Jessica Dickey News

TheatreWorks Silicon Valley has been approved for a $20,000 Grants for Arts Projects award to support its New Works Festival and the upcoming World Premiere of Nan and the Lower Body. Developed in the 2019 TheatreWorks New Works Festival, Jessica Dickey's play Nan and the Lower Body is scheduled to make its World Premiere in July 2022 in the company's 51st season, directed by TheatreWorks Artistic Associate and Director of New Works Giovanna Sardelli.

TheatreWorks Silicon Valley has postponed the opening of its 51st mainstage season to October 2021, with eight plays to be presented through August 2022.

The Drama League has announced today THE ESSENTIALS, an expanded series of workshops and seminars developed to explore best practices and changing realities for stage directors and theatermakers, offering vital tools for artists to succeed.

TheatreWorks Silicon Valley's Artistic Director Tim Bond and Executive Director Phil Santora announced today that the Tony Award-winning theatre will postpone the opening of its 51st mainstage season to March 2021, with eight plays presented through May 2022.

Williamstown Theatre Festival has announced its 2020 Artists-in-Residence: Trip Cullman, Joshua Harmon, Michael R. Jackson, Sylvia Khoury, Martyna Majok and Tyne Rafaeli.

Lynne Meadow (Artistic Director) and Barry Grove (Executive Producer) have announced this year's six recipients of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Initiative commissions. The commissioned writers are Kate Attwell, Mia Chung, Noah Diaz, Julia Izumi, Ife Olujobi, and Stacey Rose.

TheatreWorks Silicon Valley's Founding Artistic Director Robert Kelley, Artistic Director Designate Tim Bond, and Executive Director Phil Santora announced changes to TheatreWorks's 2020-21 Season, which is now scheduled to begin in October 2020.

Leah Ryan's Fund For Emerging Women Writers celebrates ten years of awarding it's prize to women playwrights with 10 X 10: An Evening of 10 Minute Plays Celebrating Ten Years of Winners. The gala event will take place at Cherry Lane Theatre on March 30 and will feature world premiere short plays from past recipients Megan Mostyn Brown, Genia Femia, Jiehae Park, and Eliana Pipes. A pre-show cocktail reception begins at 6:00pm, followed by the main performance at 7:00pm and an afterparty at Cowgirl. The evening will be under the direction of Daniella Topol. For more information, visit https://leahryansfeww.com/.

Shakespeare & Company is excited to announce its 2020 summer season, May 21 - October 18, 2020. Under the theme 'The Labyrinth of Love' the season includes Shakespeare titles: King Lear, Much Ado About Nothing, The Comedy of Errors, and, in a special workshop production, Measure for Measure. The contemporary plays this season are The Lifespan of a Fact by Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell, and Gordon Farrell; What Rhymes With America, by the Obie Award-winning playwright Melissa James Gibson; Row After Row by Jessica Dickey; Susan Smith Blackburn Award and Obie Award winner My Left Breast by Susan Miller; and Laurence Olivier Award winner Betrayal by Harold Pinter.

Theatre enthusiasts packed the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts tonight to hear Founding Artistic Director Robert Kelley, incoming Artistic Director Tim Bond, and Executive Director Phil Santora of TheatreWorks Silicon Valley announce the lineup for the 2019 Regional Theatre Tony Award-winning company's 2020-21 season, which launches this summer.

ENSEMBLE STUDIO THEATRE (EST) (William Carden, Artistic Director) and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (Doron Weber, Vice-President, Programs) have announced details for the 2020 First Light Festival, part of the EST/Sloan Project to develop plays exploring science and technology.

Studio Theatre and Artistic Director David Muse have announced that Reginald L. Douglas will join the organization as its new Associate Artistic Director later this month. Douglas comes to Studio from City Theatre Company in Pittsburgh, where he has served as Artistic Producer since 2015.

In celebration of its 25th anniversary, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater will host a 25th Anniversary AlumniJam every Monday night in January. These four events will showcase 15 alumni playwrights who will revisit past productions and share new never-before-seen work. Participating writers include Bill Bowers, Jessica Dickey, William Francis Hoffman, Xavier Galva, Basil Kreimendahl, Michael Laurence, Jessica Litwak, Mashuq Mushtaq Deen, Matt Pepper, Tim Pickney, Diana Oh, Dael Orlandersmith, Jose Rivera, Cori Thomas, and Jonathan Tolins. These writers represent some of New York's greatest voices-Pulitzer finalists, Obie winners, and Academy Award nominees-who have shaped Off-Broadway theater over the last quarter century.

