Greetings NYCPlaywrights
*** FREE THEATER ONLINE ***
CLOSE (BUT NOT TOO CLOSE!)
Project Y Theatre Company and Women in Theatre Festival (Live and Online!) presents CLOSE (But Not Too Close!), a premiere digital musical.
Book by Palmona Sierra, Lyrics by Julia Koyfman, Compositions by Dusty Sanders.
Welcome to CLOSE (BUT NOT TOO CLOSE!) a website designed for people who want to meet that special someone, but aren't really ready for an in-person relationship.
Computer savvy scammer, Alex, catfishes an unsuspecting introvert, Louis, who is trying out online dating for his first time. Alex sets up a double date where she can figure out his credit card information. She brings along her Uncle Leslie as wingman and Louis brings his friend, Ellie, who can't bother to put on clothes for a digital date. Technical difficulties arise - as they always do in chat boxes - allowing Alex to learn Louis' wildest hopes and dreams.
This funny new musical is co-directed by Michole Biancosino and Andrew W. Smith. Digital Sound Mix by Neel Murgai. Digital Media and Editing by Courtney Smith. Graphic Design by Christopher Ulloth.
Featuring: Kevin R. Free, Iris Beaumier, Nathan Salstone, and Robyn Parrish.
Video Design by Courtney Smith
Digital Music Technician by Neel Murgai (of Brooklyn Raga Massive)
Produced by Project Y Theatre Company www.projectytheatre.org
Order your ticket and we'll send you the dedicated link to the show -
available March 17th through September 16th!
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/close-but-not-too-close-world-premiere-digital-musical-tickets-142626203815?utm-medium=discovery&utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&aff=escb&utm-source=cp&utm-term=listing
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
Hedgepig Ensemble Theatre is seeking to commission a playwright to adapt a verse play by a forgotten woman writer from history. The commissioning award is $1,000.
As part of Hedgepig’s Expand the Canon (www.expandthecanon.com) effort, we are commissioning an adaptation loosely based on Mercy Otis Warren’s verse drama, The Ladies of Castile. This play grapples with revolution, women’s roles in the status quo, and a country divided.
We are especially interested in proposals from playwrights that identify as Global Majority (does not identify as "white") women or non-binary playwrights. Playwrights must be 18+ and based in the New York City Metro Area. The ideal candidate has experience working from historical source material, comfort in a devising setting, and interest in both prose and verse writing.
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Awarded for the best playwriting response theme of the Alpine Fellowship 2021 - Untamed: On Wilderness and Civilization.
The prize will be £3,000 plus a rehearsed reading at the Fellowship’s annual Symposium to which the winner will be invited to attend. Runners up will be invited to attend the Fjällnäs symposium to exhibit their work, all food and accommodation covered. Travel expenses will be reimbursed up to a total of £500.
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Red Eagle Soaring seeks plays between 10 - 30 minutes written by Native playwrights.
These plays will be performed by Native Youth as part of Red Eagle Soaring's inaugural short play festival in June 2021. The playwright of each selected play will be compensated with a licensing fee of $100 per performance.
For this year's play festival we are excited to focus on the question: Who do you want to be?
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** FUNNY HAH HAH ***
First produced at the City Dionysia of 423 BC, THE CLOUDS is, arguably, Aristophanes’ best-known comedy – though for all the wrong reasons. A critical assessment of sophistry in Ancient Athens, the play satirizes and lampoons the city’s greatest philosopher, Socrates, and may have contributed to his trial and execution about two decades later. However, originally it wasn’t well received and only won the third prize at the festival, prompting Aristophanes to revise it a few years later. The play that has reached us is an incomplete version of this revision. It begins with the farmer Strepsiades (meaning “Twister” or “Cheater”) bemoaning his fate: his son Pheidippides has run him into debt because of his passion for horses. Now, he wants him to become a student at the Thinkery, the philosophical school of Socrates and there learn how to turn lies into truth and use this knowledge to get him out of debt. Pheidippides refuses, so Strepsiades has no choice but to go himself. At the Thinkery – located just next door to his own house – Strepsiades meets a student who tells him all about Socrates’ supposedly great discoveries, and soon enough, at his bequest, he is introduced to Socrates himself, who is seated in a floating basket and studying the sun. Strepsiades is accepted as a student at the school and his induction is celebrated with a parade, at which the Clouds, the patron-deities of the Thinkery, suddenly appear (representing simultaneously the worldliness and the impracticality of Socrates’ teachings).
