Sundance Theatre News

Vineyard Theatre Artistic Directors Douglas Aibel and Sarah Stern have announced the upcoming 2018-2019 Season.

Goodman Theatre announces a line-up of free staged readings written by members of its Playwrights Unit-a year-long residency for Chicago-based writers to develop their plays-in-progress with the Goodman's artistic team, in partnership with Chicago Dramatists. Members of the 2017/2018 Playwrights Unit include Sam Collier, Ricardo Gamboa, Isaac Gomez, Kristin Idaszak and Nigel O'Hearn. Free, one-time-only readings take place July 14-18 at Goodman Theatre (170 N. Dearborn); to make a reservation call 312.443.3800 or visit GoodmanTheatre.org/PlaywrightsUnit. Availability is extremely limited.

Goodman Theatre announces a line-up of free staged readings written by members of its Playwrights Unit-a year-long residency for Chicago-based writers to develop their plays-in-progress with the Goodman's artistic team, in partnership with Chicago Dramatists.

Atlantic Theater Company (Neil Pepe, Artistic Director; Jeffory Lawson, Managing Director) will present Middle Eastern MixFest, a series of free readings co-curated by playwrights Mona Mansour and Heather Raffothat will run Wednesday, August 8th through Thursday, August 16th at Atlantic Stage 2 (330 West 16th Street).

Lovers of new theatre will gather this August for an advance look at tomorrow's hits at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley's 2018 New Works Festival at Palo Alto's Lucie Stern Theatre. This unique festival offers audiences an extraordinary opportunity to experience new plays and musicals in their early stages of development, and hear about the creative process in a "Meet the Artists" panel discussion. With multiple performances of each work, playwrights and composers are able to rewrite scenes, add or delete songs, revise and refine, allowing audiences to return and watch the exciting evolution of brand new pieces of American theatre.

The OBIE Award-winning NAATCO, National Asian American Theatre Company, kicks off their 28th season with Stephen Brown-Fried's new adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry VI.

Corkscrew Theater Festival presents Field, Awakening, written by Melis Aker and directed by Tatiana Pandiani. Running July 14-22, Field, Awakening is a political drama set in Turkey in 2016, where a group of high school friends reunites at a soccer field on the evening of an attempted military coup. As the night progresses, the friends unexpectedly find themselves at the center of international strife, and they begin to realize that the Turkey they called home may be rapidly disappearing. Performed by Kieron Anthony, Ayse Babahan, Jamar Brathwaite, Sinan Eczacibasi*, Fahim Hamid*, and Nazli Sarpkaya, Field, Awakening is the second production in the second annual season of Corkscrew Theater Festival, a new summer theater festival that provides early-career artists with a high level of production support.

"Packed with young talent…in the risk-taking venture that is summer festival-going, encountering talent you want to see more of is a worthy payoff." - Laura Collins-Hughes,The New York Times

Artistic Director Darko Tresnjak and Managing Director Michael Stotts have announced playwright Mfoniso Udofia as the 2018 Aetna New Voices Fellow at Hartford Stage.

The Core Writer program at the Playwrights' Center gives 25-30 of the most exciting playwrights from across the country the time and tools to develop new work for the stage. The Center is announcing new Core Writers Darren Canady, Erin Courtney, Marisela Treviño Orta, Stacey Rose, Ariel Stess and Ray Yamanouchi. In addition, the Playwrights' Center is pleased to welcome three new student playwrights to its Core Apprentice program for 2018-19: Lily Padilla, Drew Paryzer and Lauren Wimmer.

Boston Court Performing Arts Center presents the West Coast premiere of Her Portmanteau written by Mfoniso Udofia and directed by Gregg T. Daniel, May 24 - June 30, 2018 (press opening June 2).  The production stars Joyce Guy (Abasiama), Omoze Idehenre (Adiaha) and Dele Ogundrian (Iniabasi).

Karamu House, the oldest multicultural performing arts center in the country, closes it's 102nd consecutive season with the Tony Award-winning musical Passing Strange. Karamu House President and CEO, Tony F. Sias notes, 'this is a piece that is important and relevant, and speaks to and engages our millennial and 'genZ' generations.' With book and lyrics written by Tony Award-winning singer-songwriter Stew, and music composed by Stew and Heidi Rodewald, the production opened on May 10 and will run through June 3, 2018 in Karamu's Arena Theatre in Cleveland, Ohio.

