The Culture Project News

The American Theatre Wing and The Village Voice announce that Tony Award-nominated and three-time Obie-winning actress Kathleen Chalfant will receive a special Obie Award for Lifetime Achievement at the 63rd Annual Obie Awards.

Bay Street Theater and Sag Harbor Center for the Arts is pleased to announce the full cast and creative team for the World Premiere of FELLOW TRAVELERS, a new play by Jack Canfora, directed by Michael Wilson. The production will run as the first show in Bay Street Theater's 2018 Mainstage Season, from May 29 - June 17, 2018. Single tickets are on sale now, and tickets are also still available as part of a Mainstage Subscription. To purchase tickets and subscriptions, call the Box Office at 631-725-9500 or purchase online at www.baystreet.org.

Since 2004, director Mallory Catlett has worked across disciplines to expand the boundaries of theater. Through original works with her own company, Restless NYC, and collaborations with some of today's leading artists-composer Mika Karlsson (The Echo Drift), Dread Scott (Decision), Aaron Landsman (City Council Meeting & Perfect City)-Catlett creates theater that The New York Times calls "lurid, feverish and powerful." She has been called a "downtown treasure" by Time Out New York.

Vietgone by Qui Nguyen is the Vietnamese-American playwright's own creation story-a telling of his parents' 1975 refugee camp romance in a "geek theater" spectacle that's at turns affecting, sage, raucous, and fantastical. A screenwriter for Marvel Studios and founder of Obie Award-winning company Vampire Cowboys, Nguyen's work champions representation and diversity on stage while dripping with pop culture nods, contemporary music, and action-adventure narrative. The production pairs this Studio-commissioned playwright with director and Studio Cabinet member Natsu Onoda Power. Drawing on Vietgone's comic book aesthetics, Studio's Stage 4 is transformed into a garage concert with a live band and original funk-rock-punk-n-roll score, giving audiences a front row seat to this anything-but-typical story of boy meets girl.

Kitchen Theatre Company continues its 2017-2018 Season with the world premiere of Brawler by Walt McGough, a play about pro sports and what it means to be a hero, produced in collaboration with Boston Playwrights' Theatre. Performances of Brawler begin at the Kitchen Theatre Company in The Percy Browning Performance Space on April 8 and run through April 22.

PlayPenn, the new play development organization which assisted in the development of the Tony Award-winning international hit OSLO by J.T. Rogers, has announced their 2018 New Play Development Conference plays and writers. The conference, which takes place July 10 through July 29, 2018 in Philadelphia, includes workshops and readings of six plays, at least two additional readings of works-in-progress, and forums for artists and theatre lovers.

Stage and screen star Cynthia Nixon has finally broken the silence about her political ambitions. She just announced via Twitter that she'll run for Governor of New York this year.

WP Theater and The Bushwick Starr, in association with New Georges, are pleased to announce that due to popular demand, [PORTO], the upside-down romantic comedy written by Obie Award Winner Kate Benson (Super Magic Wild Forest, Desert) and directed by Obie Award winner Lee Sunday Evans (Bull in a China Shop, Caught), will extend. Previously scheduled through February 25,[PORTO] will now play its final performance on Sunday, March 4, 2018 at WP Theater (2162 Broadway).

Reacting to Wendy Davis' 2013 anti-abortion in the Texas Legislature, playwright C. Denby Swanson, author of 'The Norwegians,' resolved to write a play about a woman's right to choose and the effect of this wedge issue on female friendship or 'sisterhood.' The result was a darkly comedic drama, 'Gabriel: A Polemic,' in which four tightly-bonded women, confounded by issues of abortion and free will, are divided unexpectedly by a crisis of faith at their weekly dinner. The Drilling Company, which developed the play in a series of readings and workshops since 2014, will mount its world premiere March 9 to 26 at North of History, a new performance/gallery space founded by Gene Kaufman that is located at 445 Columbus Ave. (between 81st and 82nd Streets). Hamilton Clancy directs.

Commonwealth Shakespeare Company (CSC) announces the first staged production of its 2017-18 Winter/Spring Season, Ariel Dorfman's shattering drama Death and the Maiden, directed by Founding Artistic Director Steven Maler at the Sandra L. Sorenson Black Box, Sorenson Center, Babson College, 231 Forest Street in Wellesley, MA.

