*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
Stairwell Theater presents
Henry IV: Part One by William Shakespeare
August 20, 22, 26, 27, 28, 29
The Old Stone House, Brooklyn
What comes of incessant war?
The greatest king England has ever known is dead. Now, during the bloody conflict of the One Hundred Years' War, England enters into a dangerous transfer of power, just as a new champion arises on the French side. Can the English Lord Talbot defeat the young upstart, Joan of Arc?
The first of a planned four plays running through Richard III, Henry VI: Part 1 features puppetry, music, and daring maneuvers. Join Stairwell at Park Slope's Old Stone House as they interrogate the subject of foreign wars - and the havoc they wreak on the world.
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
More than any other creative genre, drama has suffered the hardest during the Covid-19 pandemic. With the closure of theaters worldwide as in plagues of the past, playhouses have been forced to find new ways to reproduce the magic of live theater by going virtual. For smaller venues lacking the resources, many have closed temporarily or permanently shuttered. For playwrights, this reality translates to fewer opportunities to showcase their work, and the virus places in peril the future of live theater and new works.
We seek an anthology to showcase works by playwrights examining Covid-19 in all its permutations.
We are looking for dramatic works (short plays, performance pieces, monologues, etc.) from diverse playwrights worldwide that speak to the deaths, isolation, social, political, and economic upheaval that have followed in the wake of this pandemic.
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In an effort to expand our mission to address this erasure, NY Classical is embarking on a three-year initiative to develop two new, original plays for production in our 2024 and 2025 seasons. We are seeking plays that explore new ways of viewing the “classics,” expand our ideas of what “classics” can be, and challenge the power structures that undergird the notion of “classics.”
These New Visions can include, but are not limited to…
Adaptation/Translation. Examples include: Cherrie Moraga’s The Hungry Woman and Herbert Siguenza’s El Henry.
Response/Subversion. Examples include: Branden Jacobs Jenkins’s An Octoroon and Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Prequel/Sequel. Examples include: Lucas Hnath’s A Doll’s House, Part 2
Plays that engage with history and bring forgotten events to life. Examples include: John Guare’s A Free Man of Color and August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean
Plays that engage with written stories beyond the stage, including novels, poems and poetry collections, and journals that exists in the public domain. Examples include: Kate Hamill’s Pride and Prejudice and Kristin Laurence’s Little Women
Plays that derive from oral histories, rituals, and other forms of creating, knowing, remembering, and documenting the world beyond the written word. Examples include: Ondinnok’s Rabinal Achi and SPAC’s Tenshu Monogatari.
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The Lionheart Theatre Company is looking for interested playwrights to submit short, 10-minute plays for consideration for Lionheart’s October Halloween play festival “Bewitching.”
Please note that “Bewitching” will be a live, staged performance. Lionheart is looking for plays that focus on common “spooky” themes, such as horror, the paranormal, the macabre, and general chills and thrills appropriate for late October.
*** THEATER CANCELLATIONS ***
The Warner Theatre in Torrington has canceled a planned production of the historical drama “I Am My Own Wife” after criticism from the transgender community over the casting of a cisgender male in the lead role.
Complaints on Facebook about the Warner’s production of the one-actor show said trans voices should tell trans stories, echoing an ongoing debate about representation in the arts world.
“It is incredibly damaging and harmful to trans people to cast cis men in trans women’s roles,” Embrys Graham, a genderfluid theater artist, wrote in emails to the Warner. “It perpetuates the damaging idea that trans women are ‘men in dresses.’ This concept has been the cause of hatred and violence against trans women.”
The play, produced by Long Wharf Theater with a nonbinary actor in 2020, tells the true story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who lived openly as a transgender woman through the Nazi and East German Communist regimes. Long Wharf was heralded for employing not just a nonbinary actor but an almost entirely nonbinary or transgender creative team amid a national discussion of cisgender actors portraying transgender characters.
More...
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News is coming out of Lancaster, PA today that the Superintendent canceled an upcoming high school production of the musical “Hairspray” over alleged complaints about insensitive language in the script.
McCaskey High School students hoping to perform the show this May are disappointed to see that Superintendent Damaris Rau pulled the plug on the show, just over a week after auditions were held.
Ms. Rau told local news,
“This is not the appropriate time to put on a musical like this,” Rau said, referring to the racial strife over the summer as well as the mental health impact the coronavirus pandemic has had on children.
“Kids are too raw” right now, she said.
Ms. Rau explained that after she had received an email written a group of students to the principal describing their concerns, she read the script herself and made the call to cancel the show and advise the directors to change the show.
More...
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A Minnesota theater has canceled an upcoming performance of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s "Cinderella" over concerns regarding the cast's lack of diversity.
In a release, Chanhassen Dinner Theatres said its staff and leaders "believe unapologetically" in their decision to replace the performance with one "Footloose!"
