Herman Melville News

Spring has sprung, andWill Geer's Theatricum Botanicum is thrilled to announce its annual summer line-up of theater, music and performance in its unique and stunning outdoor setting in Topanga. The Summer 2019 Season will include six plays opening in rapid succession and performed in repertory throughout the summer, along with a host of satellite events.

Chicago Opera Theater (COT) caps its 2018/2019 season with the Chicago premiere of "Moby-Dick," an epic adaptation of Herman Melville's 1851 classic "Moby-Dick; or, The Whale" at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance (205 E. Randolph Street) Thursday, April 25 and Sunday, April 28. The production is co-produced by Utah Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, San Jose Opera and Gran Teatre del Liceu.

The Shakespeare Project of Chicago presents a special production of MOBY DICK-REHEARSED, Orson Welles's adaption of Herman Melville's novel, for two performances: March 15 at the Niles-Maine District Library and March 16 at the Newberry Library. The theatrical reading is part of the Newberry's special exhibition celebrating the 200th anniversary of Melville's birth - 'Melville: Finding America at Sea.' Admission is free and registration is required at both venues.

From Friday, March 29 through Tuesday, April 9, BAM presents Strange Desire: The Films of Claire Denis, the most extensive retrospective ever presented in the US dedicated to Denis, a filmmaker consistently counted among the greatest living directors by filmmakers and critics alike. Denis' work is a delicate balance of contradictions: her films are beloved, yet elusive; influential, yet singular; grounded in corporeality, but with a shifting relationship with time. Born in France, raised in colonial Africa where her father was a civil servant, and eventually returning to France as a teenager, Denis subtly explores race and colonial relationships, love and eroticism, the texture of bodies and environments, and the elasticity of time. Following the retrospective, BAM will screen Denis' critically acclaimed new feature, the poetic science fiction film High Life (2019), starring Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Mia Goth, and Andre Benjamin. Denis will appear in person at BAM for a sneak preview show on April 3. The film opens in New York and Los Angeles on April 5.

As 2019 gets underway, the Rural Touring Dance Initiative (RTDI) will tour a fresh selection of shows created by dance companies whose work has been enjoyed on both national and international stages and can now be seen in to village halls and rural venues across the UK. Shows are offered in the form of 'menus' so local promoters are able to select the work that best suits their venue. This year's menu will bring an eclectic mix of dance adaptations of classic novels, fairytales and Shakespeare, Northern adventures and Windrush stories to an ever-growing audience who might not otherwise have the opportunity to see them. The initiative is a partnership between the National Rural Touring Forum, The Place, China Plate and Take Art.

San Francisco Opera General Director Matthew Shilvock today announced repertory and casting for the Company's 97th Season, opening Friday, September 6, 2019, with a gala performance of Charles Gounod's Romeo and Juliet (Rom o et Juliette) starring tenor Bryan Hymel and soprano Nadine Sierra in Op ra de Monte-Carlo Director Jean-Louis Grinda's production. In keeping with the Company's time-honored tradition, the new season will be inaugurated with San Francisco Opera Guild's elegant, signature benefit and celebration, Opera Ball 2019.

Road Less Traveled Productions (RLTP) continues to expand its commitment to the development of new works by local playwrights with the commission of a new adaptation of Herman Melville's Moby Dick by playwright Neil Wechsler. RLTP previously produced the world-premiere of Mr. Wechsler's play, Grenadine, winner of the 2008 Yale Drama Award as selected by Edward Albee. Other adaptations by Wechsler include Ibsen's Emperor and Galilean and The Faust Project (an adaptation of both parts of Goethe's Faust, in collaboration with composer Nathan Heidelberger). 

The Liverpool Playhouse has announced an alternative take on Charles Dickens' festive ghost story A Christmas Carol as their Christmas production for 2018.

The South Street Seaport Museum family mourns the death of longtime Museum historian, educator, Melville scholar, and friend Jack Putnam. A memorial service will be held in Jack's honor on Saturday, November 17, 10am, at St. Paul's Chapel, 209 Broadway, New York, NY 10007. Reception to follow, between 1pm and 4pm, at the Seaport Museum's Melville Gallery, 213 Water Street, New York, NY 10038.

The Board of the Traverse Theatre has today announced that it has appointed Gareth Nicholls, previously the organisation's Associate Director, to the position of Interim Artistic Director. He will assume the role, working with Executive Producer Linda Crooks, from 5th December, the date on which Outgoing Artistic Director Orla O'Loughlin departs from the organisation to take up the post of Vice Principal and Director of Drama at Guildhall School of Music and Drama full time from the beginning of 2019.

Rural Touring Dance Initiative Phase Two gets underway as it announces its Autumn 2018 touring schedule:

Leslie Sacks Gallery is pleased to present Alex Weinstein a few singles and one greatest hit featuring recent paintings by the Los Angeles based artist alongside an early swell model relief sculpture. The paintings in this exhibition are not from a particular body of work or a solitary investigation. They are more like singles, stand-alone compositions expressive of ideas and practices that matter to the artist emotionally and esthetically. The canvases are autobiographical and intended to be shared, even completed upon viewing, then becoming both complicit and emotive objects. This material is a snapshot of the evolution of Weinstein's output over the last decade.

Orson Welles adaptation of Herman Melville's grand tale of revenge, obsession and danger is presented with compact simplicity in Sport For Jove's presentation of MOBY DICK.

The Seymour Centre and Sport for Jove are proud to present one of the defining tales of English literature, Moby Dick, in the Seymour Centre's Reginald Theatre this August. Compressed from a 900-page novel to 90 action-packed minutes on stage, this is a chance to see and hear a defining work we all wish we'd found the time to read!   

Hit The Lights! Theater Co. (HTL!) is please to present two original works as part of the 2018 Minnesota Fringe Festival. In their shadow play WHALES, inspired by punk rock, interactive game shows, documentaries, and Herman Melville's seminal masterpiece Moby-Dick, HTL! invites you to catch a glimpse of the world that brought us a certain legendary white whale and the men that hunt him. In HORSETALE, part of Family Fringe, a Horse and his Tail become separated and in their search for each other, find themselves. HTL! weaves together handmade shadow puppetry, three vintage overhead projectors, live original folk music, and American iconography to tell a story as wild and expansive and intimate as the West itself.

The Seymour Centre and Sport for Jove are proud to present one of the defining tales of English literature, Moby Dick, in the Seymour Centre's Reginald Theatre this August. Compressed from a 900-page novel to 90 action-packed minutes on stage, this is a chance to see and hear a defining work we all wish we'd found the time to read!   

Hit The Lights! Theater Co. (HTL!) is please to present two original works as part of the 2018 Minnesota Fringe Festival. In their shadow play WHALES, inspired by punk rock, interactive game shows, documentaries, and Herman Melville's seminal masterpiece Moby-Dick, HTL! invites you to catch a glimpse of the world that brought us a certain legendary white whale and the men that hunt him. In HORSETALE, part of Family Fringe, a Horse and his Tail become separated and in their search for each other, find themselves. HTL! weaves together handmade shadow puppetry, three vintage overhead projectors, live original folk music, and American iconography to tell a story as wild and expansive and intimate as the West itself.

Hit the Lights! Theater Co. is pleased to present their original shadow play WHALES at The Peoples Improv Theater (The PIT), running April 24 through May 18th, 2018.

The Liverpool Playhouse has announced an alternative take on Charles Dickens' festive ghost story A Christmas Carol as their Christmas production for 2018.

Hit the Lights! Theater Co. is pleased to present their original shadow play WHALES at The Peoples Improv Theater (The PIT), running April 24 through May 18th, 2018.