* FREE THEATER ONLINE ***
Black Box New Play Festival
Jan. 21 – Jan. 31, 2021
Thurs – Sun @ 7:30pm
The 24th annual new play festival will feature world premieres of short plays written specifically for Zoom, to view online from the comfort of your own home. Performances are free to watch and will be streamed online at 7:30pm EST Thursday through Sunday each week (link to be provided) – no downloads necessary!
First Week: January 21 – 24
Decade by Decade by Barbara Anderson
Directed by Trent Dawson
It’s a Thursday morning two years since the pandemic began in the Brooklyn home of Maria, Andrew, and their son Jared. Maria works as a Covid tracer and Jared is an internet influencer, but Andrew was forced into early retirement from his much-loved teaching career. In fact, everyone over sixty is considered too vulnerable to work or to even leave their homes. Andrew does his best to retain his role as the family provider, but what begins as a typical Thursday soon becomes a day when secrets are revealed and actions must be taken.
Surf’s Up by Ken Levine
Directed by Elizabeth Bove
Peter announces to his Millennial daughter, Wendy, that he has quit his job and is going on an “endless summer” to surf around the world. And he invites her to shake up her button-down life and join him.
Trading Places by Roger Collins
Directed by Noel MacDuffie
A father and his teenage daughter, separated in Cyberspace, debate the sanctity of raising mother from her grave after one year of interment. The father prevails and they intone an incantation and resurrect the matriarch. But yet another debate ensues – who will join whom seems to be at issue. As the time for their decision grows short, they rehash their relationships until, suddenly, darkness looms over all three and the matter is decided.
Second Week: January 28 – 31
Covid Chips by Mark W. Sasse
Directed by Mike Mroch
As restaurants in New York State begin to re-open during the COVID-19 crisis, Mr. Jawarski, from Peppy’s Pub in Jamestown, receives a Zoom call from an Albany health official making sure that Peppy’s is compliant. As Mr. Jawarski continues complying with new regulations, the health official keeps making additional Zoom calls to bring attention to another matter of omission.
Women Underground by Kay Ellen Bullard
Directed by Justin Braun
Three women living lives of quiet desperation find themselves buried in the rubble of a bank explosion. Each has her own past experiences that could impact their survival strategy. Is any rescue even possible if you’ve already been living the equivalent of a buried life?
Every Single Sunday by Chris Karmiol
Directed by Whitney Stone
Different generations attempt to make a virtual connection and it doesn’t go too smoothly. But that’s okay… it wasn’t meant to.
Register for free tickets
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
Blue Pearl Theatrics - A Monologue Festival Competition & Short Film
Are you a writer that's willing to take an audience down the rabbit hole?
CORRUPTION INC. is a powerful two-fold project encompassing an exciting and exclusive livestream monologue festival competition and culminating in a critically important theatrical short film featuring a series of chosen monologues which will be produced and showcased on various digital platforms and submitted to film festivals across the country.
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theREP is looking for scripts that use theatre to address injustices, inequities, and cultural collisions, providing a voice for the unheard on stage, in the workplace, the Capital Region and beyond. Specifically seeking scripts with racial, ethnic, generational, religious and gender diversity. Scripts that engage art and social justice.
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TEDxAsburyPark is seeking Readings and Performances of one minute or less on the topic of “Treat Others as You Wish to be Treated”, aka “The Golden Rule”, which is a cornerstone of most world cultures, religions and creeds.
TEDxAsburyPark will showcase a community production of the best 30 readings/performances for a LIVE virtual audience on April 1, 2021.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** HAPPY ENDINGS ***
There Must Be Happy Endings by Megan Sandberg-Zakian is an exploration in the personal dramaturgy of the mind and spirit. In her first book of essays, the author takes a deep dive into the works that have made a lasting impression upon her. They are an extension of her need to share stories through theatre. Whether by quoting Homer, The Dark Knight or Annie, these essays draw the reader into the author’s personal story by circumnavigating the landscape of the greater western narrative. She tells us why happy ends are important and why they are especially important to her. Her title essay isn’t demanding sappy closure but commanding a divine right to culminate our narratives with an end to the suffering within them.
