Welcome
John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
Pegasus PlayLab is a new play festival at the University of Central Florida dedicated to developing new works by MFA Playwriting candidates or emerging playwrights. We are seeking four full-length plays, including devised works and Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) pieces, which we will rehearse for two weeks in collaboration with the playwright and subsequently present as workshop productions. There is a possibility that one play will be fully mounted into a production.
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This year we are asking playwrights to submit a new 10-minute play inspired by the characters in Shakespeare’s pastoral comedy As You Like It.
PROMPT: After the Curtain: Where are they now?
At the end of As You Like It four couples marry (Rosiland & Orlando, Celia & Oliver, Phoebe & Silvius, Audrey & Touchstone), Jacques is off to pursue a religious life of contemplation, and Duke Senior, his crown newly restored to him, plans to return from exile and create a new court.
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The Sauk, located in Jonesville, Michigan, is seeking scripts to consider for production as part of SAUK SHORTS 2023.
Scripts may be original works or published works that you would like us to consider. Scripts should have a performance time no longer than 15 minutes.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** CLYDE'S ***
Theaters around America appear to be staging fewer shows than they were before the pandemic, but a lot of the work they are doing is by Lynn Nottage.
An annual survey by American Theater magazine, conducted this year for the first time since the start of the pandemic, found that Nottage’s sandwich shop comedy, “Clyde’s,” will be the most-produced play in the country this season, with at least 11 productions. The survey also found that there were 24 productions of Nottage plays planned this season, which ties her with the perennial regional theater favorite Lauren Gunderson for the title of most-produced playwright in America.
“Clyde’s,” which had a well-reviewed Broadway production starring Uzo Aduba that opened late last year, is peopled by characters who previously served time in prison, and its mix of laughter and social commentary, plus Nottage’s stature as a two-time Pulitzer winner, apparently appealed to those who program theater seasons. Among those staging the play are the Arden Theater Company in Philadelphia, the Arkansas Repertory Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theater, Center Theater Group in Los Angeles and TheaterWorks Hartford.
“‘Clyde’s’ just hit the sweet spot — it has a multiracial cast, it addresses issues of incarceration and racial tension, it’s a comedy, and it’s really smart, and it’s by a Pulitzer winner,” said Rob Weinert-Kendt, the editor in chief of American Theater and an occasional contributor to The New York Times. “It’s a comedy, but it’s not turning away from the world.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/theater/most-popular-plays-playwrights.html
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Clyde's: Turning Art Into Justicd
Second Stage Theater
A conversation between playwright Lynn Nottage, director Kate Whoriskey, and Ford Foundation president Darren Walker
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRYT6djNjv4
***
Nottage describes Clyde's as magical realism, and says it's set both in the kitchen of a sandwich shop and a liminal space. All the play's characters are formerly incarcerated, including the shop's owner, who's kind of the boss from hell.
Uzo Aduba, best known for her Emmy Award-winning role of Suzanne "Crazy Eyes" Warren in Orange Is the New Black, plays the devilish Clyde. She admires Nottage's choice of topics: "She has done the very hard thing of giving space to faces, voices and stories that are often forgotten."
When Nottage went to Reading, Penn., to research Sweat, her play about struggling blue collar workers, she also spoke with many people who were trying to resurrect their lives after leaving prison. So, while the characters in Clyde's work a dreary, repetitive job, they dream of a better future... and a better sandwich.
More...
https://www.npr.org/2022/01/14/1072902297/two-time-pulitzer-winner-lynn-nottage-turns-a-triple-play-in-new-york-city
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What melts away as you get to know the characters are the monumental stigmas attached to jail time. Donovan’s Jason is inked to the max with prison tats, some of them racist symbols, but the story behind them reveals something unexpected. Letitia, here called Tish, in Young’s smashingly vibrant turn, is all adolescent energy and adult anxiety, the latter brought on as a single mother caring for a sick child. Salazar’s hyper Rafael needs an emotional home for his nurturing instincts, as an alternative to his weakness for drugs.
Aduba, in one of the best roles of her career, swans in and out of the kitchen, her Clyde never letting the employees forget her power over them. She’s their new matron, and they have traded one kind of prison for another. Like the sandwiches they fuss over, though, Nottage wants us to know that their fates remain in their own hands. The fun of “Clyde’s” is waiting to see which way that realization cuts.
