Monique News

Earlier this month, the Rob Guest Endowment held auditions in Melbourne and Sydney to search for this year's winner of the Rob Guest Endowment Award. After careful consideration, the 30 Semi-Finalists for the 2018 Rob Guest Endowment Award were chosen and announced today.

African-American Shakespeare Company opens their 2018-19 Season with Ntozake Shange's 'For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf', a play that hasn't been professionally produced in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 20 years.

For the first time in over 20 years the Bay Area will have the chance to experience Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls When The Rainbow is Enuf. This transformative and riveting evening of provocative dance, music and poetry tells the stories of 7 individual women dealing with the at times brutal, tender and dramatic arcs of their lives. 

With direction by Kleber Montanheiro, the musical tells the story of Carmen Miranda, the Brazilian Bombshell, from her arrival in Brazil as a child, through radio, her first recordings, Brazilian cinema and Cassino da Urca, to stardom in Hollywood movies. The play is an adaptation of the award-winning book of the same name by Heloisa Seixas and Julia Romeu, which tells and sings for the whole family the 46 years of life of this little girl who brought Brazilian music and culture to the four corners of the world. The cast is formed by Amanda Acosta, Daniela Cury, Luciana Ramanzini, Maria Bia, Samuel de Assis and Fabiano Augusto.

Hot Creations co-founder Jamie Jones has joined forces with New York's David Berrie for an electrifying two track release in the shape of the Doctor Zouk EP. The production is the result of a friendship spanning many years between the two producers, and is set for release on Friday, September 14th.

SJ Presents and WBLS continue the celebration of Circle of Sisters with Circle of Sisters' R&B Live; an extraordinary lineup featuring soul and R&B icons featuring BELL BIV DEVOE, BOBBY BROWN, BRANDY,TAMIA, DRU HILL & 702. The Circle of Sisters' R&B Live concert honors women and the music they love. This star-studded event is set for Sunday, September 30, at 7 p.m. at Prudential Center. To purchase tickets visit ticketmaster.com or call 1-800-745-3000. Tickets are also available at Prudential Center Box Office located at 25 Lafayette Street, Newark, New Jersey.

American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) Conservatory Director Melissa Smith and Young Conservatory Director Jill MacLean announced today the 2018-19 production lineup and schedule for the Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) Program and Young Conservatory. Tickets for all performances are available online at www.act-sf.org/csvshows or by calling the A.C.T. Box Office at 415-749-2228.

WE Day, an unparalleled youth empowerment event, returns to New York to celebrate 19,000 youth and educators from across the Tri-State area for the second annual WE Day UN on September 26, 2018 at Barclays Center. Taking place during the conclusion of the 73rd United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), WE Day UN is held in partnership with UNAIDS and UN Global Compact and other UN agencies.

Soho Rep. announces its 2018-2019 season, with two world premieres that demonstrate the small but flexible space's 'indispensible' (New York Magazine) presence as 'a 70-seat house filled with big ideas' (Hilton Als, The New Yorker). Through singular and irreverent stylistic approaches, Kate Tarker's Thunderbodies,directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz (October 16-November 18, 2018), and Christopher Chen's Passage, directed by Saheem Ali (April 23-May 26, 2019),interrogate the staggering ramifications of U.S and global imperialism.

In a world struggling to find connection, how strange that we're brought together in one place to witness the beautiful love and ultimate separation of a family, in an oddly comforting way...To say the least, this is a beautiful story. And one that might be hard to hear. Playwright Tara Beagan does not shy away from the challenging topics, baring a lifetime of pain in just over two hours.

Curve and Jamie Wilson have revealed the full casting for the upcoming festive Made at Curve production of Irving Berlin's White Christmas.

Following a hugely successful run at both The Whitefire Theatre in Sherman Oaks, CA, and at The Hollywood Fringe Festival (winning the Encore Producers' Award), MdB Productions is pleased to present Mulatto Math: Summing Up the Race Equation in America at United Solo Fest 2018. Featuring playwright and internationally award-winning performer Monique DeBose and directed by NAACP-winning director Denise Dowse. The show will have one performance at United Solo Fest on Saturday, September 15th at 9pm. Running time is 65 minutes.

Presented by Hi-ARTS, the Hip-Hop Theater Festival returns to Washington, D.C., this September 12 through 16 with a boundary-breaking mix of theater, music, poetry, art, dance, lyricism and activism. The free, five-day event highlights a unique art form that has sustained and celebrated the American urban community that birthed it while also being embraced by fans worldwide.

Homer's Illiad is referred to as the 'goriest' of the ancient poems, in which Greek and Trojan warriors meet their fates in violent, bloody and graphic ways. Alice Oswald's Memorial is a visceral and faithful adaptation of the poem which has the oral history of the dead (or 'oral cemetery' in her words) at the moral centre of the work. Presented by Alice Oswald and Brink Productions, Memorial is one of the most stunning pieces of live theatre I have ever seen.

A classic mystery-comedy. Once famous mystery writers involve the audience as they apply their individual methods to solving various murders. They include a couple who write sophisticated murders, a young author of the James Bond school, a retired writer of the hard hitting method and an aging queen of the logical murder.

Tap Dancer/Musician, Broadway's Omar Edwards, will be bringing his new show HARLEM NIGHTS: The Music, The Song, TheDance to MIST, Harlem's premier entertainment destination, on Thursday, September 20, 2018. Accompanied by his band, The K 360 Club, Edwards and company take the audience on a musical journey through a pool of sounds from jazz to reggae and back again.

The French Institute Alliance Française is pleased to announce the appointment of Courtney Geraghty as its new Artistic Director. Geraghty, who has both American and French citizenship, arrives at FIAF following an international career with positions in France, Japan, and Chile. Most recently she served as Cultural Attaché for the French Embassy in Santiago, Chile, curating and commissioning artistic events from a variety of disciplines, while also operating as the South American Performing Arts Liaison across the region. She will begin programming for FIAF in 2019.

The Actors Fund announced today that the 2018 Looking Ahead Awards will honor the cast of Disney Channel's 'Andi Mack,' Raven-Symone and Monique Coleman on Sunday, October 28 from 4-8pm at the magnificent Taglyan Complex in Hollywood. The fifth annual celebration, which raises support and awareness for The Actors Fund's Looking Ahead Program, features exciting 'blue carpet' arrivals, cocktail hour, gourmet dinner and celebrity-studded awards ceremony.

The 15 selected to participate in the program are the following: indie film directors Maria Burton (“A Sort of Homecoming”), Pablo Gomez-Castro (“El Alquiler”), Stephanie Martin (“Wild Horses”), and Marshall Tyler (“Night Shift”); TV movie director Princess Monique (“Seasons of Love”); brand director and entrepreneur Ryan Brown (“The Rough Part”); feature screenwriter Michelle Steffes (“The Interview”); indie film/commercial directors Alonso Mayo (“Fixed”) and Phillip Rhys (“The Scarecrow”); digital writer/directors Cynthia Kao (“Groundhog Day For A Black Man”) and Marvin Lemus (“Gente-fied: The Digital Series”);  commercial/streaming writer/director Dinh Thai (“Monday”); Broadway producer/director and indie film director Coy Middlebrook (“For Spacious Sky”); actor/director and law enforcement professional Jeremy Earl (“Constance Murphy”); and music video and commercial director Bobby Yan (“Marz”).