*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
THE DRILLING COMPANY'S SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARKING LOT RETURNS WITH
"TWO NOBLE KINSMEN"
Three-week run will play two weeks on the Lower East Side
and one week in Bryant Park.
PARKING LOT OF THE CLEMENTE, 107 Suffolk Street:
Thursday through Saturday, July 15, 16, 17 and Wednesday through Friday, July 28, 29, 30 at 7:00 PM
Subways: F to Delancey Street, M to Essex Street.
BRYANT PARK, 6th Avenue at 42nd Street, in midtown Manhattan:
Monday through Wednesday, July 19, 20, 21 at 7:30 PM
Subways: B, D, F, or M to 42nd St./Bryant Park; 7 to 5th Ave.
Running time: 2 hours (without intermission)
"The Two Noble Kinsmen" is a play by John Fletcher and William Shakespeare that was reprinted in a second folio edition of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays in 1679. Its story is taken from "The Knight's Tale" by Chaucer. It is generally accepted to be The Bard's final play before he retired to Stratford-Upon-Avon and died three years later--a collaboration of an older playwright with one whose career had only begun. The play is a tragicomedy in the manner of Fletcher. It was most famously adapted to the restoration stage by Sir William Davenant as "The Rivals" in 1664.
Admission is free. At The Clemente, chairs are provided on a first come, first served basis and audience members are welcome to bring their own. At Bryant Park, free chairs are plentiful. As of this writing, The Clemente is still requiring masks, Bryant Park does not.
Rainout notices will be posted on www.shakespeareintheparkinglot.com and www.drillingcompany.org.
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
Edward Hopper created brilliant works of art that are full of intrigue and possibility.
We are looking for 3-5 original short plays inspired by Hopper paintings for a production in early 2022. You may select any Hopper work of your choice, but you have greater odds of being selected with one other than Nighthawks. Your play's content can cover any genre, but should be appropriate for the virtual theatre medium and time period of the artwork.
***
Submissions are now being accepted for Paradox Theatre Works’ first annual New Works Festival Showcase. Seeking original monologues (Between 2 and 5 minutes), from playwrights from across the globe that have not been produced in the Chicago area yet. This year’s festival is monologue driven and we are holding a “Cocktails & Monologues” night.
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Druid New Writing script submission window is now open. The company accepts plays in the English language. For the purposes of clarity: Druid accepts translations of original plays into English which meet our criteria. The open submission process takes place alongside commissions, workshops, mentoring, public readings and other playwright development initiatives as part of Druid’s commitment to bring new work into production.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** 1776 ***
As unlikely and sweeping a success as the revolution it celebrates, "1776" tells a truer story than the history books. The show itself is the best evidence that the American experiment worked and continues to work, sloppy and imperfect though it may be. Imagine leering on the Bolshoi stage like Howard Da Silva's Ben Franklin. Or a Peking player showing Chairman Mao unable to work on the little red book because his mind is in his wife's bedchamber, which is why Michael Scott's Tom Jefferson dawdles over the Declaration of Independence.
The idea sounds vulgar but the execution isn't, and portraying the men of the Second Continental Congress as all too human makes all the more remarkable what they accomplished after months of irresolution, bickering and horse-trading.
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It didn’t push the boundaries of the musical genre much, and its cast was all White. Yet, “1776" confronted uncomfortable aspects of America’s racist past as it attempted to address the politics of the day. It exposed contradictions in the nation’s founding as a society reliant on slavery and offered realistic portrayals of the Founders — including their flaws — despite receiving blowback from conservatives, including President Nixon.
Sherman Edwards, a World War II veteran and high school teacher turned musician, composed “1776.” Initially, he struggled to generate interest in a historical Broadway musical steeped in American patriotism, with numerous producers telling him that colonial America was “unsuitable for the theater.”
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Peter Stone was brought up from a family of screenwriters. He started out his career writing for television before transitioning into film. He wrote several films such as Charade, Father Goose (which won him an Academy Award), Mirage, etc. He then went into theatre as he felt he'd have more creative control in that medium. The first two musicals he wrote were Kean and Skyscraper. Stone was originally hesitant to work on the project before he met with Sherman Edwards. When Edwards played the opening number 'Sit Down, John', Stone realized that the musical wasn't going to be some history lesson. Instead, it was going to be a musical about real men fighting to build a country.
What Peter Stone was able to write into the book were two things that were never in the real Independence Hall, a calendar and a tally board. The tally board would be used to show the audience how the votes were going while the calendar would be used to let them know how close they are to the Fourth of July when everyone believed that the Declaration was signed. But the only thing they needed left was a director.
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On the face of it, few historic incidents seem more unlikely to spawn a Broadway musical than that solemn moment in the history of mankind, the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Yet "1776" which opened last night at the 46th Street Theater, most handsomely demonstrated that people who merely go "on the face of it" are occasionally outrageously wrong. Come to think of it, that was also waht the Declaration of Independence demonstrated, so there is a ready precedent at hand.
"1776" which I saw at one of its critics' previews on Satuday afternoon, is a most striking, most gripping musical. I recommend it without reservation. It makes e en an Englishman's heart beat a little faster. This is a musical with style, humanity, wit and passion.
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“The house is yours,” President Nixon said tonight to the cast of “1776,” which had just performed the first full‐scale, full‐length Broad way show ever presented at the White House and received a standing, shouting ovation. It was George Washington's 238th birthday, and so, quite appropriately, the production was Sherman Edwards's tale about the drafting of the Declaration of Independence. John Adams, Benjamin Frank lin and Jefferson were among the principals, with Washing ton being heard from by dis patch. When It was over, the President gave a sense of his tory back to the performers. He told them that Abigail Adams, the first Presidential wife to inhabit the Executive Mansion, had hung her wash to dry in the same room where they had played. He pointed out the portrait of Washington by Gilbert Stuart hanging on an East Room wall. He informed his listeners that probably the best paint ing ever done of Franklin was just next door in the Green Room, and that a blessing John Adams wrote, express ing the hope that only wise and just men would live in the house, was carved into the mantelpiece of the State Dining Room.
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The special performance was not without its controversy. As a freshman Congressman in 1947, Nixon was a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee, whose witch-hunt for communists in the entertainment industry influenced the blacklisting of dozens, including Howard da Silva.
Also, the president wasn't comfortable with John Dickinson's song "Cool, Cool, Considerate Men," which gave a damning view of conservative property-holders. Producer Stuart Ostrow declined the president's request to omit the song, but when it came time for 1776 to be adapted into a movie, producer Jack L. Warner heeded Nixon's request to edit it out. Years later the filmed version of the song was discovered and added as part of a director's cut.
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It's difficult to explain why "1776," the 1972 motion picture based on the musical of the same name, is such a great movie. Starring William Daniels as John Adams, Howard Da Silva as Benjamin Franklin and Ken Howard as Thomas Jefferson, it tells a fascinating story with which all Americans are (or at least should be) intimately familiar — namely, the tale of the fierce debates at the Second Continental Congress that culminated in the drafting and signing of the Declaration of Independence.
It's a great story, one that both I and many of my close friends ritualistically watch every 4th of July. Yet what about "1776" makes it so resonant? Why does this movie stand out when countless other patriotically themed motion pictures fade into the background?
It's instructive to first look at another recent musical about our Founding Fathers, "Hamilton." While it doesn't pass a lot of tests when it comes to historical accuracy, "Hamilton" works so well because it brilliantly resurrects the philosophical debates that were at the core of America's founding during the ratification of the Constitution and the administration of President George Washington.
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