More...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater_dance/clydes-nottage-broadway-play/2021/11/23/608fe630-4c69-11ec-b73b-a00d6e559a6e_story.html
***
Often, the sessions lead to bouts of confession—all the employees give up the goods on why they did time, even, eventually, Jason. This is supposed to deepen the bonds among them, and, perhaps, to offer a well of complexity not often granted to working-class people chewed up by the system and given a harsh set of choices: eat shit, starve, or go back in. But the life stories come between slapstick riffs on sandwich-making and kitchen etiquette—a bunch of well-performed gags—and as a result the play has trouble finding its tone. It’s hard to figure out how seriously to take the putatively tough moments in “Clyde’s,” or what to do with the biographies we’re offered. (Clyde’s own answer to anybody else’s suffering is to dismiss it. “I don’t do pity,” she says.) The lighting, by Christopher Akerlind, tries to indicate emotion—when Montrellous is rhapsodizing, he gets a fuchsia glow—but nothing that any character says steers the play in a new direction. Sad tales are divots for us to navigate between laughs.
Much of the problem lies with Clyde herself. In an early private moment, Clyde and Montrellous—who have a history that remains shrouded throughout the play—are arguing about the future of the shop. Montrellous lets slip that Clyde has fallen into “gambling debt,” and that the shop is somehow mixed up in the trouble. That’s the only thing we ever really learn—or, at least, think we learn—about Clyde. She rings a bell when new orders come in, appearing at the window to the kitchen all of a sudden, like a poltergeist at the climax of a horror flick. She rages through the kitchen, spewing just enough bile to get the objects of her tyranny complaining again, but she’s never subjected to the kind of scrutiny that makes watching a character worthwhile.
More...
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/06/the-search-for-justification-in-clydes-and-trouble-in-mind
***
Food is more than a plot point in Clyde’s–it’s the show’s foundation. “I was thinking about the tension of opposites in food, like savory and sweet,” Nottage tells me, recounting the writing process. “Things that are dissonant and harmonious, and how they shouldn’t work, but somehow when combined, they do.” By juxtaposing slice-of-life workplace comedy with precise social commentary, Nottage showcases her ability to mine the painful nuances of everyday life for much needed nuggets of humor. “After what we’ve been through this last year, people want to laugh,” Nottage says candidly. “People want to be reminded that, at the end of the tunnel, there is hope and joy.”
“Baby eggplant parmigiana with puttanesca on an olive and rosemary ciabatta,” Rafael pitches to the group in one scene. “Bacon, lettuce and grilled squash on cornbread with molasses butter,” Letitia responds. “Curried quail egg salad with mint on oven-fresh cranberry pecan multigrain bread,” Montrellous declares, getting the final word in before Clyde yells for American cheese on white, snapping everyone back to work.
More...
https://www.bonappetit.com/story/clydes-lynn-nottage
***
Nottage, the first woman to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice — the first in 2009 for “Ruined,” and the second in 2017 for “Sweat” — has often been accused of being insufficiently commercial for Broadway; here it feels like she’s deliberately satirizing that judgement with an allegorical cattle prod that likely will still be fun for audiences who are blissfully oblivious to all of the insider stuff that has riven Broadway in recent months.
It’s a very clever play, buoyed by lively performances and a director willing to take risks. I suspect “Clyde’s” will be talked about for a good while among Broadway insiders.
The allegory has its limits. The restaurant ends up a big hit, thanks to Montrellous’ work, and it’s never logical why Clyde is so opposed to the great but still simple sandwiches that apparently are making her so profitable. I think Nottage is trying to say that producers (and maybe capitalist Broadway itself) constantly underestimates the public and that if only the artists were in charge, success and good art would come out of the oven.
More...
https://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/broadway/ny-clydes-second-stage-broadway-review-20211124-a7ukn4crg5egvp52uioa2jpjpq-story.html
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*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
PSA, the Journal of the Pirandello Society of America seeks submissions of
short dramatic pieces (5 to 30 minutes of expected performance time) inspired
by Luigi Pirandello’s short stories, for publication in the next or future
issues. An essential requirement is that proposed dramaturgies draw inspiration
from Pirandello’s short stories.
***
Last Frontier Theater Conference ~ up to 200 submissions will be accepted from
new applicants; at that point, full-length submissions will only be open for
Alaskans, past participants. New folks will still be able to submit plays 30
minutes and under.
