Welcome

Welcome
John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC

Greetings NYCPlaywrights

 


 

*** FREE THEATER ONLINE ***

 

Sujit Vaidya

One of Vancouver’s leading exponents of the exquisitely beautiful South Indian dance style of bharata natyam, Sujit Vaidya also creates work which reflects a modern sensibility and questions arbitrary limitations set in the name of ‘tradition’. In this stimulating presentation, Sujit will perform short solo works, and discuss how he and other artists are increasingly challenging the traditional hierarchies, politics and stereotypes surrounding bharata natyam.

 

https://thedancecentre.ca/event/sujit-vaidya/

 

***

Downstage is pleased to offer the Turtle Island premiere of ARTICLE 11’s Deer Woman. Streaming daily from October 4 to October 18 at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. MST.

Lila, one missing girl’s big sister, refuses to stand idly by. She’s ex-army and the daughter of a hunter who taught her all he knew. When circumstances converge, Lila finds the perfect opportunity to avenge her baby sister’s murder while exercising the skills taught by the Canadian government.

 

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/deer-woman-tickets-121873606237

 

 

*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***

 

The Woodward/Newman Drama Award is an exclusive honor offered by Bloomington Playwrights Project, remembering the many great dramas Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman performed in together. It presents the best unpublished full-length drama of the year with a cash prize of $3,000 and a full production as part of the BPP’s Mainstage season, along with travel reimbursement. 

 

***

 

V INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR YOUNG THEATER WORKS - The Contest aims to encourage writers in the creation of bold and powerful plays for young people. The spirit of this competition is the participation of playwrights in terms of equality, regardless of nationality, age, gender or language. 

 

***

 

American Stage is committed to producing powerful and relevant professional live theatre. Our 21st Century Voices is an initiative dedicated to developing and presenting new works for the stage that speak to a contemporary audience in fresh and compelling ways. 21st Century Voices programming includes an annual staged reading festival, workshopping of new scripts, playwriting residencies and fully produced new plays receiving one of their first three professional productions at American Stage.

 

 

*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***

 

 

 

*** INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DAY *** 

 

MY RED HAND, MY BLACK HAND (An Audio Play)

 

October 15, 2020 – November 8, 2020 

(Preview performance on October 12- Indigenous Peoples’ Day)

 

Café Negro Arts Series

Co-production with Cara Mia Theater Company

Written by Dael Orlandersmith

Directed by Guinea Bennett-Price 

 

The regional premiere of Dael Orlandersmith’s MY RED HAND, MY BLACK HAND marks the return of the Café/Negro Series with Cara Mia Theater Company! The play unfolds as a teenager describes the past, present and future of her parents' cultures. She tells us about the "Red" Tlingit and Lakota parentage of her father, who leaves the reservation to play the blues in Boston, and the "Black" rural Virginia background of her mother, who goes to Boston seeking the big-city life. Her parents meet at a dance and fall in love, but not without the complications of prejudice from their families.

 

https://www.soulrep.org/season-2

 

***

 

It was November 1967. Centennial celebrations had reached fever pitch, 20 million Canadians giddily revelling in a slick, carefully orchestrated outpouring of national euphoria. In Vancouver, a smart, ferociously independent regional theatre company, The Playhouse, had chosen to mark the occasion with the debut of a decidedly less than rapturous flag-waving two-act drama by Athabaskan-born novelist and playwright George Ryga. The Ecstasy of Rita Joe, exploded onto the stage, a brutally frank depiction of enduring racism, its cast of Indigenous protagonists the victims of abuse, institutionalized indifference and violence. Audiences were stunned.

 

Half a century later, shocked and shattered, we are still unable to look away. Nothing Ryga so bitingly chronicled has fundamentally changed, earnest social and political promises to the contrary.

 

More...

https://operagoto.com/ecstasy-rita-joe-review/

 

***

 

Spiderwoman Theater broke new ground in using storytelling and storyweaving as the basis for the creation of their theatrical pieces. The performers wrote and performed personal and traditional stories and with Muriel as the “outside eye”, they were organically layered with movement, text, sound, music, and visual images.

