During the month of March, when women are celebrated and honored all around the world, Irondale hosts the On Women Festival, giving female-identifying artists the platform to celebrate their own experiences. Created in 2018, each iteration of this festival has been different and unique, just like the creators and the shows that are part of it. For next year’s festival, we have the challenge of re-imagining how to offer good theatrical experiences to our audiences, that are relevant to today’s world, and that are safe for everyone involved. And we must do things differently as well, to make sure we’re uplifting and empowering the voices of marginalized artists.
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OOTB’s Building the Box Series is designed for playwrights to hear their work in the early stages of development. We are accepting submissions from playwrights to participate in a new works festival set for October 2021 with exact dates TBA; 6 will be chosen and stipend will be provided.
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Acting Naturally is seeking One Act Play submissions for A Night of One Acts
Playwrights, ages teen through adult are encouraged to submit a maximum of two plays. Plays should be no longer than 20 minutes with four characters maximum and simple set requirements.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** THE THANKSGIVING PLAY & OTHERS ***
Just because a target’s too easy doesn’t mean it won’t make a satisfying meal.
Take turkeys, or the holiday they stand for. In Larissa FastHorse’s “The Thanksgiving Play,” which opened on Monday at Playwrights Horizons, the familiar, whitewashed story of Pilgrims and Native Americans chowing down together gets a delicious roasting from expert farceurs.
But Thanksgiving is not the only object of the satire, and to the extent the play sometimes seems to miss its mark, it’s because the mark keeps moving.
Clearly, Ms. FastHorse, a member of the Sicangu Lakota nation of South Dakota, is aiming for a takedown of American mythology — white American mythology, that is. The national narcissism, bordering on sociopathy, that could turn theft and genocide into a feel-good feast is her play’s point of entry.
Also in her sights: cursory diversity initiatives that despite their good intentions impede real progress, particularly in the theater.
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Stone Bank Elementary School in Oconomowoc has canceled its first grade Thanksgiving play "out of respect for Native Americans" and concerns about "the sensitivity of this time in our history."
"Unfortunately, the children are unable to dress as a Pilgrim or Native American," teachers wrote in an email to parents. "We apologize if you already purchased or made your child’s costume. There have been some conversations and concerns about the accuracy of the first Thanksgiving story. Out of respect for Native Americans, and the sensitivity of this time in our history, we are not going to reenact the first Thanksgiving story.
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The Indiana Repertory Theatre is touting The House That Jack Built as “the next great American play,” and it opened to a packed house for last weekend’s world premiere. The buzz around this latest work by IRT playwright-in-residence James Still is well-founded: It received the 2012 Todd McNerney National New Play Prize, and Still’s poetic depiction of a Thanksgiving get-together in Vermont is sharp, witty, and modern.
In the play, set in a large, inviting kitchen, we peer into the holiday gathering of two sisters, Lulu (Deirdre Lovejoy) and Jules (Jenny McKnight), and their significant others. But it’s their extravagant mother, Helen, played by IRT veteran Patricia Hodges, who steals the show.
The drama feels as though it could be about everyone and yet no one in particular, poignantly touching on the myriad situations and emotions many of us encounter during the holidays—the inside jokes siblings share of memories past, the wacky relative who entertains and embarrasses, the straggler trying to fit in, the sorrow of loss. It’s all masterfully executed on stage, and theatergoers at the premiere were visibly moved.
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A middle-class family seems to be spiraling toward perilous entropy in “The Humans,” the blisteringly funny, bruisingly sad and altogether wonderful play by Stephen Karam that opened on Sunday at the Laura Pels Theater, in a superlative Roundabout Theater Company production.
Written with a fresh-feeling blend of documentarylike naturalism and theatrical daring, and directed with consummate skill by Joe Mantello, Mr. Karam’s comedy-drama depicts the way we live now with a precision and compassion unmatched by any play I’ve seen in recent years. By “we” I mean us non-one-percenters, most of whom are peering around anxiously at the uncertain future and the unsteady world, even as we fight through each day trying to keep optimism afloat in our hearts.
The play turns on a staple of American drama: the family gathering. This can lead to canned laughter or trumped-up histrionics, but the Blakes, who assemble in Manhattan for Thanksgiving dinner, are drawn with such specificity and insight that we are instantly aware that we are in safe hands. (Mr. Karam’s “Sons of the Prophet,” seen on the same stage, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.)
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It’s Thanksgiving 1983 in Washington and the Pascal family are preparing for the holiday. Jackie-O is overly excited by the fact that her twin brother Marty is coming home for the occasion. When he arrives having driven through a hurricane, he brings with him Lesly, his fiancée and Jackie-O is apoplectic for The House Of Yes is a dark tale of incest, jealousy and a very dysfunctional family!
Written by Wendy MacLeod the play (which was filmed in 1997 starring Parker Posey) takes place over one night as the family’s traits and morality are peeled away like the layers of an onion. To start with there’s Jackie-O which isn’t her real name, but she’s obsessed by Jackie Onassis at the time when her then husband John F Kennedy was assassinated. Also, in the house is her Mother who spends the evening swanning around, possibly high on pills. Marty seems to be the only normal member of the family but his love for his sister is more than just brotherly love. The third sibling is Anthony who’s just plain weird and a bit of a pervert. Lesly who’s the only outsider soon comes to realise what she’s got herself into and it’s not good.
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For the longest time in "Home Front," the family drama starring Carroll O'Connor that opened last night at the Royale Theatre, nobody mentions Vietnam. The topic is verboten in the Collier household, even though the Colliers' 23-year-old son has returned from "over there," clearly traumatized by the experience, and has taken to sitting on the back porch and staring broodingly into space.
It is Thanksgiving Eve 1973 -- and then Thanksgiving Day -- in a comfy suburban bungalow in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Any talk of Vietnam would clearly mar the holiday and imperil the sense of togetherness that tradition demands. So the other family members -- the mother, a wound-up flibbertigibbet (Frances Sternhagen); the father, seemingly a pillar of good-natured patience (O'Connor); and the daughter, a pretty party girl verging on petulant (Linda Cook) -- all try to pretend the problem doesn't exist.
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HAPPY THANKSGIVING
by Tim Boland
Performed by the Quarantine Players
A full-length play set on Thanksgiving Day, 2016, two weeks after the highly divisive U.S. presidential election.
A Michigan-state (Blue state turned Red!) married couple, two conservative Republican parents, are holding their annual Thanksgiving dinner for their three adult children coming back to Jackson, Michigan (often branded as the birthplace of the Republican party): their first-born, a liberal firebrand Hillary-supporting daughter, along with their middle child, a gay Republican son, and the baby of the family, a Sandernista democratic socialist daughter.
Annual Thanksgiving family gatherings are normally fraught with enough anxiety for this diverse and politically-conscious family, but after the long and contentious presidential campaign of 2016, this post-election turkey get-together threatens to be a disaster in the making. One American family and their binds of marriage, parenthood, brother and sisterhood will all be tested as the family members are challenged to answer the ultimate question, which comes first, party, candidate, country or family?
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