The Sundance Institute News

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.

Sundance Institute announces the six projects selected for the annual New Frontier Story Lab, which supports independent artists working at the cutting-edge convergence of film, art, media, live performance and technology.

The Juilliard School today announced that alumnus Wynton Marsalis, trumpeter, director of Juilliard Jazz Studies, and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, will address the graduates at the school's 113th commencement ceremony, which takes place Friday, May 18, 2018, at 11am in Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center. Mr. Marsalis received an honorary doctor of music degree from Juilliard in 2006. This will be the final commencement for Juilliard President Joseph W. Polisi, who has had a long association with Mr. Marsalis and asked that he be the commencement speaker. In July, Damian Woetzel will begin as the school's seventh president.

En Garde Arts presents Asiimwe Deborah Kawe and Sean Christopher Lewis's Red Hills, returning the company to its trailblazing site-specific origins with a work that speaks "precisely to its time" (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette). This haunting two-person play follows an American and a Rwandan who, as teens during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, shared a chance encounter that changed them forever. En Garde, with director Katie Pearl, has adapted Red Hills to a New York-specific space: an empty floor in a downtown office building one block from Wall Street, where it will run from June 6-July 1.

For its 35th season Undermain celebrates its past, its future, and its present with two world premieres, a rarely seen world classic, and a celebratory reboot of a recent gem from the Undermain repertoire. The two world premieres bridge new American work from an eminent playwright to an important, emerging playwright, the classic presents a Dallas premiere by 'the father of realism,' the Undermain in rep series contemplates the Undermain's recent achievements, and our second Whither Goest Thou America: A Festival of New American Play Readings looks to the future.

Sundance Institute announces the slate of theatremakers from the U.S. and Middle East / North Africa who will convene at the Theatre Program's second annual Theatre Lab in Morocco next month. The Lab, which will take place from May 6 - 27 at the Fellah Hotel outside Marrakech, comprises three uninterrupted weeks of consultation, mentorship and workshop performance of new work for the stage. The Theatre Lab alternates locations each season, moving between the 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. Led by Sundance Institute Theatre Program Director Philip Himberg and Producing Director Christopher Hibma, teams of creative advisors, actors and dramaturgs will collaborate with writers and directors, independent from commercial or public pressures, as they develop their projects.

Sundance Institute announces the slate of theatremakers from the U.S. and Middle East / North Africa who will convene at the Theatre Program's second annual Theatre Lab in Morocco next month. The Lab, which will take place from May 6 - 27 at the Fellah Hotel outside Marrakech, comprises three uninterrupted weeks of consultation, mentorship and workshop performance of new work for the stage. The Theatre Lab alternates locations each season, moving between the 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. Led by Sundance Institute Theatre Program Director Philip Himberg and Producing Director Christopher Hibma, teams of creative advisors, actors and dramaturgs will collaborate with writers and directors, independent from commercial or public pressures, as they develop their projects.  

The MITTEN Lab (A Michigan Incubator for Theatre Talent Emerging Now), led by co-founders Katherine M. Carter and Rachel Sussman, is now accepting submissions for the 2018 MITTEN Lab residency, taking place from September 9 - 16, 2018 in Bear Lake, MI and culminating in a presentation featuring Interlochen Arts Academy students and Parallel 45 Theatre company members.

The sixth show of Mosaic Theater Company of DC's Third Season, Paper Dolls, has been officially extended through April 29. Written by Philip Himberg (the Artistic Director of the Sundance Institute Theatre Program) and directed by Broadway director Mark Brokaw, this vibrant and thought-provoking play with songs illuminates the world of five gay male Filipino nurses in Tel Aviv who care for elderly Orthodox and Chasidic men six days a week-and headline a drag show on their day off!

Award-winning singer-songwriter Shaina Taub will independently release her second full-length studio solo album, Die Happy on Tuesday, May 1, 2018, it was announced today. The album will debut digitally exclusively on Bandcamp in May and will be released widely on all digital platforms later this year. Die Happy is the follow-up to Taub's debut album Visitors, released in 2015. 

Rainbow Theatre Project will close out the 2017 / 18 season with a production of Kevin Michael West's Top and Bottom. A gay comedy that was a hit at the NY Fringe Festival, Top and Bottom will run from April 5 - 29, 2018 at the District of Columbia Arts Center.

Esther and Schmuli are shy young Orthodox Jews embarking on an arranged marriage, despite barely knowing each other. Abe and Julia are high-profile celebrities embarking on a dangerously flirtatious correspondence, despite being married to other people. On the surface, the lives of these two couples couldn't be more different. But Anna Ziegler's funny, insightful, and mysterious new drama explores the hidden connections between seemingly disparate people, drawing audiences into an intriguing puzzle and a deeply sympathetic look at modern love.

ENSEMBLE STUDIO THEATRE (EST) (William Carden, Artistic Director, Sarah McLellan, Executive Director) and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (Doron Weber, Vice-President, Programs) announced today the full cast and creative team for the World Premiere of BUMP, written by Chiara Atik (Five Times in One Night) and directed by Claudia Weill(Girlfriends). Part of the EST/Sloan Science & Technology Project (Graeme Gillis, Program Director; Linsay Firman, Associate Director), BUMP begins previews at EST's Curt Dempster Theatre (549 W. 52nd Street, New York, NY 10019) on May 9, 2018, with an opening night set for May 17, for a limited run through June 4, 2018.

The Old Globe's 2017-2018 Season continues with today's announcement of the complete cast and creative team for the Globe-commissioned world premiere of Anna Ziegler's new American play The Wanderers, directed by Barry Edelstein, the Globe's Erna Finci Viterbi Artistic Director. The Wanderers will run April 6 - May 6, 2018 in the Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre, part of the Globe's Conrad Prebys Theatre Center. Tickets start at $30.00 and are on sale to the general public now. Previews run April 6-12. Opening night is Friday, April 13 at 8:00 p.m.

Pasadena Playhouse, the State Theater of California, announces a new Hitchcock-style drama Belleville by Pulitzer Prize finalist and Obie Award winner Amy Herzog.  Performances run from Wednesday, April 18 to Sunday, May 13; the press opening is April 22. 

Columbia University and Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith are pleased to announce that Junk by Ayad Akhtar is the 2018 winner of the Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History.

The sixth production of Mosaic Theater Company's third season will be Paper Dolls, written by Philip Himberg (Producing Artistic Director of the Sundance Institute Theatre Program) and directed by Broadway veteran Mark Brokaw. This uplifting, entertaining, and thought-provoking play with songs illuminates the world of five gay male Filipino nurses in Tel Aviv who care for elderly Orthodox and Chasidic men six days a week-and headline a drag show on their day off!

Morphing identity, bending gender, mapping space through gesture and singing the song of suffering so exquisite that its high notes touch the exultant limits of transcendence, for over three decades it is fair to say that Kelly has been a foundational figure of the downtown stage. Now, John allows us to see his concurrent practice as a visual artist-more modest and ancillary to his career in hybrid theatrics-but just as central to his aesthetic core, quieter and suffused with a fragile melancholia, and just as revelatory.

Seven theatre artists have gathered for the nineteenth annual Sundance Institute Playwrights & Composers Retreat at Ucross Foundation in Wyoming, currently underway from February 5 to February 23, 2018. Designed to support theatrical writing in its earliest stages, the residency is dedicated to uninhibited creativity, peer mentorship and professional growth.