Ntozake Shange News

Following its critically acclaimed, successful 2017 spring season, New York's beloved Dance Theatre of Harlem, under the artistic direction of Virginia Johnson, will return to NY City Center for its annual homecoming season from April 4-7, 2018.

In response to popular demand, The Acting Company (Ian Belknap, Artistic Director; Elisa Spencer-Kaplan, Executive Director) extends their acclaimed production of playwright/poet Marcus Gardley's X: Or, Betty Shabazz v. the Nation through February 25, 2018. Coinciding with African Heritage Month, the Ian Belknap-directed play deepens our understanding of one of America's most complex, compelling historical figures, and explores the tumultuous landscape of ideology and activism in the 1960s. 

LUMBERYARD Contemporary Performing Arts today kicks off the third edition of the organization's acclaimed LUMBERYARD In The City Winter Festival, which takes place from January 25 - February 10 at New York Live Arts in New York City.

Irvington Town Hall Theater (ITHT) will celebrate Black History Month with a one night only fully staged reading of Ntozake Shange's ground-breaking play for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf presented by 4th Wall Theatre on Saturday, February 24th at 7:30pm.

LUMBERYARD Contemporary Performing Arts and the upcoming third edition of their acclaimed LUMBERYARD In The City Winter Festival taking place at New York Live Arts in New York City.

New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) presents Celebrate Kwanzaa at NJPAC's 19th Annual Kwanzaa Artisan Marketplace Today, December 15th Saturday, December 16th at NJPAC 1 Center Street in Newark, NJ. Experience NJPAC's Prudential Hall lobby transformed into a Kwanzaa Artisan Marketplace where vendors display creative, unique and many one of kind hand-crafted items satisfying all gift giving needs.

Obsidian Theater opens the 2018 season with the groundbreaking 'choroepoem,' For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf. This spellbinding collection of vivid prose and free verse narratives, about and performed by Black women can be see at Obsidian Theater, January 25 - February 17.

New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) presents Celebrate Kwanzaa at NJPAC's 19th Annual Kwanzaa Artisan Marketplace Friday, December 15th Saturday, December 16th at NJPAC 1 Center Street in Newark, NJ. Experience NJPAC's Prudential Hall lobby transformed into a Kwanzaa Artisan Marketplace where vendors display creative, unique and many one of kind hand-crafted items satisfying all gift giving needs.

This season Obsidian Theater takes you from the Kit Kat Club in Hitler's Germany to the swamplands of South Carolina to pressure filled NYC and even an abandoned cabin in the woods.

The Acting Company presents their acclaimed production of playwright/poet Marcus Gardley's X: Or, Betty Shabazz v. the Nation in a full Off-Broadway run, January 14-February 18, 2018, at the Theatre at St. Clement's.

Janice Sinden, President & CEO of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts (DCPA), announced today that Chris Coleman has been named the fourth Artistic Director of its DCPA Theatre Company following a national search. Coleman will join the company in May 2018.

Adrienne Willis, Executive and Artistic Director of LUMBERYARD Contemporary Performing Arts, today announced the third edition of the organization's acclaimed LUMBERYARD In The City Winter Festival, which takes place from January 25 February 10 at New York Live Arts in New York City. The 2018 Winter Festival will feature genre-blurring productions from three daring and highly accomplished artists, including choreographer Kei Takei and her company Moving Earth Orient Sphere who will present the New York premiere of LIGHT, Part 44 (Bamboo Forest) (??) and Solo from LIGHT, Part 8 (January 25-27); playwright and performance artist Robbie McCauley, who presents the New York premiere of Sugar (February 1-3); and choreographer, dancer and visual artist Dana Reitz, who will present her new world premiere work (February 8-10).

Voyage Theater Company and Crossroads Theatre Company will present The New York Premiere of Rohina Malik's THE MECCA TALES, directed by Kareem Fahmy (3/Fifths at 3LD; This Time with Rising Circle Theater Collective), at The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture (18 Bleecker Street at the corner of Elizabeth Street), tonight, October 20, through November 4.

Following a successful summer run of Aaron Posner's play Life Sucks, Company of Fools' 22nd season of theatre continues this fall with a production of BRIGHT HALF LIFE by playwright Tanya Barfield. Company of Fools' Interim Artistic Director, Ilana Becker, will direct the play, which runs Sept. 27-Oct. 14, 2017, at the Liberty Theatre in Hailey.

The Acting Company will honor playwright John Guare and film and theater producer/philanthropist Anne L. Bernstein - two individuals whose exemplary work aligns with the artistic and educational ideals of the widely acclaimed touring repertory company that promotes theater and arts education nationwide - at the Company's 2017 Winter Gala, on December 4.

Voyage Theater Company and Crossroads Theatre Company will present the New York Premiere of Rohina Malik's THE MECCA TALES, directed by Kareem Fahmy (3/Fifths at 3LD; This Time with Rising Circle Theater Collective), at The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture (18 Bleecker Street at the corner of Elizabeth Street), October 20-November 4.

Voyage Theater Company and Crossroads Theatre Company will present the New York Premiere of Rohina Malik's THE MECCA TALES, directed by Kareem Fahmy (3/Fifths at 3LD; This Time with Rising Circle Theater Collective), at The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture (18 Bleecker Street at the corner of Elizabeth Street), October 20-November 4.

Following a successful summer run of Aaron Posner's play Life Sucks, Company of Fools' 22nd season of theatre continues this fall with a production of BRIGHT HALF LIFE by playwright Tanya Barfield. Company of Fools' Interim Artistic Director, Ilana Becker, will direct the play, which runs Sept. 27-Oct. 14, 2017, at the Liberty Theatre in Hailey.

The Acting Company has announced its 2017-18 season, which exemplifies the venerable organization's commitment to cultivating a national audience for the theater with exceptional touring productions of classical and new works; developing the best young American actors by giving them an opportunity to practice their craft in a wide-ranging repertory; and educating students that have limited access to the arts.

Chesney Snow (In Transit) calls THE UNWRITTEN LAW: REALITY SHOWING OF MY AMERICAN LIFE 'a choreopoem.' Like everything else in Snow's exquisitely wrought and riveting autobiographical work, his invocation of the term coined by Notzoke Shange in 1975 to describe For colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When The Rainbow Is Enuf is deliberate. In just 65 minutes, Snow compresses one-hundred years of family history and anchors this into a larger historical narrative. Not a single word is superfluous or out of place; everything signifies. Yet for all this tragedy, THE UNWRITTEN LAW isn't a downer. One feels sadness and some anger but by the show's conclusion, the dominant feeling is simply awe--awe at the courage and beauty both of the show as a whole and of Snow himself. Snow, literally, wrote his way out of the despair. The phenomenal dancing of Rebecca Arends and Maleek Washington are essential to the show's effect, as is the haunting union of A.J Khaw's piano and Varuni Tiruchelva's cello. The pure pleasure of the language, the dancing, and the music add up to 65 minutes of the most breathtaking theater I've ever witnessed.