More...
https://www.greekmythology.com/Plays/Aristophanes/The_Clouds/the_clouds.html
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Humor to us means jokes, stand-up comics, sit-com TV shows, funny movies, comic plays, musical-comedy Broadway shows. To an Elizabethan audience, similar genre of humor existed. But, to that audience humor also meant the body fluids that governed someone’s general personality and emotional outlook on life. Ben Jonson’s 1598 (revised in 1616) play, EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOR combines both of these ideas. But, humor often covers our darkness. In Every Man in his Humor, anger, anxiety, jealous, and insecurity are the internal experiences, which the characters attempt to hide behind the jokes.
We can begin to see the humor awaiting us by reading the program to acquaint ourselves with the characters’ names. Knowell (Christopher Seiler), his son Edward Knowell (Chris Johnston), and their man Brainworm (Allison Glenzer) obviously do not know well and can use their brains only so much. Master Stephan (Benjamin Reed) and Master Matthew (Nathan C. Crocker) seem neutral enough, though they are the insecure fools who make themselves the butt of most jokes. The Kitely family, Thomas (Rene Thornton, Jr), Dame (Sara Hymes), and Mistress Bridget (Lauren Ballad), are not as sharp or fast as their bird-of-prey sir-name suggest (Master Stephan has a whole series of jokes about hawking and falconry early in the play). Their retinue, Thomas Cash (Michael Amendola), George Downright (John Harrell) and his half-brother, Wellbred (Bridget Rue) each are defined by how the Kitelys have provided for them, as each name suggests. The water-bearer, Oliver Cob (John Harrell) and his wife Tib (Lauren Ballard), wander in and out of scenes, doing the grunt work that allows all these city folks to be buffoons. Captain Bobadill (Patrict Midgley) is the soldier who links all these characters, their anxieties, and antics together. Justice Clement (Michael Amendola) will adjudicate the intertwined conflicts, issuing verdicts and clemency to resolve the play.
More...
https://hermitsdoor.wordpress.com/2015/03/11/theatre-review-every-man-in-his-humor-by-ben-jonson/
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As a comedy of manners, THE COUNTRY WIFE satirizes Restoration London’s patriarchal hierarchy through cuckolding, wherein Horner, the play’s licentious libertine posing as a eunuch, undermines the power of the patriarchy by having affairs with married women and deceiving their unsuspecting husbands. Engaging in sexual conquests and challenging social taboos may appear to be Horner’s literal purpose. However, his rhetorical purpose is to expose how the patriarchy’s assumptions toward the weaknesses of women, as well as the sexual ineptness of men, not only allow their power to be usurped from them, but also help to ridicule English society’s chauvinism and need to propagate the idea of gender hegemony. One way in which Wycherley achieves this is through the “china” scene, where Horner and Lady Fidget carry out their affair through double entendre without making Fidget’s husband or the grandmother of Mrs. Squeamish aware of their sexual escapades in the china closet. Lady Fidget, relating to Horner’s knowledge of “china,” tells her husband, “Why, the unmannerly toad knows China very well and has himself very good, but will not let me see it, lest I should beg some. But I will find it out and have what I came for yet” (Wycherley 48). While Sir Jasper believes his wife’s use of the word “china” is to be taken literally, the truth of the matter is that she intends for it to represent her sexual escapades with Horner behind closed doors. Lady Fidget’s use of witty double entendre in this scene provides “thesis and justification for the manipulation of others,” such as Sir Jasper, and her verbal dexterity determines “influence and power,” while her “verbal obtuseness isolates and debases” (McNamara 60). This not only creates an opportunity for her to exploit Sir Jasper for his naiveté, but it also allows Wycherley to satirize the imprudence of the patriarchy in believing that it cannot be duped by those it considers to be inferior.
More...
https://thequixoticpedagogue.wordpress.com/2015/05/14/the-country-wife-as-a-comedy-of-manners/
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Moliere's comedy LA TARTUFFE is unchallengeably a classic, and that is what the French Company, Le Treteau de Paris has given us. There is nothing fandangled about their interpretation of the 17th century comedy; it's a very faithful production, based on the conviction that Moliere is still funny.
They are right. Director Jean de Rigault carves his laughs out of the rich lines of iambic pentameter, relying very heavily on the full tone range of his actor's voices, their bodies--especially arm gesturing--and the expanse of the stage. A fine example comes in one of the very first scenes when Orgon, the master of the house, returns from a business trip and asks the maid, Dorine, what has happened during his absence. She answers that his wife has been sick, indeed had to be bled. But Orgon is interested only in hearing about Tartuffe, the religious man he has gathered into his home. There is a wonderful, almost song-like exchange between the two as Dorine tells of her mistress' suffering, and Orgon answers over and over with the refrain "What about Tartuffe?" And as Dorine describes his glutonous feasting, Orgon answers with "Poor fellow!"
