*** 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presents the best unpublished full-length drama of the year with a cash prize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.
***
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...
***
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/
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