Wilma Theater News

Each year, as a part of the Jilline Ringle Solo Performance Program, 1812 Productions hosts residencies for three female solo artists, providing them with essential time and space to continue development of original solo works.  This year, 1812 Productions and the Advisory Board of the Jilline Ringle Solo Performance Program are pleased to award residencies to Folaranmi Afolayan, Pratima Agrawal, and Alexandra Tatarsky. The summer residencies will take place from Monday, July 9th through Sunday, July 15st.

Peak Performances kicks off its 2018-19 season with the world premiere of Hatuey: Memory of Fire, a rousing Afro-Cuban-Yiddish opera performed in English, Yiddish and Spanish, with music by Frank London, libretto by Elise Thoron, direction by Mary Birnbaum, and choreography by Maija Garcia.

The Comrades are excited to announce their third season, with all performances taking place at the Greenhouse Theater Center located at 2257 N Lincoln Avenue in Chicago, where they are a resident company.

One year after its sold-out world premiere, Opera Philadelphia seeks an encore engagement for We Shall Not Be Moved, “a rare work in the genre to be created by artists of color” (New York Times). When it first played to seven sold-out Wilma Theater audiences during O17, Opera Philadelphia's inaugural annual festival, the opera – a company commission from Daniel Bernard Roumain, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, and Bill T. Jones – was a hit with audiences and critics alike, being hailed as a “deeply moving” (Washington Post), “poignant and genre-bending” (Wall Street Journal), “highly polished piece of theater” (Philadelphia Inquirer). “One minute I was on the verge of tears,” said a local high-school student; “next minute I was on the edge of my seat.” As Opera News noted, with its “compelling score utilizing classical, jazz, music theater, hip-hop and dance music vocabulary,” We Shall Not Be Moved “succeeds on the level of art and not just polemic.”

The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage announced 45 grants today in support of the Philadelphia region's cultural organizations and artists. The 2018 awards total more than $8.7 million and provide funding for 12 Pew Fellowships and 33 Project grants.

Free For All, one of the capital's cherished annual traditions, will return this summer to Shakespeare Theatre Company (STC), offering two weeks of free performances of the Company's 2016 production of Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet. Directed by STC Associate Artistic Director Alan Paul, whose hit production of Camelot has extended through July 8 due to popular demand, the production will run at Sidney Harman Hall (610 F St NW) from August 21-September 2, providing more than 12,000 people the chance to see the play free of charge.

Itamar Moses has won the 2018 Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for THE BAND'S VISIT.

Itamar Moses has won the 2018 Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for THE BAND'S VISIT.

What kind of future will you have living in these here United States? Remember when you were eleven years old and you had a bike, one that made you dream about a world bigger than the one in which you live?

What kind of future will you have living in these here United States? Remember when you were eleven years old and you had a bike, one that made you dream about a world bigger than the one in which you live?

Philadelphia Theatre Company announces the director and full cast for the Pennsylvania premiere of Lynn Nottage's Sweat. This Pulitzer Prize for Drama winner explores Reading Pennsylvania's shrinking industrial economy and shares the fear, tragedy and hopefulness of a community being forced to accept inevitable change. The production will kick-off the first produced season under new Producing Artistic Director Paige Price. Justin Emeka directs a cast filled with local stars and Barrymore Award-winners who have earned extensive theatre, film and television credits. Sweat will run from October 12 to November 4, 2018 at Philadelphia Theatre Company's stage at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre, 480 S. Broad Street. Subscriptions and single tickets for the 2018-2019 season are already on sale and are available in person at the box office, online at philatheatreco.org or by phone at 215-985-0420.

The Play Company (PlayCo), led by Founding Producer Kate Loewald and Managing Director Robert G. Bradshaw, today announces the complete cast for Toshiki Okada's Time's Journey Through a Room, marking PlayCo's third collaboration with Okada, translator Aya Ogawa, and director Dan Rothenberg, May 10 - June 10, 2018. This haunting play, set in post-Fukushima Japan, will star three Japanese born performers, all of whom are now based in New York: Yuki Kawahisa (Honoka), Maho Honda (Arisa) and Kensaku Shinohara (Kazuki). The play is both an intimate examination of how we move forward from life-altering events, and a study of how we experience time, asking whether we can ever be alive to the present moment. 

