TheaterWorks Hartford is thrilled to present the 2022 edition of its New Work Festival. This free festival, running May 16–22, explores and celebrates new voices in American Theater. With workshops, a panel discussion, and talk-backs—both in-person and online—the New Work Festival strengthens TheaterWorks Hartford’s commitment to the development of important new plays. Participants include playwrights Brooke Berman, Melissa Crespo & Sarah Saltwick, Terry Guest, and James Anthony Tyler who are joined by directors Shariffa Ali, Michael Barakiva, Mikael Burke, and Caitlin Sullivan. Reservations are required and can be made at www.twhartford.org.
Every theatre student is always told to read more plays, but oftentimes, it's difficult to find something that holds our attention or seems right for us. After examining this trend among my fellow college theatre students for some time, I started to cobble together a list of play recommendations specifically tailored towards something all of us are very interested in: our zodiac signs! Now, I (a Scorpio) have offered a play recommendation for each of the twelve signs based on what I think they need most, so find your sun sign, check out the description, and happy play reading!
Fault Line Theatre will continue the 2022 Season of Irons in the Fire, the organization’s reading series of new plays in development, with God Save the Queer by Zackary Grady, directed by Portia Krieger and featuring Michael Urie (George), Mallory Portnoy (Charlotte), Keshav Moodliar (Tariq), Seth Clayton (Louis), and Mary McCann (Kate).
Many parts of the campus are resuming in-person events, with an impressive variety of live entertainment, illuminating exhibits, cultural festivals, live music and comedy and seasonal, family-friendly fare. Here is our list of things to do virtually (V) and in person (IP) this month.
As theater begins a lengthy, gradual comeback from a shut down year, centering support for playwrights is key to ensuring that what’s on the horizon looks different than the standard production models that drove the industry’s recent past. In The Playwrights Realm’s 15th Anniversary Restart Season, in lieu of productions, the organization expands its existing programs and networks of support for playwrights, generating a vital sense of community that likewise catalyzes vital writing.
The Realm’s Play-A-Thon, returning March 15-25 following its success in 2020, creatively activates the potential of virtual gathering to bring people together in direct engagement with the work of some of today’s most captivating writers.
PlayCo has announced the first installment of plays in its 2020-2021 season, kicking off the company's 20th year with works that continue and complement its legacy of showcasing bold international and American playwrights whose works electrify with their immediacy and challenge with their complexity.
The Play Company today shared the series of Mini-Commissions they initiated in April, offering audiences digital access to exciting new works by artists creatively navigating the constraints of our times.
Arts journalist and editor Mark Blankenship announced the debut of The Flashpaper: Theatre's Thoughts on Right Now, a new journal dedicated to the urgent ideas of contemporary theater artists.
Artistic Director Hal Brooks has announced that the 2020 Season of the Cape Cod Theatre Project will feature staged readings of new work by Zora Howard, Michele Lowe, Edith Freni and Kevin Artigue.
The Play Company has announced #Playfrom6FeetAway Spring 2020 programming, a series of experimental new works and stimulating conversations that can be experienced together, even as we hunker down and shelter in place.
The Bret Adams and Paul Reisch Foundation has announced the recipients of their special COVID-19 response grants for playwrights, composers, lyricists and librettists who have had a full professional production cancelled, closed, or indefinitely postponed due to the COVID-19 closures.
The Play Company (PlayCo; Founding Producer Kate Loewald, Managing Director Robert Bradshaw) announced the cast and creative team for Sarah Einspanier's Lunch Bunch, directed by Tara Ahmadinejad.
The Playwrights Realm (Founding Artistic Director Katherine Kovner and Producing Director Roberta Pereira) will presents the 2020 INK'D Festival of New Plays, showcasing new works by this year's Realm Writing Fellows Tanya Everett, Maya Macdonald, Tasha Gordon-Solmon, and Christopher Reyes (February 24-27). The festival's plays offer vast tonal and stylistic variation while cohering around complex contemplations of structural issues. INK'D has proven to be an indispensable launching pad for the voices driving the future of playwriting. This year's powerful slate continues to introduce audiences to a diversity of fresh perspectives, thereby underscoring theater's potential to expand the possibilities of dramatic storytelling and engage with the world around it.
Producer Madeleine Foster Bersin has announced the cast and creative team for House Plant, by Sarah Einspanier (Lunch Bunch), and directed by Jaki Bradley (1969: The Second Man), as part of Next Door at NYTW. Previews begin at the Fourth Street Theatre (83 E 4th St) on Wednesday February 5, 2020, with opening night set for Friday February 7, for a limited run through Saturday February 22, 2020. Tickets are on sale now at nytw.org.
The Play Company (PlayCo; Founding Producer Kate Loewald, Managing Director Robert Bradshaw) and Clubbed Thumb present Sarah Einspanier's Lunch Bunch, directed by Tara Ahmadinejad. Lunch Bunch follows seven public defenders who embark on a frenzied quest for the perfect lunch-seeking meaning, belonging, and some semblance of order in daily culinary minutiae amidst the failures and injustices of larger social systems around them.
The Playwrights Realm today announces recipients of two career-propelling development programs the organizationa?"led by Founding Artistic Director Katherine Kovner and Producing Director Roberta Pereiraa?"offers to gifted, incisive, and diverse playwrights. Now entering its thirteenth season, The Realm has continually produced work by brave new voices and expanded its commitment to providing holistic support to playwrights striving to make a life in the arts.