Herman Melville News

NYU Skirball’s Winter/Spring 2023 season will open on January 12 with  the U.S. premiere of Moby Dick. Learn more about the full season here!

Why Not Theatre has announced that it has partnered with Harbourfront Centre to present a wildly-original theatrical adaptation of Herman Melville's classic Moby Dick, by innovative French-Norwegian puppetry company, Plexus Polaire.

The fifth annual Festival of Cool, presented by Canada Goose, will return to Toronto's Harbourfront Centre from December 8-18, 2022. Year after year, Harbourfront Centre is Toronto's number one destination for outdoor fun and cultural activities.

​​​​​​​UCLA's Center for the Art of Performance (CAP UCLA) presents the acclaimed Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company's latest work What Problem? on Saturday, November 19 at 8 p.m. in Royce Hall. Tickets starting at $39 are available now at cap.ucla.edu, 310-825-2101 and the UCLA Central Ticket Office. 

FirstWorks and Brown Arts Institute at Brown University announced community participants and public engagement events surrounding an artist residency with Bill T. Jones. The co-presented residency culminates in a performance of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company's 'What Problem?' at The VETS on Friday, November 4, 2022.

FirstWorks, a Providence-based nonprofit dedicated to connecting art with audiences, and Brown Arts Institute at Brown University, a new university-wide research enterprise and catalyst for the arts at Brown, announced their partnership to co-present an artist residency featuring visionary director, choreographer, and dancer Bill T. Jones.

The Shed will present MOBY DICK; or, The Whale, a new feature-length silent film by award-winning filmmaker and visual artist Wu Tsang. With original music composed by Caroline Shaw and Andrew Yee with Asma Maroof and conducted by Daniela Candillari, its presentation at The Shed will be performed live by Members of the New York Philharmonic.

In What Problem?, Jones, a two-time Tony Award winner (FELA! and Spring Awakening), choreographer, dancer, theater director and writer, invites the public into his creative process for a provocative and thoughtful meditation on the tension between belonging to a community and feelings of isolation in divisive times.

In the world of audiobook publishing, there is no higher honor than the annual Audie Awards. This year, tiny but esteemed audiobook producer, Alison Larkin Presents of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, is competing with the goliath publishers of the audiobook business for the 2022 Audie Award in the Literary Fiction & Classics category.

The Audio Publishers Association (APA) have announced finalists for the 2022 Audie Awards. Finalists include Cynthia Erivo for Best Female Narrator and Lin-Manuel Miranda for Best Male Narrator. Leslie Odom Jr., Annie Golden, Telly Leung, and Jason Tam are also featured on audiobooks that made the list. Check out the full list of nominations now!

A Theater in the Dark's live virtual audio drama A WAR OF THE WORLDS to return for three Halloween weekend performances, October 29-31

Broadcast live from the deck of Wavertree, this month's sing-along will include whaling songs and show-related artifacts from the Museum collection in honor of American novelist Herman Melville's birthday.

South Street Seaport Museum has announced its August schedule, including free tours of the historic tall ship Wavertree and the 1908 lightship Ambrose, free demonstrations by Bowne & Co. letterpress printers, an outdoor exhibition on Pier 16, cruises aboard the 1930 tugboat W.O. Decker, and more.

South Street Seaport Museum's monthly sea-music event Sea Chanteys and Maritime Music – the original NYC chantey sing, now made popular on TikTok – continues virtually on Sunday, August 1, 2021 at 2pm ET.

Following this spring's sold-out run of Afterwardsness, renowned director, choreographer, and dancer Bill T. Jones returns to Park Avenue Armory will present and perform in the world premiere of his monumental new work, Deep Blue Sea.

On Site Opera, New York's pioneering opera company rooted in site-specific storytelling and the immersive experience, in partnership with the South Street Seaport Museum, brings opera aboard the deck of the historic tall ship Wavertree with What Lies Beneath, August 28-September 2, 2021.

Queer|Art, New York City's home for the creative and professional development of LGBTQ+ artists, has announced the upcoming summer season of Queer|Art|Film, returning for another digital season now through August 16th.

Center for Performance Research is thrilled to present mayfield brooks: Whale Fall II, a week-long series of encounters featuring in-person, virtual, and streaming events, June 12–20, 2021. This program marks the first time CPR will welcome the public back to its space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn since March 2020. 

John Lithgow is featured in a special, new audio recording released by 92Y: a reading of William Maxwell’s novel, So Long, See You Tomorrow. The novel is Lithgow’s personal favorite, and in the recording, commissioned by 92Y’s Unterberg Poetry Center, the Emmy Award-winner reads it in its entirety.

MOBY DICK IN THE DARK is performed entirely without visuals, combining recorded sound, live Foley effects, an original musical score, and the human voices of actors, to tell the story.