Rob Ruggiero, Producing Artistic Director announced today that TheaterWorks  will present the Westport Country Playhouse's acclaimed production of THE INVISIBLE HAND by Ayad Akhtar, May 24 through June 23, 2018.  THE INVISIBLE HAND is the fourth show of TheaterWorks 32nd Season.

Lantern Theater Company concludes its record-smashing 2017/18 season with the regional premiere of Don't Dress for Dinner by French playwright Marc Camoletti. Lantern Resident Director Kathryn MacMillan will direct a cast that includes some of Philadelphia's finest comedic actors: Chris Anthony, Jessica Bedford, Marc LeVasseur, Lee Minora, Karen Peakes, and William Zielinski. Theater critics and members of the press are invited to request tickets for opening night on Wednesday, May 30 at 7 p.m. by contacting Anne Shuff at ashuff@lanterntheater.org. Performances run Thursday, May 24 through Sunday, June 24, 2018; a full schedule is included in the fact sheet below.

People's Light presents the wildly successful off-Broadway hit Skeleton Crew, a powerful story of love and loyalty by New Play Frontiers writer Dominique Morisseau. This funny, incisive, and "deeply American" (The New York Times) play that "theatergoers won't want to miss" (Huffington Post) centers on a group of Detroit autoworkers as they confront the eroding manufacturing industry. Steve H. Broadnax III, who directed the theatre's critically-acclaimed staging of The Mountaintop in 2016, returns for the production. Skeleton Crew opens on June 13 and has already extended to July 15 on the Steinbright Stage at People's Light.

Philadelphia's Bearded Ladies Cabaret returns to The Wilma Theater with You Can Never Go Down the Drain after their New York City run at La MaMa and Joe's Pub at the Public Theater. Mr. Rogers always said: no matter how bad things are, 'You can never go down the drain.' Using and abusing iconic songs from the children's show, John Jarboe, Artistic Director of Philadelphia's Bearded Ladies Cabaret, puts this idea to the test. For this performance, expect a goldfish funeral, gay romps into the land of make-believe, and some earnest questions about irony. You Can Never Go Down the Drain runs for ten performances between June 20th to July 1st at The Wilma Theater.

The U.S. Premiere of Toshiki Okada's Time's Journey Through a Room opens this Sunday, May 20, at the Mezzanine Theatre at the A.R.T./New York Theatres. Presented by The Play Company (PlayCo), led by Founding Producer Kate Loewald and Managing Director Robert G. Bradshaw, Time's Journey Through a Room is PlayCo's third collaboration with Okada, translator Aya Ogawa and director Dan Rothenberg. This haunting play, set in Japan after the Fukushima disaster, stars the Japanese-born, New York based performers Yuki Kawahisa (Honoka), Maho Honda (Arisa) and Kensaku Shinohara (Kazuki). The play is both an intimate examination of how we move forward from life-altering events, and a study of how we experience time, asking whether we can ever be alive to the present moment. 

Rob Ruggiero, Producing Artistic Director announced today that TheaterWorks  will present the Westport Country Playhouse's acclaimed production of THE INVISIBLE HAND by Ayad Akhtar, May 24 through June 23, 2018.  THE INVISIBLE HAND is the fourth show of TheaterWorks 32nd Season.

According to Philly.com, an audience member interrupted a performance of the play Passage at the Wilma Theater in Center City Thursday night. Jaylene Clark Owens, an actress in the production, was performing a scene that included a white actor (Ross Beschler) and Filipino actor (Justin Jain), when a man interrupted loudly, referencing Forrest Gump in a racially-charged comment.

A collective of perspectives. A public outcry. The establishment of a movement. This month, two new plays- Until the Flood by Dael Orlandersmith, directed by Neel Keller and florissant & canfield by Kristiana Rae Colon, directed by Derrick Sanders-bring a national dialogue to the stage.