And then there is some very fine slap-stick. The credit here belongs wholly to de Rigault as Moliere has left vitually no stage directions. The greatest moment comes at the climax of the play when Orgon discovers that the trusted, devout Tartuffe is a hypocritical lecher thirsting after his wife. As Tartuffe lunges forward to embrace her, the virtuous lady steps quickly aside and Tartuffe lands in her husband's no longer quite so fond embrace.
More...
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1968/10/11/tartuffe-pbmbolieres-comedy-ila-tartuffei-is/
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THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ERNEST, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is an 1895 play by Irish playwright Oscar Wilde. It is a farce on the societal conventions and restrictions of late-Victorian society, and remains enormously popular today.
The play follows the lives of two best friends, Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff. Jack lives in the country with his ward, Cecily Cardew, but spends much of his time in London — where he calls himself "Ernest Worthing," so that he can do as he likes without anything getting traced back to his real identity. Furthermore, as luck would have it, his girlfriend Gwendolen (Algernon's cousin) has always dreamed of marrying a man named "Ernest." Algernon finds out Jack's ruse, but keeps Jack's secret for his own mischievous purposes: since he knows that there is no such person as "Ernest Worthing," he can sneak off to Jack's country home and pose as "Ernest Worthing," where he meets and falls in love with Cecily.
Jack, meanwhile, had "killed" his fictional brother Ernest, only to find that Cecily had already met "Ernest" in the form of Algernon. Not long after, Gwendolen arrives and meets Cecily, and the ladies soon find that both of them are engaged to a man named Ernest Worthing.
It makes... more sense if you actually read it. And keep in mind that Wilde specifically ordered that the comedic script should be acted with the utmost seriousness. Plus the finale ending with the multiple plays on the word/name "Ernest" is much funnier if played seriously.
More...
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Theatre/TheImportanceOfBeingEarnest
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Tragicomedy is a play which claims a plot apt for tragedy however which ends happily like a comedy. The action is critical in theme and subject matter and tone additionally generally however it appears to be a tragic catastrophe till a surprising turn in events brings out the joyful ending. The characters of a tragicomedy are noble however they’re concerned in improbabilities. In such a play tragic and comic parts are blended up collectively.
“A tragic-comedy is not so called in respect to mirth and killing, but in respect it wants death which is enough to make it no tragedy. Shakespeare’s ‘Cymbeline’ and ‘The Winter’s Tale’ may also be categorized as tragicomedy.”
WAITING FOR GODOT revealed in 1956 describes the play as a “tragicomedy” in two acts. There are many dialogues, gestures, conditions and actions which can be stuff of pure comedy. All musical devices are employed to create laughter in such a tragic scenario of waiting. The complete environment of the play may be very akin to dark-comedy. For instance, Vladimir is set to not hear Estragon’s nightmare. The latter pleads with him in vain to listen to him, saying that there’s no person else to whom he might talk his personal nightmares.
More...
https://literaturetimes.com/waiting-for-godot-as-tragicomedy/
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The two London hits that reached Broadway last season, ''Nicholas Nickleby'' and ''The Dresser,'' both made wild comic hay out of the misadventures of fleabag British theatrical troupes touring Shakespeare in the provinces. Now the West End has a new hit farce, Michael Frayn's NOISES OFF that takes the same basic premise to its ludicrous apotheosis and just possibly to its most dizzying comic heights yet.
The theatrical company we meet in ''Noises Off'' is not of the past but the present, and the play it is performing is not ''Romeo or Juliet'' or ''King Lear'' but a cheesy sex farce titled ''Nothing On.'' As madly invented by Mr. Frayn, ''Nothing On'' is a reductio ad absurdum of mainstay West End entertainments like ''There's a Girl in My Soup'' or ''No Sex Please, We're British'': it's an idiotic trifle involving eight slamming doors, two illicit couples in various states of undress, an Arab sheik and a contantly misplaced plate of sardines. But we never see all of ''Nothing On'' in ''Noises Off.'' It's Mr. Frayn's devilish conceit that, instead, we watch Act I of his play-within-the-play three times over - in each case from a different perspective, at a different stop along a calamity-ridden tour of such backwater towns as Weston-Super-Mare, Stockton-on-Tees and Goole.
Funnier still, Mr. Frayn has seen to it that ''Nothing On'' is not only a nutty parody of a quintessentially British theatrical genre but also a funhouse-mirror reflection of the private lives of the third-rate actors who perform it. In Act II of ''Noises Off,'' in which we watch a sorry Wednesday matinee of ''Nothing On'' from the wings, the sleazy onstage and backstage love triangles on view finally merge so completely that the act can only end with parallel climaxes, and the simultaneous dropping of two curtains.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/1982/06/16/theater/theater-noises-off-and-other-london-comedies.html
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