Milwaukee Rep will present the world premiere of Antonio's Song / I Was Dreaming of a Son by Pulitzer Prize finalist Dael Orlandersmith and Antonio Edwards Suarez for a limited two week run in the Stiemke Studio March 24 - April 5, 2020. Antonio's Song / I Was Dreaming Of A Son features Antonio Edwards Suarez (The Night is a Child, Milwaukee Rep) in a personal solo/movement drama that explores the sins of our fathers and mothers as well as the gifts they bestow upon us in a poetic journey that will question/challenge the legacy of stereotypes.
Milwaukee Rep has announced the complete cast and creative teams for the final productions of the 2019/20 Season including the world premiere Antonio's Song / I Was Dreaming of a Son by Pulitzer Prize finalist Dael Orlandersmith and Antonio Edwards Suarez in the Stiemke Studio March 24 - April 5, 2020; the world premiere event Hootenanny: The Musicale by celebrated musician David Lutken in the Stackner Cabaret March 27 - May 24, 2020; and the telenovela of passion and deception Destiny of Desire by Karen Zacarías in the Quadracci Powerhouse April 21 - May 17, 2020.
New Repertory Theatre dusts off an old chestnut for a family-friendly, non-holiday, crowd-pleasing offering as their gift for the season. Lionel Bart's OLIVER!, based on Charles Dickens' novel OLIVER TWIST, is known to be a little dark, with its themes of orphans, child exploitation, and vast income inequality (sound familiar?), but in the hands of New Rep's new Artistic Director, Michael J. Bobbitt, the darkness is lightened up with jaunty performances, a smattering of silly antics, and a set design (Luciana Stecconi) that skews to the cartoonish. With almost a dozen capable adults anchoring the cast, the seven children of all ages are given free rein to behave like children, albeit amazingly talented and spirited ones.
Dougherty unspools the stories of Chester and Dr. Cotton, his treating physician, with novelistic skill. The feeling of truly being in the World War II period never lifts. The stories reel us in: Chester's of the way he deals with his injury, and Cotton's of hospital life in wartime, with its politics, scandals, and sexual misbehavior. This show is the whole package: a polished, intriguing, thematically-consistent but otherwise dissimilar pair of stories well-told, leaving one profoundly moved.
And now of course we are into the story of Antonio's family of origin, and the world of his origin, which has conditioned him to behave this way, which implicitly and explicitly looks to its men to solve problems with violence.
The Hangar Theatre Company opens its 45th Mainstage summer season with the farce, Or, What She Will, a fast and witty play directed by Morgan Gould. This play by Liz Duffy Adams imagines Aphra Behn, the first recognized female playwright, during one raucous, racy night in the 1600s. Performances will run from June 13-22 with matinee and evening shows.
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.
George C. Wolfe's SPUNK was first staged at New York's Public Theater in 1990. It is based on Zora Neale Hurston's 1937 novel 'Their Eyes Were Watching God'.
I've never been disappointed by a show at Signature Theatre. Even their ongoing Grand Hotel, which is working with some less-than-stellar source material, is elevated by the wonderful craftsmanship and talented artists this theater welcomes. The same can unfortunately not be said of the disappointing Spunk, which opened in Signature's more intimate ARK theater on Friday. Zora Neale Hurston's masterful prose falls flat in a production that feels like it opened too soon, resulting in an evening lacking in the gumption this show tries to champion.
Signature Theatre presents Spunk based on three short stories by Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God) and adapted by acclaimed writer and director George C. Wolfe (Jelly's Last Jam, Shuffle Along). The production is directed by Timothy Douglas (Arena's Nina Simone: Four Women, Disgraced). Spunk runs from April 30 through June 23 in Signature's ARK Theatre.
Signature Theatre presents Spunk based on three short stories by Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God) and adapted by acclaimed writer and director George C. Wolfe (Jelly's Last Jam, Shuffle Along).
Signature Theatre has announced the cast and creative team for Spunk, based on three short stories by Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God) and adapted by acclaimed writer and director George C. Wolfe (Jelly's Last Jam, Shuffle Along). The production will be directed by Timothy Douglas (Arena's Nina Simone: Four Women, Disgraced). Spunk will run from April 30 through June 23 in Signature's ARK Theatre.
Let me start this review with a comment by Olney's Artistic Director, Jason Loewith's comment in the program. 'After all my years in this business, many of them championing playwrights and new plays, it takes a lot to knock my socks off. I can count on two hands the experiences that reshaped by understanding of live theater and its possibilities. The world premiere of Ella Hickson's OIL in London two years was one of them. It is a blazingly, ambitious, as intellectually thrilling, as emotionally resonant as most the great works I've seen this century.'
The American Premiere of Ella Hickson's Oil directed by Tracy Brigden begins its Olney Theatre Center run in the Mulitz-Gudelsky Theatre Lab on February 27 and runs through March 31. Invited Press Night is Saturday, March 2 at 7:45pm.
Some people go to the theater to find a place to escape from the world around them. If you are one of those people, Studio Theatre's production of Kings wont be your cup of tea. This production is often an uncomfortably real exploration of politics, lobbyists and daily life in the heart of our nation. It takes a moment for the plot to get moving, but once it has left the station, Kings proved to be a thoroughly enjoyable ride.
Bianca Laverne Jones gives us a Berta a man would want to compose a song about. Her face, her eyes, the modulations of her voice, like the song Berta, Berta itself, communicate so much more than the lines she delivers. 'Berta is a voluptuous, stately Black woman with a striking countenance,' say the directions. Just so.
A show about Reagan that does not explore how his personality gave rise to so much destructiveness is not going to satisfy any well-informed theatergoer. Yet such a show is unfortunately what playwright Michael Weller has given us in A Late Morning (in America) With Ronald Reagan.
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.
The final production of Mosaic Theater Company of DC's third season will be the world premiere staging of The Vagrant Trilogy, written by Mona Mansour and directed by Mark Wing-Davey. The Vagrant Trilogy is comprised of three different one-act plays: The Hour of Feeling, The Vagrant, and Urge for Going. These three plays, combined for the first time in one epic performance, follows Palestinian scholar Adham and his family over multiple generations and in multiple continents.
The Winter's Tale-Shakespeare's late play filled with romance, jealousy, reconciliation-concocted landscapes and a bear in pursuit-is next on stage at Folger Theatre at the Folger Shakespeare Library on Capitol Hill. Directed by six-time Helen Hayes Award-winner Aaron Posner, the production is on stage from March 13 through April 22, 2018