***
Heartland Theatre Company is seeking eight 10-minute original plays to be
considered for production in June of 2023 as part of our 20th annual 10-minute
play festival. This year, the theme is THE WAITING ROOM.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site
at https://www.nycplaywrights.org
***
*** CROSS-DRESSING MUSICALS ***
These periodic speeches of “we-get-it-we-really-do” rather undermine Tootsie’s
central conceit: a male actor dresses as a woman to get work, leading to a
woman falling for him as a woman, and a man falling for him as a woman. The
experience teaches Michael—well, what exactly? How hard it is to be a woman,
and phew, he’s ultimately very happy to be a man, albeit one who’s learned
something about sexism.
While there is no overt homophobia or misogyny in either movie or stage show,
note that the central “joke” in both of Tootsie’s intimate scenarios is that
Michael’s cross-dressing could lead to, with both male and female suitors—oh
no—two variants of a same-sex kiss or attraction, and Michael is a straight guy
in a dress! Stop the clocks!
More...
https://www.thedailybeast.com/tootsie-on-broadway-a-cross-dressing-classic-gets-a-large-spoonful-of-woke
***
“As the producers of Mrs. Doubtfire made clear in their statement on December
2, 'they have taken feedback and notes from people representing different
constituencies who have seen rehearsals as part of the process of making the
show.' One GLAAD employee attended a rehearsal, but not in an official
consulting capacity. No formal feedback from GLAAD has been given to producers.
Conversations between the show’s producers and GLAAD continue.
“Some media stories have implied that Mrs. Doubtfire has worked with GLAAD,
while Tootsie did not. On the contrary, GLAAD has been working closely with the
producers and creative team of Tootsie during its rehearsal process and
Broadway run, to make sure any concerns from members of the transgender
community are addressed. It has been a collaborative and productive
relationship. GLAAD’s insights and suggestions have been met with understanding
and have been implemented into the production where needed.
More...
https://playbill.com/article/exclusive-glaad-responds-to-mrs-doubtfire-and-tootsie-reports
***
After much self-ballyhooing, this much anticipated revival of the musical 1776
has arrived, and the trend-makers (and Hamilton whisperers) at the American
Repertory Theater and Roundabout Repertory Theatre Company also draw on the
signing of the Declaration of Independence as a way to reenvision history. In
this version, the roles of the members of the first Continental Congress —
white men all — are performed by a multiracial, multigenerational cast that
includes only female, nonbinary, and transgender performers.
Like so many 20th-century plays and musicals, 1776, which opened on Broadway in
1969, desperately calls for an update. In the over half a century since the
show won three Tony Awards, including Best Musical, many of the air-brushed
myths about our founding fathers have been undermined. Among the complicating
facts: of the 47 original signers of our first guiding document, 34 were
slaveholders. Perhaps no one in that First Congress has been the subject of a
more radical change of heart than the author of the Declaration himself, Thomas
Jefferson. Jefferson (played with grit and underlying anger by Elizabeth A.
Davis) is one of the show’s three leading characters. His sexual involvement
with his slave Sally Hemings after his wife’s death resulted in six children.
The other two leads are John Adams (Crystal Lucas-Perry, who is solid in the
role, but not nearly obnoxious or disliked enough) and Benjamin Franklin (the
wonderful, but too understated, Patrena Murray). The action of the narrative
spans two months during a blistering hot Philadelphia summer in May and June of
1776, culminating with the signing of the Declaration on July 4.
More...
https://artsfuse.org/257661/theater-review-1776-still-an-egg-in-the-theatrical-incubator/
***
One can fit a number of genres and genders under a dress-wearing umbrella —
there are men and male-presenting performers playing women, playing men playing
women, wearing dresses for drama, wearing dresses for laughs, wearing dresses
as a means of self-expression. And many artists see drag, performed by people
of all genders, as its own distinct category of stylized performance.
Each new production prompts a new round of reflection, conversation, and
occasionally controversy over whether these characterizations are sexist,
transphobic, dated or delightful. The musical adaptation of “Some Like It Hot,”
a 1959 movie starring Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe, promises
that the film’s plot and characters “have been updated for a modern audience,”
and one of its lead actors is nonbinary.