In the early 80’s, Indigenous communities in New York and nationally and internationally identified the women of Spiderwoman Theater as a powerful voice for their concerns and so the company emerged as a leading force for Indigenous women, artists and cultural artisans.

 

More...

https://www.spiderwomantheater.org/blank-mpvle

 

***

 

In 1974, the late James Buller founded Native Theatre School with the belief that with a viable Aboriginal school, Aboriginal actors, playwrights and directors would have a respectful and supportive home for the community’s creative explorations and exchanges. Buller’s hope was that the four-week program would grow Aboriginal voices and the Aboriginal theatre community. James Buller’s dream is alive and well and bigger than he could possibly have imagined. Today, the Centre for Indigenous Theatre offers full-time three and four-year programs embracing the spirit, energy and inspiration derived from the culture, values and traditions of Indigenous people.

 

More...

https://www.indigenoustheatre.com/about/

 

***

 

Seattle Rep presents (Re)Imagine Indigenous Theater livestreaming on the global, commons-based, peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Thursday 19 November 2020 at 5 p.m. PDT (Seattle, UTC-7) / 6 p.m. MDT (Denver, UTC-6) / 7 p.m. CDT (Chicago, UTC-5) / 8 p.m. EDT (New York, UTC-4).

 

(Re)Imagine Theater is a panel series that brings artists and community leaders together to envision a new theatrical world. Without constraints, what do we want theater to look like? We will highlight individuals and organizations who are working toward positive change, and discuss how artists and community can work together to craft our vision for the future of theater. But before any of that work can be done, we must know what we are working towards. We must be able to imagine the future to make it, and we hope that these conversations will challenge and inspire Seattle Rep and theaters across the nation.

 

https://howlround.com/happenings/livestreaming-panel-reimagine-indigenous-theater-asl-interpreted-live-captioned

 

***

 

Lynn Riggs is all too often reduced to a footnote in the history of American theater, as the author of the play from which Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein fashioned the musical “Oklahoma!”

 

While it’s that the connection to one of the most groundbreaking and successful pieces of American musical theater that keep Riggs’ name before the public, it obscures the bulk of his life and career, during which Riggs — whose Cherokee heritage meant he was the only Native American playwright of significance in the first half of the 20th century — wrote numerous plays, as well as screenplays and poetry.

 

“More Sky: The Story of Lynn Riggs,” which had its world premiere Thursday, Sept. 17, at the Lynn Riggs Theater at the Dennis R. Neill Center for Equality, is an effort to bring Riggs’ life and life’s work to a wider audience.

 

More...

https://tulsaworld.com/entertainment/arts-and-theatre/more-sky-play-gives-oklahoma-writer-new-life/article_b5fb93c6-f909-11ea-ac68-ef97e3e1c73f.html

 

***

 

The MacArthur Foundation has announced its 2020 class of MacArthur Fellows, honoring the creativity and originality of 21 Americans. The fellowship, known colloquially as the “genius grant,” awards each fellow $625,000 over five years for professional pursuits. Playwright Larissa FastHorse is among the grantees, along with singer and composer Cécile McLorin Salvant, fine artist Ralph Lemon, and a host of other visual artists, scientists, legal scholars, and writers. The full list of awardees can be found here.

 

“Larissa FastHorse is a playwright and performing arts advocate illuminating Indigenous processes of artmaking and storytelling as well as Native American perspectives on contemporary life,” the MacArthur Foundation released in a statement.  “A member of the Sicangu Lakota Nation, FastHorse combines a keen sense of satire and facility with dramatic forms in plays that are funny, incisive, and, at times, deeply unsettling for audiences faced with the realities of Native Americans’ experience in the United States.”

 

More...

https://www.americantheatre.org/2020/10/06/larissa-fasthorse-named-macarthur-fellow/

 

--