It is that time of year again. We have chosen our artwork for
the 2020 Playwrights and Artists Festival. We, as always, extend first look to
those who have submitted to our festival in years previous.
We understand that times right now are vastly different for
theatre productions. As of right now we are going ahead with this November’s festival.
We will keep you updated via our website if any changes occur.
We will also be offering our prizes for these categories.
$300 for Best of Festival.
$200 for Artistic Merit.
$100 for Audience Favorite.
The play must be inspired by one of the works of art...
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The Gallery Players in Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York, is
seeking plays for its 24th Annual Black Box New Play Festival to be held in
January 2021.
We are specificallv seeking plays from the BIPOC (Black,
Indigenous and People of Color) playwriting community.
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SEEKING 5-MINUTE COMEDIC PLAYS dealing with Quarantine and
COVID-19 for possible publication with Smith & Kraus, Inc.
Only comedies or upbeat pieces will be considered.
Must be previously unpublished. It does not need to have had any
type of reading or production.
Plays should have 2-4 characters. No more than 4...
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see
the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE ***
Lin-Manuel Miranda and Disney: Timeline of a Collaboration
Disney+ is streaming a live-capture film of “Hamilton.” It’s
just the latest chapter in a deepening relationship between the company and the
musical’s creator.
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s relationship with Disney started
inauspiciously. He wrote a song on spec for a holiday show. The company
rejected it.
“It was a holiday song, called ‘Holidays at Our House,’ and I
will never play it for you,” he recalled recently. “It was not very good.”
But in the years since, the partnership has blossomed, so much
that Miranda recently joked about the idea that Robert A. Iger, the company’s
executive chairman, might burst into his house if he talked too much about an
upcoming project.
More...
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Offered as a Bicentennial project, “Valley Forge” is an
adaptation of Maxwell Anderson's play. The emotional tone is common‐man
lyrical. In the winter of 1778, Gen. George Washington (Richard Basehart)
struggles to feed 4nd clothe a rag‐tail army, probably the “worst managed army
in the history of military operations.” On the Other side, living in luxury, Gen.
William Howe (Harry Andrews) is attempting to keep from Washington the news
that the French have decided to join forces with the Continental Army.
More...
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In the American Theatre, we have long been guided by the
principle that we can “change the world, one play at a time.” What if it was
also one day at a time with the same play? On Friday, Juneteenth, (June 19th),
theatre communities around the country will provide their response to the current
moment – the civil uprising that has come as a reaction to the murders of
George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and countless others before them –
with simultaneous free readings of Vincent Terrell Durham’s bold new play,
Polar Bears, Black Boys & Prairie Fringed Orchids. With a perfect blend of
wit, pathos and humor, the play speaks to some of the most pressing subjects of
our time – gentrification, white fragility, the Black Lives Matter movement,
and police violence against Black bodies. The need for collective action – a
commitment to speaking the truth and to begin dismantling systemic racism in
our institutions – has never been greater and through Vincent’s words, our
community can begin moving toward awareness and justice.
More...
***
A New World is an utterly fine work, visually and in many other
ways perfect. And the Globe is the right place to see it. A generally excellent
cast mingles with the audience, bouncing and dancing and carting bodies and
stocks past bemused but delighted tourists, while the moon rises overhead. The
music, the banter, the proclamations – Dominic Dromgoole's production has you
straight back in America and France of the 1790s, and you can practically smell
the dung and the fear.
More...
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The Ruckus at Machias, written by Richard Sewell and debuted in
1976, portrays local rather than national history. Centered on one of the first
naval battles of the Revolutionary War, The Ruckus at Machias follows both
“Tory and Rebel factions” as they navigate June 1775 and the effects of the
beginnings of the Revolution in rural Machias, Maine.[6] The action centers on
Hannah Weston, whose husband Josiah Weston goes against her wishes to fight the
Tories and capture British soldiers aboard a ship docked in harbor, the HMS
Margaretta. To help, she melts the pewter spoons from her wedding for
ammunition and treks twenty miles through the forest to bring them to Josiah.
As a thank you, “the community presents Hannah with a red dress – and presents
the Continental Congress with its first captured war-vessel.”[7] Its language,
setting, and action remain very true to the time, while more abstract, artistic
moments weave in and out, making for a balanced, interesting, and informative
piece.
More...
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Dearest Enemy — as the show in question was called — wasn't a
failure. It was what we'd call a moderate success. It opened Sept. 18, 1925
during a momentous ten days on Broadway: The Lunts in Shaw's Arms and the Man
on Monday, Kit Cornell in the scandalous Green Hat on Tuesday, No, No Nanette
and Noël Coward's The Vortex on Wednesday, Dearest Enemy on Friday, Rudolf
Friml's Vagabond King on Monday and Kern and Hammerstein's momentous Marilyn
Miller vehicle Sunny on Tuesday. It's not any wonder that Dearest Enemy got
lost in that crowd.
This was a Revolutionary War love story, based on a factual
occurrence in little old New York: On Sept. 15, 1776, a lady on Murray Hill —
Mrs. Murray, in fact — entertained General Howe and his troops long enough to
enable George Washington and his army, fleeing from their crushing loss in the
Battle of Brooklyn, to meet up with reinforcements. Despite its novel
provenance, the musical was a by-the-book affair, with Mrs. Murray's niece
falling for a British soldier (of course) but tricking him to save the
Republic. With songs.
More...
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A revival of the musical comedy “1776” will come to Broadway in
the spring of 2021, the Roundabout Theater Company said Monday.
The revival, directed by Diane Paulus, will begin next May at
the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass., where Ms. Paulus is the
artistic director. It will then be presented at several other theaters around
the country, including in July 2020 at the Center Theater Group in Los Angeles,
before arriving at Broadway’s American Airlines Theater. The musical will be a
coproduction of the A.R.T. and the Roundabout, both of which are nonprofits.
More...