"It was 98 percent white," Michael Brindisi, the theater's artistic director, told the Twin Cities Pioneer Press. "That doesn’t work with what we’re saying we’re going to do."
The statement said the theater is still "looking forward to bringing it to our stage in the future."
"But we as a company decided our original casting didn’t go far enough in our commitment, and instead of waiting another full year to implement these important changes, we chose now," it said.
The theater also announced new diversity protocols it will be implementing going forward, including bringing Black, Indigenous and other artists of color to analyze future productions before they begin the casting process.
More...
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Shakespeare on the Green won’t take place again this year amid ongoing controversy over racial and diversity issues with the group that organizes the event.
Nebraska Shakespeare’s board of directors announced the cancellation Friday, citing a lack of staff to produce the 35th anniversary season. The event usually is held in late June and early July at Elmwood Park. It was canceled last year because of the pandemic.
“A number of our company have resigned from the productions due to a belief that we are not making enough progress improving diversity, equity and inclusion for the organization,” board member Adrian Blake said in a prepared statement.
Blake also cited COVID-19 as a factor in the cancellation.
Members of the theater community have been concerned about several moves by the company. They say its social media posts have been racially insensitive and that Nebraska Shakespeare staff and board haven’t acknowledged the Black Lives Matter movement, among other things.
More...
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The creators of the show Hedwig and the Angry Inch have weighed in to a casting row that led to the producers of an upcoming Australian production pulling the show from January’s Sydney festival.
In a statement on Wednesday, John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Task said they did not believe the title role was a trans character, and the role should be “open to anyone who can tackle it and, more importantly, anyone who needs it.”
The January festival announced the postponement of rock musical and seminal queer show on Tuesday, following a flood of complaints over the casting of a cis male as Hedwig.
The Packed to the Rafters actor Hugh Sheridan was announced to be playing the complex genderqueer character in early November.
Sheridan, who revealed in October that he has been with men and women but eschews labels when it comes to sexual orientation, was to become the latest in a long line of queer cis men to play the role, including its creator Mitchell.
More...
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What started as a local issue became toxic for students when the cancellation of their spring play “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” went viral this week.
The play was canceled in January after Ithaca High School students raised concerns about diversity and inclusion. This week, students involved have received significant backlash after national news coverage prompted a flood of derogatory comments and even death threats, that have led to an increased police presence at the school.
When the cast list revealed that the role of Esmeralda, the female lead popularly portrayed by a woman of color in the Disney version of the retelling, had gone to a white student, several students banded together this winter to speak out, noting their experiences with color-blind casting in the ICSD theater program.
“I was so excited when they announced the show,” said Prachi Ruina, who initially tried out for the part. “I just thought ‘finally, there’s going to be a girl of color up there on the stage’.”
Ruina, 16, and other students at the school — Maddi Carroll, 17, Ari Cummings, 16, and Eamon Nunn-Makepeace, 14 — created a list of demands for the school district and theater department in hopes of diversifying general casting practices and creating a culture of diversity. After several meetings and community discussion, however, the school district canceled the play.
In the few weeks since the cancellation, students had been hoping to work out plans for a new spring production. Instead, those plans were interrupted by national threats directed to the students after the story went viral.
Fox News picked up the article and headlined it with “High school cancels musical after white student lands lead role.” As of Thursday, there were more than 9,000 comments on the article. Other outlets, including Breitbart and The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi and white supremacist site, have also picked up the story.
On the message board site 4Chan, the article from Fox News was posted several times, eliciting dozens of racist comments. The students’ Facebook page was shared and anonymous posters commented saying people should “dox” them, which usually refers to releasing personal information about people to harass them.
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Ultimately, the "is Hamilton canceled?" debate raises a lot of questions that are difficult to answer—ones both specific to the project itself, and about any piece of art that's arguably problematic, yet loved by many. Twitter, where you'll find an ocean of "if you like this bad thing, you are also by extension bad" opinions, alongside the valid and thoughtful Hamilton critiques, is one place to broach that conversation—but it shouldn't be the only place we're having it.
A lot has happened since the musical was first created and staged—aka, the years before the 2016 election. And in a time when non-Black people are being encouraged to consider our own roles in upholding structural racism, Miranda does seem to be trying to do that himself: On May 31, he apologized for not denouncing white supremacy and supporting the Black Lives Matter movement on the official Hamilton social media platforms earlier.
"As the writer of this show, I take responsibility and apologize for my part in this moral failure," he said in the video. "Hamilton doesn't exist without the black and brown artists who created and revolutionized and changed the world through the culture, music and language of hip-hop, Literally, the idea of the show doesn't exist without the brilliant black and brown artists in our cast, crew and production team who breathe life into this story every time it's performed."
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