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Winner of six Korean musical awards and the Richard Rodgers Award, MAYBE HAPPY ENDING makes its English-language debut! When two obsolete helper-bots discover each other in late 21st century Seoul, they have a surprising connection that challenges what they believe is possible for themselves, relationships, and love. Looking past our era of technology-driven isolation, this heartfelt love story celebrates a magical and bittersweet reawakening to the things that make us human.
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Romeo lives, and so does Juliet: in the Viennese adaptations, tragedies have happy endings and German Enlightenment plays feature a Hanswurst.
As a result of the reforms introduced by Joseph II the Burgtheater rose to become the most highly-regarded theatre in the German-speaking countries. For the first time Shakespeare’s plays were performed in German, albeit in adaptations written specially for the Viennese stage that were often very different from and somewhat disrespectful to the originals. The Emperor issued a formal instruction that they were to be given happy conclusions known as ‘Viennese endings’ and were not to contain sad scenes (funerals, deaths, and so on) in order to avoid depressing audiences. Plays such as Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet thus had to undergo radical alterations. There is no record of what contemporary audiences thought about this.
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Happy Ending is an alarmingly universal 21st century play, set in surroundings that many women all over the world have experienced first-hand. Gov gives her subject a distinctive Israeli twist. Some 20 years after Margaret Edson’s Wit presented an American English professor facing down terminal cancer alone in a hospital room, Gov shows us a different kind of woman dealing with the disease in the context of a group. Like Edson’s Professor Vivian Bearing, Talia Roth is professionally successful, intelligent, and sharp-tongued. But she is also a famous Israeli actress, instantly recognizable to the hospital staff and other patients.
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To Actresses, Greek Tragedy Offers Many Happy Endings
Pat Carroll was attracted to the role of the Chorus of Mycenae in Sophocles' ''Electra'' because of its spareness, its necessity, its raw and relentless candor. ''There is no subtext,'' Ms. Carroll said. ''What is said is what is meant.''
She was also grateful for the part, period, because she is 71, and there are few female roles of comparable force for women her age. ''That's another reason why, over the past 12 years I have done nothing but classical work,'' Ms. Carroll said. ''You aren't categorized into an age category. You are free to be any age you want to be.''
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https://www.nytimes.com/1998/09/29/theater/to-actresses-greek-tragedy-offers-many-happy-endings.html
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On the battlefield of politics coming armed with a shield and sword will do you little good. One must learn to stroke their opponent with one hand and fight them with the other. Boom Theatre Company presents the first full-length show of their fourth season, Hillary: A Modern Greek Tragedy with a (Somewhat) Happy Ending, and as the title states elements of mythology blend into recent politics as if it were the way these two stories have always been told.
Directed by the company’s Artistic Director, Ryan Nicotra, this relatively new work by Wendy Weiner makes its East Coast premier with Boom, and is shaking up the events of the Clintonian presidency with a new mythological twist. The story becomes a political recap of the 90s, flashing before the audiences’ eyes with humorous infusions of the Greek Gods, presented with the framework of a chorus to narrate the particulars.
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Why were you drawn to Happy Ending?
I chose this comedy for our debut at Anacostia Playhouse because of the history of the playwright, Douglas Turner Ward, and the theatre group he co-founded, Negro Ensemble Company. The Negro Ensemble Company was created in the early 1960s when there were no outlets for the wealth of Black theatrical talent in America.
The main catalyst for this project was the 1959 production of A Raisin in the Sun, written by Lorraine Hansberry, a gritty, realistic view of Black family life. Playwrights writing realistically about the Black experience could not get their work produced, and even the most successful performers—such as Hattie McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen—were confined to playing roles as servants. Disenfranchised artists set out to create a theatre concentrating primarily on themes of Black life.
Ward’s play highlights Black life and creates characters of emotional depth and variety.
Describe the play for us.
Happy Ending is a social satire set in the 1950s about two sisters and domestic workers, Vi and Ellie; their idealist nephew, Junie; and Ellie’s husband, Arthur. These characters, who depend on income from their white employers—the Harrisons—have just discovered that the Harrisons are getting a divorce, which may cause the employees to lose their jobs It’s a play that everyone can laugh at, learn from, and watch to see characters come to life.. The story of how extended families in the Black community are struggling to make ends meet is relevant today.
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