Marcela Lorca News

Enjoy a rare thing: A black musical rooted in the blues that conjures up mythic characters and is also, fundamentally, a feel-good family story. THUNDER KNOCKING ON THE DOOR in the hands of the social activist theater company Ten Thousand Things is a celebration of love, music, movement, and the mystical moments that cause us to transform into new, fuller versions of ourselves.

The Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation (SDCF), the not-for-profit foundation affiliated with Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, presented the third annual SDCF Awards including the Gordon Davidson Award, Zelda Fichandler Award, Joe A. Callaway Awards, and Breakout Award. The event took place on Tuesday, November 12, 2019 at the Laurie Beechman Theatre.

The Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation (SDCF), the not-for-profit foundation affiliated with Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, presents the third annual SDCF Awards including the Gordon Davidson Award, Zelda Fichandler Award, Joe A. Callaway Awards, and Breakout Award.

Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation (SDCF), the not-for-profit foundation affiliated with Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC), has announced the winner and three finalists for the annual Zelda Fichandler Award. The award will be presented at an invitation-only event on Tuesday, November 12, 2019 in New York City. The Fichandler Award recognizes directors and choreographers who have demonstrated great accomplishment to-date with singular creativity and deep investment in a particular community or region, and is named for Zelda Fichandler, the founding artistic director of Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. This year's Fichandler Award focused on directors and choreographers from the central region of the United States.

The World Premiere of Don Carlos: Prince of Asturias, written and performed by Oscar Emmanuel Fabela, is headed the largest Solo Performance Festival in the world: The United Solo Festival in New York City, celebrating its 10th anniversary. The production plays October 25 at 7:30 pm at Theatre Row.

The Minnesota Orchestra announced plans for Sommerfest 2019 today, unveiling a four-week July festival, presented under the banner Musica Juntos (Music Together), that spotlights Latin American music and culminates in performances of Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov's La Pasion segun San Marcos, a much-celebrated, genre-blurring retelling of the biblical passion of St. Mark, described by critics as "a work of genius" and "the first indisputably great composition of the 21st century."

INTO THE WOODS is new artistic director Marcela Lorca's debut directorial outing for Ten Thousand Things after the retirement of renowned artist and social change agent Michelle Hensley, the founder of the company. Seeing this Sondheim masterpiece up close and stripped of pretentiousness is a treat.

American Blues Theater, Chicago's second oldest Equity Ensemble, under the continued leadership of Artistic Director Gwendolyn Whiteside, has named Benjamin Benne, was selected from a pool 752 submissions. As part of the award, Benne receives a $1,250 cash prize and the opportunity to further develop his script with American Blues Theater.

Ten Thousand Things is a treasure: a company dedicated to bringing live theater to marginalized and underserved audiences for free. Founding Director Michelle Hensley retired in June of 2018. So this production is the first in new Artistic Director Marcela Lorca's inaugural season, and is directed by Randy Reyes, who is Artistic Director of Theater Mu locally. The mission of TTT is clearly in safe hands, especially given the extant structure of the Artist Core, a group of veteran performers who provide guidance and active advice to the organization.

The Globe is happy to announce that the Globe for All Tour will continue to bring shows to the community in 2018, with support provided by Theatre Forward's Advancing Strong Theatre grant program. Following the Globe engagement of Karen Zacarias's hilarious comedy directed by Edward Torres, Native Gardens will travel June 28 through July 1 to four of our community partner venues for free performances in South Bay, Lemon Grove, Otay Mesa, and Oceanside. Developed in the 2017 Powers New Voices Festival, it runs through June 24 in the Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre, part of the Conrad Prebys Theatre Center, and then hits the road!

Michelle Hensley, retiring Artistic Director and Founder of Ten Thousand Things, is a gift. A gift to theater, a gift to Minnesota, a gift to the world. She taught us a new way to do theater, a new way to experience theater, one that considers who the audience can and should be, which is everyone. Read her book ALL THE LIGHTS ON if you want to know more about it, or go see her beautiful swan song THE GOOD PERSON OF SZECHWAN, which is also the first play that TTT ever did nearly 30 years ago when Michelle started it in California. We've been lucky enough to have TTT as a vital part of the #TCTheater community for 25 years, a tradition that will continue after Michelle's retirement under the leadership of new Artistic Director Marcela Lorca. One can only hope that all of the artists and audience members she's worked with and influenced in those years will continue on this tradition of inclusive, accessible, imaginative theater that is unlike anything else.

Gurira's family drama FAMILIAR has just opened in a lavishly designed and carefully calibrated production at the Guthrie. It's familiar in many ways, as a well-made play on a single set (the interior of an upscale household in Minnetonka, MN) unrolling in real time, that dives into the secrets and dreams of a family, whose distinctive characters are all drawn together now for the wedding of the elder daughter.

Milwaukee Repertory Theater to hold auditions for the second annual Professional Training Institute (PTI), an advanced actor training program for students in 8th-12th grade who may have an interest in pursuing a career as a professional theater artist. Participants will receive free training from some of the top theater professionals in the world, culminating in a capstone summer performance where they will be employed as paid, professional actors.

Repertory Theater presents the inaugural Professional Training Institute's production of So Thrive My Soul, in the Stiemke Studio July 13 - 16, 2017. The Professional Training Institute (PTI) is a free yearlong advance actor training program for students in 8th-12th grade who may have an interest in pursuing a career as a professional theater artist.

Second Stage Theater's (Carole Rothman, Artistic Director) production of SOMEBODY'S DAUGHTER has been extended by one week and will now play through Sunday, June 25.

As previously announced, Second Stage Theatre will begin the 2017 Uptown Series with the world premiere of Chisa Hutchinson's SOMEBODY'S DAUGHTER, directed by MAY ADRALES.

A cozy, celebratory dinner party in a cosmopolitan New York penthouse ignites irreversible damage between friends in Ayad Ahktar's 2013 Pulitzer Prize winning play Disgraced now on stage at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater's Quadracci Powerhouse. Eventually, each character in the no intermission production will somehow be disgraced-sometimes by their personal identity, religion or culture and determined through their own specific actions or reactions to another person. The Rep becomes the third theater company to mount Disgraced in a co-production with Minneapolis' Guthrie Theater and New Jersey's McCarter Theatre in what has become the most produced play in 2016. One only needs to attend to understand why this potent combination of contemporary dilemmas facing Americans personally and politically drew the country's theatrical attention.

Milwaukee Repertory Theater presents the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Disgraced, written by one of the most in-demand playwrights of today Rep Associate Artist Ayad Akhtar in the Quadracci Powerhouse beginning January 17 through February 12.

Milwaukee Repertory Theater  presents the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Disgraced, written by one of the most in-demand playwrights of today Rep Associate Artist Ayad Akhtar in the Quadracci Powerhouse beginning January 17 through February 12.  According to American Theater Magazine, Disgraced was the most produced play around the country in the 2015/16 Season, and now for the first time it makes a homecoming to Milwaukee, the hometown of playwright Ayad Akhtar.  

Milwaukee Repertory Theater presents the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Disgraced, written by one of the most in-demand playwrights of today Rep Associate Artist Ayad Akhtar in the Quadracci Powerhouse beginning January 17 through February 12.