Choreographer, playwright, and dancer Jinah Parker's momentous and timely work SHE will run March 31 - May 19 at the Gym at Judson in Manhattan. This moving work of dance-theater-"a Choreoplay"-opens up all-too-necessary conversations about sexual trauma, systemic racism, women's healing and ownership of their bodies, and the undoing of rape culture.

The winner of the 2016 Tony Award for Best Play, Stephen Karam's The Humans, begins performances on January 24 in Northwest Arkansas. In its 2016 Broadway production, the play was a breakout critical and popular success, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and called the best play of the year by nearly a dozen top publications ranging from The New York Times to the Washington Post. Performances are scheduled January 24-February 18, and tickets are on sale now from $17-$48 at (479) 443-5600 or theatre2.org.

Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA; Jeffrey Horowitz, Founding Artistic Director) announces a free post-performance discussion moderated by Pulitzer Prize-winning theatre critic and Negroland: A Memoir author Margo Jefferson in connection with TFANA's world premiere production of Adrienne Kennedy's He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box. The talk, which begins at 8.30 PM is open to all and features director Charlotte Braithwaite and playwrights Lydia Diamond and Jackie Sibblies Drury, follows the January 20 performance of Kennedy's first new play in a decade, which begins at 7:30 that evening, at Polonsky Shakespeare Center (262 Ashland Place, Brooklyn, NY 11217). The discussion will also be streamed live on Theatre for a New Audience's Facebook page. He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box runs January 18-February 11. To reserve a seat to this panel, visit www.tfana.org/heartpanel.

Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA; Jeffrey Horowitz, Founding Artistic Director) announces a free post-performance discussion moderated by Pulitzer Prize-winning theatre critic and Negroland: A Memoir author Margo Jefferson in connection with TFANA's world premiere production of Adrienne Kennedy's He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box. The talk, which begins at 8.30 PM is open to all and features director Charlotte Braithwaite and playwrights Lydia Diamond and Jackie Sibblies Drury, follows the January 20 performance of Kennedy's first new play in a decade, which begins at 7:30 that evening, at Polonsky Shakespeare Center (262 Ashland Place, Brooklyn, NY 11217). The discussion will also be streamed live on Theatre for a New Audience's Facebook page. He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box runs January 18-February 11. To reserve a seat to this panel, visit www.tfana.org/heartpanel.

The winner of the 2016 Tony Award for Best Play, Stephen Karam's The Humans, begins performances on January 24 in Northwest Arkansas. In its 2016 Broadway production, the play was a breakout critical and popular success, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and called the best play of the year by nearly a dozen top publications ranging from The New York Times to the Washington Post. Performances are scheduled January 24-February 18, and tickets are on sale now from $17-$48 at (479) 443-5600 or theatre2.org.

Mile Square Theatre, Hudson County's leading professional theatre, kicks off its 2018 season with Alfred Uhry's powerful masterpiece Driving Miss Daisy. Set in the South between the late 40's and early 70's, the play explores an unlikely friendship between an elderly white Southern Jewish woman, Daisy Werthan, and her African-American chauffer, Hoke Colburn.

Commonwealth Shakespeare Company (CSC) announces the first staged production of its 2017-18 Winter/Spring Season, Ariel Dorfman's shattering drama Death and the Maiden, directed by Founding Artistic Director Steven Maler at the Sandra L. Sorenson Black Box, Sorenson Center, Babson College, 231 Forest Street in Wellesley, MA.

On his continuing journey through the works of Stephen Sondheim, director Spiro Veloudos brings us Sondheim's latest work,Road Show, the true boom-and-bust story of two of the most colorful and outrageous fortune-seekers in American history. From the Alaskan Gold Rush to the Florida real estate boom in the 1930s, entrepreneur Addison Mizner and his fast-talking brother Wilson were proof positive that the road to the American Dream is often a seductive, treacherous tightrope walk.

New York Theatre Workshop has announced the full cast and creative team for the World Premiere of AN ORDINARY MUSLIM, by NYTW Usual Suspect and 2017-18 Tow Foundation Playwright-in-Residence Hammaad Chaudry (Salaam, Mr. Bush), directed by NYTW Usual Suspect and Obie Award winner Jo Bonney (The Body of An American).

Mile Square Theatre, Hudson County's leading professional theatre, closes its 2017 season with a rollicking send up of Alfred Hitchcock's classic thriller, The 39 Steps. Just in time for the holidays, Patrick Barlow's adaptation is a fast-paced comic romp that turns the classic Hitchcock's masterpiece into an evening of pure comic joy that will be a welcome treat for audiences of all ages.