The final production of Mosaic Theater Company of DC's third season will be the world premiere staging of The Vagrant Trilogy, written by Mona Mansour and directed by Mark Wing-Davey. The Vagrant Trilogy is comprised of three different one-act plays: The Hour of Feeling, The Vagrant, and Urge for Going. These three plays, combined for the first time in one epic performance, follows Palestinian scholar Adham and his family over multiple generations and in multiple continents.

Mile Square Theatre, Hudson County's leading professional theatre, presents its annual 10-minute play festival, 7th Inning Stretch: 7 10-minute plays about baseball.

A secret wedding ceremony between the daughter of an American missionary and a local teenage girl is disrupted by violence when a child soldier fleeing the atrocities of war stumbles into their remote Ugandan church.caryn desai [sic] directs the Los Angeles premiere of Cardboard Piano by Whiting Award-winning playwright Hansol Jung. Cardboard Piano opens May 4 atInternational City Theatre in the Long Beach Performing Arts Center, with two low-priced previews set for May 2 and May 3.

Goodman Theatre announces the cast and creative team for the Chicago premiere of Father Comes Home From the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3) by Pulitzer Prize winner Suzan-Lori Parks, directed by Niegel Smith. Parks, in her "finest work yet" (New York Times), serves up "an American story as much about our present as it is about our past" (Los Angeles Times). Filled with wit, poetry and original music composed by Grammy Award winner Justin Ellington and performed on stage nightly by Chicago native blues musician Melody Angel, the production follows Hero (Kamal Angelo Bolden), a Texas slave, who faces a simple yet monumental choice: join his master in the Confederate army to win his freedom-or remain enslaved at the plantation. Father Comes Home From the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3) appears May 25 - June 24, 2018 (opening night is June 4 at 7pm) in Goodman Theatre's 350-seat flexible Owen Theatre. The estimated run time is 2 hours and 30 minutes. Tickets ($10 - $40; subject to change) are available at GoodmanTheatre.org/Father , by phone at 312.443.3800 or at the box office (170 N. Dearborn). The Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation is the Major Production Sponsor and American Airlines is the Contributing Sponsor.

Rhinebeck Writers Retreat is presenting a private reading of the new musical, THE PROXY MARRIAGE, book and lyrics by Michele Lowe and music and lyrics by Adam Gwon, on May 7 in New York City, which includes actors Jason Tam (Jesus Christ Superstar Live on NBC, Broadway: A Chorus Line, If/Then), Whitney Bashor (The Bridges of Madison County), Anika Larsen (Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Avenue Q), and Daniel Jenkins (Mary Poppins, Billy Elliot, Big River). The reading is directed by Lonny Price (Sunset Boulevard starring Glenn Close) and music directed by Vadim Feichtner (Falsettos Broadway revival).

Sundance Institute's Theatre Lab kicks off on May 6th, and today announced this year's participating acting company and creative advisors. The Lab, which runs through May 27 at the Fellah Hotel outside Marrakech, Morocco, is supervised by Artistic Director Philip Himberg and Producing Director Christopher Hibma, and is the centerpiece of the Institute's year-round work with the theatre community, alternating locations between Sundance Resort in Utah and a venue in the Middle East/North African region, as part of a multi-year commitment to international work and a means of facilitating cultural exchange between artists writing in English and Arabic.

With excitement and gratitude, Seattle Repertory Theatre today announced that it was granted full funding from the prestigious Elizabeth George Foundation for support of commissions for the work of three writers - Joanna Garner, Lily Houghton, and C.A. Johnson. This grant funds developmental work that will begin this fall 2018 through Seattle Rep's The Other Season. The Foundation's incredible support enables artists at the very beginning stage of their careers to have their work recognized and cultivated by institutions across the nation like Seattle Rep in the hope that these theatres become the artistic homes for the work being created.

Theater Alliance closes Season 15 with the regional premiere of Gabrielle Reisman's Flood City, an absurdly dark comedy about the aftermath of tragedy.