunny example is 'Occasionally Nothing' by Natalie Menna, which takes us to a dismal time-to-come when something can become a profound, obvious nothing. Life becomes the time in between the sometimes which sometimes happen. The piece won awards in Planet Connections Festivity for developmental staging's, with critics cheering the playwright for her mastery of Theater of the Absurd. Theater for the New City's Dream Up festival will present the work September 8 to 16. Ivette Dumeng directs.

MainStage Irving-Las Colinas unveiled three plays, two musicals and a special collaboration that will be produced as part of the 2018-19 season to a packed house of volunteers, subscribers, and supporters on Sunday night, April 15 at the Irving Arts Center.

This summer, Planet Connections Theatre Festivity (PCTF), the brainchild of arts professional Glory Kadigan, turns 10 years old. In that decade, PCTF has successfully changed the landscape of the theatre festival and all of New York independent theatre. The multi-award-winning theatre festival will celebrate in a big way by premiering more than 50 timely and topical plays and musicals written by the next generation of playwrights. Each play contains a powerful message serving as a parable of various world themes.

Waste Land is a WORLD PREMIERE serio-comedy period piece by legendary playwright Don Nigro that explores the tumultuous love between T.S. Eliot and his first wife, Vivienne during the time leading up to his creation of one of the most influential poems of the twentieth century. Full of literary references, musings about art and creativity, and appearances by recognized modernist characters like Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein and Bertrand Russell, Waste Land is a funny and moving investigation of Eliot's life, loves, friendships and torments.

DARK MATTER is a complex show that requires the audience make connections for themselves. It is challenging theatre presented by passionate artists who find ways to keep it light enough to be entertaining.

Collaborative Artists has long enjoyed a relationship with prolific playwright Don Nigro. It was during a production of his noir mystery City of Dreadful Night, that Nigro reached out to the company with a new play that company Managing Director Steve Jarrard couldn't wait to produce.

The Baron's Men are well known for their faithful presentations of the works of William Shakespeare. They have, for years, treated the Bard's plays with a fulsome reverence, including strict adherence to Elizabethan period costume and traditional interpretation of material. This production is an abrupt about-face.

Tickets for the current production of The Baron's Men, The Curate Shakespeare As You Like It, are still available for the two final weekends. When Don Nigro, the author, was asked to adapt As You Like It so that it could be performed by seven people, he devised an original work about a ragtag group of players who must present Shakespeare's play in the face of near-impossible challenges. Since its creation, it has become an underground comic classic. This production is Austin's premiere, and it is presented with special arrangement by Samuel French.

Collaborative Artists has long enjoyed a relationship with prolific playwright Don Nigro. It was during a production of his noir mystery City of Dreadful Night, that Nigro reached out to the company with a new play that company Managing Director Steve Jarrard couldn't wait to produce.

Coming in March, The Baron's Men will be presenting the rarely performed The Curate Shakespeare AS YOU LIKE at the Curtain Theatre. This unique piece of theatre is subtitled 'the record of one company's attempt to perform the play by William Shakespeare.' The piece came about when the playwright, Don Nigro, was asked by a professional theatre company to adapt AS YOU LIKE IT for performance by a company of seven. Mr. Nigro wrote an original play about a motly company of actors, led by a daft curate, who present Shakespeare's AS YOU LIKE IT. The result is a comedy about their attempts to impersonate all of Shakespeare's characters. The play has had numerous productions nationwide and has become a cult theater classic. We recently had an opportunity to sit down with director Kate Clark for a deeper look at bringing this wholly unique piece to Austin audiences.

Closing out a six-year tenure in Spring Street Studios, Mildred's Umbrella (MU) is reviving a fan favorite from its days at Midtown Arts Center with DARK MATTER, a collection of gothic shorts by Don Nigro. These ten short pieces, speak to MU's unique aesthetic of dark and quirky comedy and feature a stellar cast of local talent.

 The Hollywood Fringe Festival is proud to announce the winners of the 2018 Fringe Scholarships. An objective and independent committee of former Hollywood Fringe participants and local arts professionals reviewed more than 125 applications for this award. The applications were evaluated based on the production's potential to increase the ethnic and socioeconomic diversity of artists and audience and how much impact the production would have on the overall attraction of audience.

Beginning with the 2018-19 season this summer, Mildred's Umbrella Theater Company (MU) will be saying goodbye to their longtime home in Spring Street Studios and moving to Montrose, where The Classical Theatre Company has generously provided the company a new home in their Chelsea Market performance space. In addition to the move, MU will be producing a shorter season of two mainstage plays plus the annual Museum of Dysfunction short play festival in order to accommodate a greater focus on developing programs that engage the community in different ways.

Milwaukee Repertory Theater presents the eighth annual production of Rep Lab, a short-play festival featuring The Rep's highly-lauded Emerging Professional Residents in the Stiemke Studio February 15-19, 2018. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased online at www.MilwaukeeRep.com, by phone at 414-224-9490, or at the Ticket Office at 108 E Wells Street, Milwaukee.

'Eleanora Duse Dies in Pittsburgh' is a short dark comedy, written by Don Nigro about the terror and holiness of theater. Famous Italian actress Eleanora Duse finds herself regretful of her past actions and attempts to find some sort of relief only to be pestered by the comedic interactions of other famous characters around her, leaving her more uncertain of her eventual fate. Theater for the New City's Dream Up Festival will present the play's New York premiere August 27 to September 12. Aan Steele directs and heads the cast of eight as Duse.

A notable company of stage artists join a powerhouse team of playwrights and directors for Planet Connections' Playwrights for a Cause, Sunday, July 23, 2017

Featuring three Houston premieres by women playwrights and a returning collection of gothic shorts, Mildred's Umbrella Theatre Company's 2017-2018 season promises to bring something for everyone to its stage.