*** FREE THEATER ONLINE ***
March 18, 2021
Public Theater
ROMEO Y JULIETA
By William Shakespeare
Adapted by Saheem Ali & Ricardo Pérez González
Based on the Spanish Translation by Alfredo Michel Modenessi
Directed by Saheem Ali
Bilingual podcast to be presented in partnership with WNYC Studios
Featuring Carlo Albán (Benvolio), Karina Arroyave (Apothecary), Erick Betancourt (Abram), Michael Braugher (Balthasar), Carlos Carrasco (Lord Montague), Juan Castano (Romeo), Ivonne Coll (Nurse), John J. Concado (Peter), Hiram Delgado (Tybalt), Guillermo Diaz (Gregory), Sarah Nina Hayon (Lady Montague), Kevin Herrera (Ensemble), Modesto Lacen (Prince Escalus/Capulet’s Cousin), Florencia Lozano (Capulet), Irene Sofia Lucio (Mercutio), Keren Lugo (Sister Joan), Benjamin Luis McCracken (Paris’s Page), Julio Monge (Friar Lawrence), Javier Muñoz (Paris), Lupita Nyong’o (Julieta), and David Zayas (Sampson)
Director Saheem Ali continues his audio exploration of William Shakespeare’s canon with a new production of ROMEO Y JULIETA, collaborating with playwright Ricardo Pérez González on an adaptation of noted scholar Alfredo Michel Modenessi's Spanish translation. Actor Lupita Nyong’o plays Julieta, with Juan Castano as her Romeo, in this bilingual Spanish and English production that will bring one of history’s most famed lovers to your homes and phones in a stunning new audio play.
*** PRIMARY STAGES ***
Writing for Audio Drama with Public Presentation at Primary Stages ESPA!
The Audio Drama has grown immensely as a way to create work regardless of the social distance. Led by award-winning playwright Crystal Skillman, you will partner with actors and directors from ESPA's Acting for Audio Drama and Directing Audio Drama classes to bring your work to life! You will rehearse and record excerpts from your work in class, which we will showcase at the end of the semester for anyone you would like to invite. Class begins March 17.
Flexible, artist-friendly payment plans available.
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
Aurand Harris Memorial Playwriting Award 2021
This award was created in 1997 to honor the late Aurand Harris (1915-1996) for his lifetime dedication to all aspects of professional theatre for young audiences.
A panel of judges named by the NETC Executive Board will administer this award. A staged reading of the prize-winning scripts will be held along with the Annual Excellence in Theatre Awards ceremony.
The contest is open to all playwrights and is for new full-length plays for young audiences. No musicals nor plays targeted at adult audiences.
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Athena Project’s Plays In Progress (PIP) Series exists to develop new theatrical works by women playwrights.
Selected playwrights work in consultation with a dramaturg, director, and cast to see their works performed at various levels, from table reads to staged performances, and receive audience feedback from post-presentation discussions. The Series also includes networking events for participating playwrights. Due to COVID-19, the 2020 and 2021 series have adapted to online formats. We plan to resume live, in-person performances in 2022.
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The Frank Moffett Mosier Fellowship for Works in Heightened Language
Monetary award to playwright: $3000 for full-length works, $1500 for one-acts.
Synecdoche Works may support further development of a submitted work at its discretion.
Submissions must be in a heightened version of the English language in order to provide a meaningful challenge to the actors. This includes, but is not limited to, works using metre, verse, rhyming schemes, pidgins, creoles, and code-switching.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** DRAG KINGS ***
It should not be a big hairy deal that a 32-year-old Chicago-based drag performer named Tenderoni will be vying in a virtual talent competition on Sunday, and yet it is truly a reason to wig out.
The pageant is called Drag Queen of the Year 2021. But despite a penchant for lip-syncing to Missy Elliott, Tenderoni isn’t a drag queen. He’s a drag king, which, generally speaking means a performer born female, who takes the stage in men’s clothes. He is what was once called a “male impersonator,” penciled-on mustache, compressed chest and all.
Tenderoni, his creator says, “is a mash-up of Michael Jackson, Bobby Brown, Prince, George Michael and Boy George.”
It’s drag, it’s cosplay and, he hopes, it’s enough to win.
While androgynous costume in this direction is hardly new — Marlene Dietrich famously set libidos afire in top hat and tuxedo in the 1930 movie classic “Morocco” — drag kings tend to be the lesser-exposed and underappreciated segment of drag. Casual fans who get their drag from TV or with a side of waffles at brunch, in fact, may never even have heard of this particular practice.
More...
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‘Trouser role’ is a theatrical term used to denote a role which is portrayed by a performer of the opposite sex.
Although in the 21st century female roles played by men have become uncommon, women in male roles (sometimes referred to as ‘travesti’ roles) are still commonplace across the art form. In English National Opera’s 2019/20 Season, we have some of the all-time greatest trouser roles, which we’ll take a look at alongside some other characters which deserve a highlight.
Cherubino is perhaps the best known travesti role in the repertoire, and is a prominent role in Mozart‘s The Marriage of Figaro. Although titled as ‘the Count’s page’, in his first appearance Cherubino bursts into the room, enlisting Susanna’s aid to be reinstated to the role – the Count discovered him with the gardener’s daughter and dismissed him. Despite being sent to Seville in the Count’s army regiment, Cherubino remains, leading to farcical situations hiding from Count Almaviva.
