The Sundance Institute News

The Sundance Institute today announced that the FUSION-produced feature documentary Science Fair has won the first-ever Festival Favorite Award, selected by audience votes from the 123 feature films screened at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.

At its January meeting, the Board of Trustees of Milwaukee Repertory Theater unanimously elected Wisconsinite Ayad Akhtar, winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, to its Board of Trustees. Joining Akhtar as part of the incoming class is Bladen Burns, SVP and Partner at Fiduciary Management, and Deborah Tomczyk, Partner and Chair of the Real Estate Practice Group at Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren. The appointments are effective immediately and each will serve a three-year term.

Sundance Institute, in a new collaboration with Netflix, today announced the recipients of the inaugural Sundance Institute Open Borders Fellowship presented by Netflix. The Institute's Feature Film and Documentary Film programs worked in collaboration to select three of the most exciting emerging filmmakers, working in both narrative and nonfiction forms. 

Manhattan Theatre Club (Lynne Meadow, Artistic Director; Barry Grove, Executive Producer) is pleased to announce the lineup for this spring'sTed Snowdon Reading Series.

On Sunday, March 11 at 3:00 p.m. in Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage, Carnegie Hall will showcase original music inspired by the 1960s and rooted in the issues and challenges of today as part of A Time Like This: Music for Change, a special concert that marks the culmination of a citywide creative learning project that has engaged people across New York City. Hosted by Def Jam Poetry veteran Lemon Andersen, the concert will feature Broadway's Carrie Compere (The Color Purple), jazz vocalist Sarah Elizabeth Charles, singer/songwriter Emily Eagen, Haitian songstress Emeline Michel, and a nineteen-piece band led by Kenny Seymour, a composer and music director for film and theater (Amazing Grace, Memphis). Youth and adults will also take the stage to share their own music, including the Wadleigh High School Choir, directed by Kim Walton, and the Future Music Project Ensemble, a collective of young musicians from across New York City. Additional special guests will be announced.

Howl! Happening is pleased to present a rare look into the heart and art of a consummate creator: John Kelly's Sideways into the Shadows. Resonating and in conversation with Kelly's major new performance work Time No Line at La MaMa (February 22 March 11, 2018), Sideways into the Shadows is a journey through Kelly's creative life that exposes both the unfolding of his artistic process and the generational rupture and emotional cost of the AIDS pandemic.

Mosaic Theater Company of DCtakes its acclaimedVoices From a Changing Middle East Festival on tour this winter, bringing several of its seminal Festival productions (I SHALL NOT HATE, VIA DOLOROSA, and the recent film adaptation of WRESTLING JERUSALEM) to the University of Oklahoma, Grinnell College, and Eastern Mennonite University for presentations of each project, and culminating in a special evening at the University of Chicago's Logan Center for the Arts where excerpts from all three works will be shared in a single evening. The tour reflects different dimensions of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the efforts to achieve reckoning and reconciliation through live performance and discussion, in works performed in English, Arabic, and Hebrew (with translated surtitles).

The Metropolitan Opera and The Juilliard School present an 'Evening of Verdi' in their seventh collaboration on Friday, February 23, 2018, at 8pm in Juilliard's Peter Jay Sharp Theater. Evan Rogister, an alumnus of Juilliard and guest conductor at the Met this season, conducts scenes from Verdi's operas with singers from the Met Opera's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program and the Juilliard Orchestra. Stephen Wadsworth provides concert stage direction for excerpts from I Lombardi alla prima crociata, Stiffelio, Falstaff, and Rigoletto.

Intellectual debate and food for thought: Odyssey Theatre Ensemble presents Mark St. Germain's off-Broadway hit, Freud's Last Session. Emmy Award-winner Robert Mandel directs for a January 13 opening, with performances continuing through March 4 at the Odyssey Theatre in West L.A.

Intellectual debate and food for thought: Odyssey Theatre Ensemble presents Mark St. Germain's off-Broadway hit, Freud's Last Session. Emmy Award-winner Robert Mandel directs for a January 13 opening, with performances continuing through March 4 at the Odyssey Theatre in West L.A.

The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts is the place to be for schools and students celebrating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Growing its annual celebration from one matinee event to four, the Kimmel Center is expanding its offerings for local Philadelphia school students, incorporating song, dance, spoken word, and video into a repertoire intended to educate and inspire those attending.

Tony Award nominated artist and Top Girls director Liesl Tommy and Huntington Trustee Neal Balkowitsch will be honored with the Wimberly Award at the 2018 Spotlight Spectacular on Monday, May 7, 2018 at the Cyclorama at the Boston Center for the Arts.

59E59 Theaters (Val Day, Artistic Director; Brian Beirne, Managing Director) welcomes the return of St. Louis Actors' Studio with the LaBUTE NEW THEATER FESTIVAL, featuring the NYC premiere of one-act plays written by Neil LaBute, James Haigney, and Carter W. Lewis, and directed by John Pierson. The LaBUTE NEW THEATER FESTIVAL begins performances on Thursday, January 11 for a limited engagement through Sunday, February 4. Press Opening is Sunday, January 14 at 7:30 PM.

Intellectual debate and food for thought: Odyssey Theatre Ensemble presents Mark St. Germain's off-Broadway hit, Freud's Last Session. Emmy Award-winner Robert Mandel directs for a January 13 opening, with performances continuing through March 4 at the Odyssey Theatre in West L.A.

Ensemble Studio Theatre (EST) has announced three World Premiere productions for the EST 2018 season.

Leviathan Lab (Artistic Director, Flordelino Lagundino) announces a public reading of INTO THE NUMBERS by Christopher Chen today, December 13th at 6:30pm at the Museum of Chinese in America. The reading commemorates the 80th anniversary of The Nanking Massacre and is co-produced by Leviathan Lab and Museum of Chinese in America. INTO THE NUMBERS is directed by Mo Zou.

Deadline reports that Grand Central Publishing has acquired Sally Field's upcoming memoir, In Pieces.

MCC Theater today announced that Tony Award winner and MCC alum Jayne Houdyshell (The Humans; A Doll's House, Part 2; Coraline at MCC Theater) will star in the World Premiere production of Relevance, written by JC Lee ('How to Get Away With Murder,' 'Looking') with direction by Tony Award nominee Liesl Tommy (Eclipsed).

Four projects representing diverse world voices, each with bold and independent visions of how art can elevate the human experience, comprise this year's selected projects for the two-week Sundance Institute Theatre Lab at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), convening December 3-17, 2017, with a public performance of another project slated for December 9. The Theatre Labs process is rigorous and generative. Dedicated to the creation and development of forward-thinking theater; projects are cast individually, rehearsed daily and benefit from concentrated, uninterrupted time and resources.

Leviathan Lab (Artistic Director, Flordelino Lagundino) announces a public reading of INTO THE NUMBERS by Christopher Chen on Wednesday, December 13th at 6:30pm at the Museum of Chinese in America. The reading commemorates the 80th anniversary of The Nanking Massacre and is co-produced by Leviathan Lab and Museum of Chinese in America. INTO THE NUMBERS is directed by Mo Zou.