One long-running production is now rethinking its practice. Since 1996,
“Chicago” has featured a character, Mary Sunshine, played by a male soprano
dressed as a woman, whose wig is dramatically removed to reinforce the line,
“things are not always as they appear to be.” But the show has just posted a
notice inviting performers of “any gender identity” to audition for the role;
asked about the change, Barry Weissler, a lead producer, said: “Our collective
understanding of gender and the art of drag has evolved over the past two
decades. We updated our casting breakdown to reflect this.”
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/09/theater/comedy-gender-some-like-it-hot.html
***
At first glance, the Kinky Boots represent the fruits of two New Yorkers who
have made countless contributions to American literature, theater, music, and
film. The glittery, thigh-high, men’s boots worn in a theatrical production by
a cross-dressing character who vividly speak up for an often-misunderstood
community. They also represent one of New York City’s most vibrant industries.
Within the context of the musical, the boots symbolize a timely message of
tolerance and an appreciation for cultural and human differences. For
centuries, works of art have been analyzed for the light they can shed on the
cultures that produced them. As works of art and objects of material culture,
the boots offer an opportunity to reflect on contemporary debates about gender,
discrimination, and intolerance.
More...
https://www.nyhistory.org/blogs/heels-history-sparkly-red-kinky-boots-tell-us-american-culture
***
The arrival in the West End in March of a stage musical version of the hit
Australian film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert will continue
that dialogue as three drag queens reinvent themselves as a family unit aboard
a tour bus.
Cross-dressing has lately been used to explore these matters, but the theatre
has always been about dressing up – not least for the very practical reason
that women were banned acting on the Greek and Shakespearean stage, forcing men
to play the women's roles.
Nowadays, of course, those prohibitions are long gone and women are laying
claim to men's roles. As Michael Billington has previously argued: "There
should be much more gender switching in the classics: not least because women
are otherwise excluded from great roles."
If such gender switches are to be welcomed, is it important for the actor to
share the sexuality of the role he or she is playing? Fierstein, for his part,
has fought to have gay men play Albin in La Cage. He says in a programme note
to the current production: "If you stand up and sing 'I Am What I Am'
without feeling your sexuality and your persecution right down to your painted
toenails, it's never going to be quite the same thing."
More...
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2008/nov/05/drag-hairspray-priscilla-wig-out
***
Booking is now open for La Cage Aux Folles, and the FM Theatre
Productions and Teatru Manoel co-production will continue the legacy in Malta
of this internationally acclaimed musical, which has won multiple Tony Awards
including Best Musical, Best Score, Best Book and Best Musical Revival, as well
as a Laurence Olivier Award.
“We can’t wait to present La Cage Aux Folles at the Manoel
this October,” says FM Theatre Productions founder and managing director Edward
Mercieca. “This crowd-pleasing, rollicking and heart-warming musical about
family, commitment, show biz and drag is one of musical theatre’s all-time
biggest hits and is sure to become one of Malta’s as well.”
Based on the 1973 French play by Jean Poiret, La Cage Aux Folles tells
a funny and moving story that also served as inspiration for the much-loved
movie The Birdcage, starring Robin Williams and Nathan Lane.
After 20 years of partnered bliss, gay couple Georges and Albin run a drag
nightclub in Saint-Tropez, where Albin is the star performer known as Zaza.
When Georges’ son announces his impending marriage to the daughter of a
bigoted, ultra-conservative politician, M Dindon, Georges reluctantly agrees to
masquerade as ‘normal’ to meet the family of the bride-to-be – but Albin has
other plans, with hilarious results!
Featuring a book by Harvey Fierstein and music and lyrics by Jerry Herman,
the FM Theatre/Teatru Manoel production of La Cage Aux Folles boasts
an all-star cast including Mikhail Basmadjian as Georges, Ray Calleja as Albin
and Edward Mercieca as M Dindon. An equally impressive supporting cast features
Raphael Pace, Jasmine Farrugia, Francesco Nicodeme, Maria Eleonora Zammit,
Krista Zammit Marmara and Sean Borg, among many others. Meanwhile, FM’s
extraordinary creative team behind the production includes director Christopher
Gatt, musical director Kris Spiteri and choreographer Francesco Nicodeme, with
vocal coach Tina Frendo.
More...
https://www.indulge.com.mt/rollicking-musical-la-cage-aux-folles-to-dazzle-audiences-at-the-manoel/
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