Greetings NYCPlaywrights
*** FREE THEATER ONLINE ***
Disney Cruise Line’s ‘Frozen, A Musical Spectacular’ | #DisneyMagicMoments
Get ready for another fun family night hosted by Disney Cruise Line! This time we’re bringing the world of Arendelle into your homes with a virtual watch party of our Broadway-style stage production, “Frozen, A Musical Spectacular.”
*** HUNTER COLLEGE MFA ***
The Hunter College MFA Playwriting Program is accepting applications through January 15th! The program is a highly selective, rigorous, and affordable two-year playwriting program located in the heart of NYC. We seek writers eager to develop their craft and challenge assumptions about what theater is and will become.
Students study with award-winning writers, working theatre professionals, and esteemed guest artists. The program offers workshop opportunities and fosters a collaborative, close-knit artistic community. Teaching Assistantships and tuition waivers are available.
Current and recent faculty include: Clare Barron, Oliver Butler, Lisa D'Amour, Maria Striar, Lloyd Suh, and Anne Washburn. Visiting artists for 2020 include: Mia Chung, Will Davis, Michael R. Jackson, Jen Silverman, and Whitney White.
For more information, visit: https://www.huntertheatre.net/mfa
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
Appalachian State University’s Department of Theatre and Dance is looking for ten-minute plays in a zoom setting to be performed by the directing class of Spring 2021. We are looking to find new playwrights who are interested in having their works produced in an academic setting for a 3000-level undergraduate class.
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Triangle Rainbow Productions artistic director Anthony Joseph is currently accepting submissions from Playwrights for their first annual Gay Play Fest 2021. Because of our current situation the festival will live stream via zoom on February 27th & 28th. Each play will be scheduled for both dates at 3:00pm. Running order will be worked out before your tech rehearsal. All submissions must be no longer than 15 minutes running time and no less than 10 minutes. All plays must be LGBTQ themed, or have at least one gay character written in the script.
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Live & In Color is looking for playwrights, composers, and lyricists of color and/or other underrepresented communities interested in developing their new musical.
The work must be able to be performed with a multiethnic cast. The winning musical submission will have a two-week workshop this fall at The Bingham Camp in Salem, Connecticut culminating in a staged presentation to an invited audience.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** TRUMP THEATER ***
THE NOVEL AND PLAY THAT PREDICTED DONALD TRUMP’S RISE
...The stage version of IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE opened on October 27, 1936. Twenty-one productions across 17 states took place in cities as varied as Birmingham, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and Omaha.
It was adapted to appeal to diverse audiences. In Tampa, it was performed in Spanish. A Yiddish version was staged in New York City. And in Seattle, an African-American theater company produced a version. Nine national touring companies were formed in all.
In the end, over 500,000 people saw the production, which ran for five years. Few in the U.S. could have missed hearing about the play, and from coast to coast, the press debated the production. MGM had even started producing a film version, but canceled it in deference to the objections of Nazi Germany, which wielded influence over the studio.
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The writer who foresaw the Trump era
...(Nottage's) research had pointed her toward the schisms dividing modern America, showing how abruptly communities can fracture along fault lines of race and class. While writing the play she felt as though she had a hammer in her hand. “I was really angry that people were not awake, “ she says. “I wanted to, like, hit people and say, ‘Hello? Do you see what I see?’”
Shifting between 2000 and 2008, SWEAT explores how the shuttering of factories devastates a community. Set mostly in and around a nameless bar frequented by the workers at a steel-tubing manufacturing plant, it centres on Tracey, who is white, and Cynthia, who is black. “When I put on my jacket, I knew I’d accomplished something,” says Cynthia, who has worked at the plant for two decades, reminiscing about happier times. “I was set. And when I got my union card, you couldn’t tell me anything. Sometimes when I was shopping I would let it slip out of my wallet onto the counter just so folks could see it.”
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The theater of Trump: What Shakespeare can teach us about the Donald
To anyone bewildered by the eruptions of violence at the Trump rallies, “Julius Caesar” and “Coriolanus” reveal just how easy it is to transform anxious citizens into mobs. The personality of the demagogue isn’t a central concern in either tragedy, but the plays carefully expose the wily business of political control and the ease with which unscrupulous leaders can manipulate the fear and frustration of the masses.
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In 'The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui,' Trump's rise to presidency compared to Hitler's
...Before the play, Will Averill, the director, spoke to the audience about how the show was originally put on in May to joke about Trump's presidential campaign. But, he said, the recent performances were shown with a much more serious tone after Trump's election.
The dark comedy attempted to capture Trump’s image and rise to presidency throughout the show, he said. Although the play seemed to mock Trump with its dialogue, Averill said the original script was performed for the night with no alteration.
“It is all the original text,” he said. “We were constantly running into situations where we were blown away by some of the words and how resonant they were today.”
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Donald Trump’s One-Show Career As a Broadway Producer If Paris Is Out! had been a smash, we might be living in a different America.
Paris Is Out!, a slight Broadway comedy starring Molly Picon and Sam Levene, opened at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre on February 4, 1970. But opened is not quite the right term: The play’s producer, David Black, had hit on a novel idea, one that gave the playwright, Richard Seff, some misgivings: There would be no traditional opening night. Instead, the play would run for two weeks of previews, starting on January 16, after which critics, should they choose, could attend the show gratis. “This is an audience play,” Black told Seff at the time. “I don’t trust the critics. I don’t want them to see it till the audience tells them they love it.” As Seff, now 92, told me, it was “a concept which I should never have permitted. But I did, I did.” This was the kind of concession a reluctant playwright made for a chance to debut on Broadway.
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Arsht Center to stage free reading of play that predicted Donald Trump's 'zero tolerance' policy
...President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy did not exist when Robert Schenkkan’s cautionary play “Building the Wall” opened in September 2017 at the Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami, but the similarities are unmistakable.
Set in 2019, the play takes place after the Trump administration rounds up and detains millions of immigrants following a terrorist attack in Times Square. Now, less than a year after “Building the Wall” opened, Trump’s crackdown on illegal U.S.-Mexico border crossings in May has led to some 2,300 children being separated from their families, prompting a humanitarian outcry.
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VIDEO: Randy Rainbow Channels His Inner Tevye with Latest Parody- 'Sedition!'
A twittler with no proof...
In the words of Randy Rainbow, "How does a desperate, lame duck President and his boot-licking minions with no hope or evidence try to overturn an election they've clearly lost multiple times?... Sedition!" Watch below as Rainbow takes on a Fiddler on the Roof classic in his latest parody.
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