Nataki Garrett News

Children's Theatre Company (CTC) is proud to announce the global 2019 - 2020 Season, including two CTC commissioned works, two international presentations, surprising reimagined classic fairy tales, and exciting musicals. This season will feature a wide range of productions that will engage conversations and create memories. Earlier in January, CTC announced that Rajane Katurah (former CTC Performing Apprentice) has accepted the position of Company Member, joining Autumn Ness, Dean Holt, Reed Sigmund, and Gerald Drake for the 2019 - 2020 Season.

Aziza Barne's BLKS is a stop-you-in-your-tracks, laugh-out-loud comedy that is about to take DC by storm. Barnes' electric writing powerfully celebrates, queerness, sisterhood and the implications of being 'Black and alive.' With director Nataki Garrett at the helm, the cast brings Aziza's words to life with infectious joy. My cheeks still hurt from smiling.

Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC), the national theatrical union representing stage directors and choreographers across the United States, announced its annual selection of Top Ten 'Standout Moments.' The recognition covered the period from July 1, 2017 through June 30, 2018.

Playwright Aleshea Harris' play IS GOD IS, receiving just its second production at Minneapolis' Mixed Blood Theatre, is a revenge play. More than that, it's a revenge fantasy. Filled with the kind of vengeance that we don't resort to in real life because we're civilized people, but it sure is fun to think about. When you hear of a man who does horrible things to his wife and/or children, or even worse, experience it first hand, there's a part of the primal brain that wants to deliver an eye for an eye. This play is the cathartic fulfillment of those desires. It reminds me of the Dixie Chicks' song 'Goodbye Earl,' in which two friends conspire to kill the abusive husband of one of them. Critics cried - you're advocating violence and murder, how horrible! No - it's fiction, art, fantasy, metaphor, seeing an evil someone get what they deserve, if only in our imagination. Such is IS GOD IS, tenfold, in all its horrific yet somehow satisfying violence to avenge great hurts against one's self and loved ones.

Aleshea Harris' award winning play, Is God Is will be adapted for the screen by Scott Rudin and A24, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Harris will adapt her own work for the screen.

Mixed Blood is the only regional theater in America producing, in the playwright's words, this "nuanced exploration of Black female anger."  IS GOD IS "explores the taboo of black female anger and the complexity of survival. It's terrifyingly funny and absurdly violent. It's about love and loyalty sisterhood and rivalry," says director Nataki Garrett.

California Shakespeare Theater continues its 44th Season with the West Coast Premiere of Everybody, a sparkling new riff on the 15th-century morality play The Summoning of Everyman by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, whom the New York Times calls 'one of this country's most original and illuminating writers.' A finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Drama, Everybody is Cal Shakes' second official offering under the New Classics Initiative (NCI), exploring what it means to be a classical theater in the 21st century, and to allow living writers to expand our classical canon. Directed by Nataki Garrett making her Cal Shakes debut,

The Ojai Playwrights Conference (OPC), one of the nation's most acclaimed new play development programs, announces its 21st season with another inspirational and though-provoking program featuring playwrights, new play workshop presentations, and special performance events from August 5 through 12, 2018 in Ojai, California.

California Shakespeare Theater continues its 44th Season with the West Coast Premiere of Everybody, a sparkling new riff on the 15th-century morality play The Summoning of Everyman by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, whom the New York Times calls "one of this country's most original and illuminating writers.' A finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Drama, Everybody is Cal Shakes' second official offering under the New Classics Initiative (NCI), exploring what it means to be a classical theater in the 21st century, and to allow living writers to expand our classical canon. Directed by Nataki Garrett making her Cal Shakes debut, Everybody plays July 18 - August 5 at the Bruns Amphitheater in Orinda. Low-priced previews take place July 18-20; Opening Night is July 21. Tickets (ranging from $20?$92) are available through the Cal Shakes Box Office at 510.548.9666 or by visiting www.calshakes.org. Ticket prices are subject to change without notice.

Mixed Blood Theatre is pleased to announce its 2018-19 Season, Transforming the Impossible to the Probable. Speaking truth to power and upending the status quo through theater via provocative programming in which comedy, drama, satire, and extravaganza take on Me Too, automation, Black Lives Matter, abortion, climate change, gender identity, NFL player protests, and, throughout everything, race. The season will put on display Mixed Blood's core value to be predictably unpredictable.

REDCAT, CalArts' downtown center for contemporary arts, presents the world premiere of The Carolyn Bryant Project, a production of the CalArts Center for New Performance(CNP), May 17 through May 20, 2018. 

The Carolyn Bryant Project makes its world premiere at REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater). Photo: Courtesy of CalArts Center for New Performance (CNP). Click here for high resolution version Till's death helped catalyze the modern Civil Rights movement - and the play's evocation of the encounter between Bryant and Till in 1955 resonates in the current era of Black Lives Matter.

Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) Artistic Director Bill Rauch announced the Festival's 2019 playbill today. The season, which will be Rauch's last at the artistic helm, celebrates Shakespeare, classics and new plays, including two American Revolutions commissions and a pilot Community Visit Project that will take a bilingual Play on! translation into community venues throughout the region.

The Denver Center for the Performing Arts (DCPA) is proud to announce the 40th season of their Tony-Award winning Theatre Company, the first to be led by incoming Artistic Director Chris Coleman and the 8th season for their unconventional line of programming, Off-Center. The new season kicks off performances on July 11 and will feature 13 productions across seven different venues at the Denver Performing Arts Complex and beyond.

California Shakespeare Theater (Cal Shakes) today announced key artists for its 2018 Season at the Bruns Amphitheater, including the Cal Shakes directorial debuts of KJ Sanchez (Quixote Nuevo) and Nataki Garrett (Everybody).

As a nation, we owe it to ourselves to ponder how men who advocated for liberty could also advocate for slavery. It is a question for serious discussion, not just the cursory glances provided by Jefferson's Garden.

Playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker explores the contradictions between our founding fathers' ideals and the realities of freedom in America. Christian, a Quaker pacifist, defies his family to fight in the American Revolution. Susannah, an enslaved woman, is tempted to fight for the British when they promise her liberty. On their travels, Christian and Susannah cross paths with Thomas Jefferson, George Mason and Sally Hemings.

Steppenwolf Theatre Company presents the Chicago premiere production of the Obie Award-winning play You Got Older, written by Clare Barron and directed by Jonathan Berry. This bawdy, irreverent and touching play features four ensemble members Glenn Davis (Mac), Audrey Francis (Hannah), Francis Guinan (Dad) and Caroline Neff (Mae), along with Emjoy Gavino (Jenny), David Lind (Matthew) and Gabriel Ruiz (Cowboy).

BroadwayWorld presents a comprehensive weekly roundup of regional stories around our Broadway World, which include videos, editor spotlights, regional reviews and more. This week, we feature FIDDLER, LES MIS, and LOVE NEVER DIES.

Aziza Barnes's BLKS is often funny, often vulgar, and sometimes heartbreaking. Now in a world premiere staging at Steppenwolf, BLKS chronicles 24 hours in the lives of three young black women in their early 20s living in New York City. Barnes's playwriting is achingly real and naturalistic, while also showcasing the playwright's poetic chops. In Octavia (Nora Carroll), Imani (Celeste Cooper), and June (Leea Ayers), Barnes has given us three unique and beautifully written characters navigating a tumultuous moment in their young lives.