The page has a reputation for falling in love with every woman he comes across (including the Countess, leading to more outrage from the Count), leadings to increasingly ridiculous situations – dressing as Susanna in an attempt to trick the Count (a case of a woman portraying a man portraying a woman).
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This post to STAGE WHISPERS is devoted to three such remarkable women — Vesta Tilley, Ella Shields and Hetty King — as it celebrates the DRAG KINGS OF THEATER in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Vesta Tilley, née Mathilda Alice Powles, was born into a British music hall family, and made her first stage appearance when she was not yet 4 years old. A year later she appeared for the first time in male attire as "The Great Little Tilley," and when she was 6, she debuted as Pocket Sims Reeves, in a parody of the then-famous opera singer.
She used her stage name, Vesta Tilley, for the first time when she was 11. By this time, she was quite comfortable in male clothing. She found it empowering, saying that "I felt that I could express myself better if I were dressed as a boy." When young, she was billed as "the dandiest fellah turned sixteen," but once she achieved major stardom, that changed to "The London Idol."
Tilley's singing voice was considered adequate, but she made no effort to "sound" like a man. Rather, her character studies of young swells, policemen or servicemen, poked fun at the foppish manners of the rich, delighting her working class audiences.
She popularized many songs, among them "After the Ball," "Following in Father's Footsteps," "Jolly Good Luck to the Girl Who Loves A Soldier" and the favorite number of all male impersonators of that era, "Burlington Bertie."
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When Joseph Papp's new production of ''Hamlet'' opens at the Public Theater on Thursday, audiences will see a lithe, dark Hamlet, slight but athletic and aggressive. This Hamlet fences with the best, throws Ophelia to the floor during his ''Get thee to a nunnery!'' speech, and wrestles his mother to the ground during the closet scene.
Most theatergoing New Yorkers have seen more than a few Hamlets, but this production offers a dimension few will ever have experienced. For this Hamlet is being played by a woman, Diane Venora, a handsome 30-year-old actress who made a striking impression as Hippolyta in last summer's New York Shakespeare Festival production of ''A Midsummer Night's Dream.''
Not that such unconventional casting is unheard of. Indeed, the history of theater is peppered with female Hamlets, although they were always regarded as something of a novelty, here as in England. Frequently, however, female Hamlets have appeared in benefit performances or in less-than-full productions of the play, and the Hamlets taken seriously by 20th-century critics have invariably been male.
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Tara Herweg-Mann portrays Jessica, a woman having a crisis of conscience after being cast to play Hamlet in Gamut Theatre Group's world premiere of the comedy "Women Playing Hamlet," which is on stage at the theater in downtown Harrisburg's Strawberry Square through March 29.
In "Women Playing Hamlet," a present-day actor named Jessica is having an identity crisis, brought on by her casting as Hamlet in a new production of the 400-year-old Shakespearean tragedy at Gamut Classic Theatre.
Is she up to it? Should she be -- or is it better not to be -- the Danish prince who wrestles endlessly with his conscience following the murder of his father the king at the hand of his uncle -- and possibly with the complicity of his mother?
More...
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It Takes A Woman: Four Times Non-Traditional Casting Made Us See The Role In A Whole New Light
Rosalie Craig as Bobbie in Stephen Sondheim's "Company" at the Gielgud Theatre on October 15, 2018 in London, England. (Robbie Jack/Corbis via Getty Images)
Nothing can refresh a canonical work of theatre like an inventive and unexpected casting choice. When directors purposely color outside the lines in the actors they employ, interactions between characters and the overall implication of the piece can infuse it with brand new immediacy while giving actors the thrilling challenge of embodying a character that audiences wouldn't normally associate with them. These are some of our favorite casting choices of females in male roles that defied convention and added another layer of storytelling.
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9 Other Male Roles Sarah Bernhardt Dared to Bring to the Stage
While Janet McTeer portrays Sarah Bernhardt’s tackling of Hamlet, Playbill looks at ten times the incomparable talent played “pants parts.”
To watch Janet McTeer play Sarah Bernhardt playing Hamlet in Theresa Rebeck’s Bernhardt/Hamlet is enthralling. Pulitzer finalist Rebeck’s new play chronicles the backstage realm at the time the legendary Bernhardt decided to tackle Shakespeare’s Hamlet as Hamlet. With all of the fuss made by the men in Paris at the time—as depicted in the play—audiences might think this was the first time Bernhardt, or any woman, had taken on a man’s role in the theatre. But no. This was simply the first time a woman opted to lead in this particular role: the Holy Grail of theatre. Extraordinarily, in an era when women did not yet have the right to vote in France, Great Britain, or the United States, Sarah Bernhardt flouted gender roles internationally, portraying men—young and old—all over the world. What other male roles did the great Bernhardt assay?
1. Zacharie in Athalie, 1867
Her first “trouser” part appears to have also been her first fledgling success as a young actress at the Théâtre de L’Odéon, France’s number two theatre (behind the Comédie-Française). The year was 1867, Bernhardt was in her early 20s and the role was that of a ten-year-old boy named Zacharie in Jean Racine’s Athalie. “The public, charmed by the sweetness of my voice and its crystal purity, encored the spoken choruses and I was rewarded by three bursts of applause,” Bernhardt later recalled, with characteristic modesty, in her memoirs.
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