Hummingbird Theater Company's slogan reads, 'hover in the moment.' That thoughtful pause describes perfectly the theatrical experience director/producer Donald Brian Bartalo creates with his latest venture, THE AMISH PROJECT, at MUCCC. This extraordinary one-person show written by Jessica Dickey fictionally explores the Nickel Mines schoolhouse shooting that fragmented the lives of families in and around an Amish community near Lancaster Pennsylvania in 2006. At lights up, the audience enters an unfamiliar world. There are no introductions or explanations. We meet a young Amish girl sitting at a school desk who is fascinated with hats. The actor then morphs into her older sister thrilled by the beauty of the world, then a non-Amish woman feverishly smoking. These transformations continue for seven disparate characters. Each is a fragment laid out and unexplained like the patches of a quilt waiting to be sewn together, to be made whole. And that is the dramatic structure Dickey deftly stitches over the next 90 riveting minutes. She lovingly and sympathetically presents each character's terror, goodness and beauty. Slowly, these characters, torn to pieces, are inextricably knotted together by chance or fate or God. Jessica Dickey quilts an absolute masterwork that warms with compassion and unflinching fellowship.

Kylie Arseneau and Cody Farkas are extraordinary in this powerful piece of theatre.

Schoolhouse Theater is very proud to present The Amish Project, directed by Todd Olson and starring Katherine M. Tanner. Good American citizens who are trying to make sense of the mass shootings that have taken place over the last several years, will be uplifted by Jessica Dickey's play. It focuses on a shooting that occurred in 2006 at the West Nickel Mines School in the Amish Community of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  The emphasis of the play is on forgiveness and reconciliation in the Amish community's response to the horror of that day. 

Lovers of new theatre will gather this August for an advance look at tomorrow's hits at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley's 2019 New Works Festival at Palo Alto's Lucie Stern Theatre. This unique festival offers audiences an extraordinary opportunity to experience new plays and musicals in their early stages of development, and hear about the creative process in a "Meet the Artists" panel discussion. With multiple performances of each work, playwrights and composers are able to revise and refine their shows during the festival, allowing audiences to view the exciting evolution of brand new pieces of theatre. The popular festival runs August 9 - 18, 2019 at the Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Rd., Palo Alto. Festival passes ($65 general$49 season subscribers) and single event tickets ($20) can be purchased online at theatreworks.org or by calling (650) 463-1960.

Theater Resources Unlimited (TRU) announces three winning plays for the The 2019 TRU Voices New Plays Reading Series: Passing Parades by Fengar Gael, The New Galileos by Amy Berryman, and Three Months with Pook by Jack Feldstein on Mondays, June 17- July 22, 2019 at 7pm at The Soho Playhouse, 15 Vandam Street, NYC

Lynne Meadow (Artistic Director) and Barry Grove (Executive Producer) are pleased to announce the complete casting for the world premiere of Continuity, the new play by Lortel and Drama Desk Award nominee Bess Wohl (Small Mouth Sounds, American Hero) and directed by Tony Award nominee Rachel Chavkin (Hadestown; Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812). The production will feature Max Baker (1984, The Explorers Club), Jasmine Batchelor (The River), Rosal Colon ('Orange is the New Black,' Between Riverside and Crazy), Curran Connor (Pidgeon, A Picture of Autumn), Garcia ('Tales of the City'), Darren Goldstein (Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes, The Madrid), Alex Hurt (Cardinal, The Whirligig) and Megan Ketch (The Big Wedding, 'American Gothic').

Bay Street Theater & Sag Harbor Center for the Arts is pleased to announce Title Wave at Bay Street: The 6th Annual New Works Festival, May 3 - 5. All readings are free, but tickets are required, as these events typically sell out. Tickets are available now at baystreet.org or by calling the Bay Street Theater Box Office at 631-725-9500, open Tuesday through Saturday 11 am to 5 pm, or until show time.