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      New Playwrights Horizons Season Includes Will Arbery World Premiere

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      Arbery’s “Corsicana” was added to the theater’s slate for next summer, along with four plays previously announced for 2021.Nearly a year ago, Playwrights Horizons’ new artistic director Adam Greenfield unveiled a four-play season for 2021, with all the titles directed by women and written by nonwhite authors.All four titles — Aleshea Harris’s “What to Send Up When It Goes Down,” Sylvia Khoury’s “Selling Kabul,” Dave Harris’s “Tambo & Bones,” and Sanaz Toossi’s “Wish You Were Here” — now have opening dates as part of Playwrights Horizons’ 2021-22 season, which is set to begin in September. And the lineup has an exciting addition: Next summer, the nonprofit theater on West 42nd Street will present the world premiere of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Will Arbery’s “Corsicana,” directed by Sam Gold.“I wanted to make good on the plays we had already scheduled and show that I was committed to these writers,” Greenfield, who is now in his second year as artistic director, said in a phone conversation on Tuesday. “Each of these pieces demands to be heard.”Arbery, who was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for “Heroes of the Fourth Turning,” his depiction of contemporary conservatism that premiered at Playwrights Horizons in 2019, is set to return to the nonprofit Off Broadway theater in June 2022 with “Corsicana.” The play tells the story of a woman with Down syndrome and her younger half brother as they grapple with their mother’s death in a small city in Texas and become entangled with a reclusive local artist. It will be directed by Gold, who won a Tony Award for helming “Fun Home” on Broadway and will also direct a staging of Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” at New York Theater Workshop in its 2022-23 season that had originally been planned for 2020, and whose starry cast includes Greta Gerwig and Oscar Isaac.The rest of the 2021-22 season is set to start in September with “What to Send Up When It Goes Down,” a ritual-as-play by the Obie winner Aleshea Harris that honors Black lives lost to racialized violence. A co-production with the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the show recently concluded a run at BAM Fisher under the direction of Whitney White (“Our Dear Dead Drug Lord”), who will stay on when the production moves to Playwrights. The New York Times critic Maya Phillips praised “What to Send Up” as “a series of cathartic experiences” for audience members of color at BAM.Next up in November is Khoury’s “Selling Kabul,” a thriller set in Afghanistan that examines the human cost of immigration policy, and which will be directed by Tyne Rafaeli. The play was initially slated for the 2019-20 season and was in rehearsals when the pandemic closed theaters in March 2020.“It tracks the experience of those Afghans who were left behind as we’ve been leaving Afghanistan,” Greenfield said. “That is a subject that has been in the news increasingly over the last year.”Then in January comes the world premiere of Dave Harris’s “Tambo & Bones,” which is being billed as a “hip-hop triptych” about two characters trapped in a minstrel show. It will be directed by Taylor Reynolds. In April, the theater will stage Toossi’s dramatic comedy “Wish You Were Here,” which follows best friends who grapple with cultural upheaval amid the Iranian Revolution. It will be directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch.Greenfield said that a new show by the “Slave Play” writer Jeremy O. Harris — “A Boy’s Company Presents: Tell Me If I’m Hurting You,” which was originally scheduled to open in May 2020 before being scuttled by the pandemic — will not be part of the 2021-22 season.“There was a backlog of plays that had been discussed, and some just made more sense to reopen with,” Greenfield said, adding, “It’s still in discussions.”(After this article was published, Harris wrote on Twitter that he had told Greenfield he had “no interest” in staging his play at Playwrights Horizons any longer, and that his treatment by the theater had been “disrespectful.” “We’re not discussing anything,” he said.)Along with its main productions, Playwrights offered details about its other projects. Eleven writers have been commissioned to produce work for the second season of the theater’s scripted fiction podcast series, “Soundstage.” The company is also continuing its new performance series, Lighthouse Project, that aims to fill the periods between scheduled productions with installations, performances and events by in-house artists rather than renting space to outside groups. More

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      17 New York Arts Organizations Are Among Those Receiving $30 Million

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      The Queens Museum, Harlem Stage and 44 other groups were chosen to receive aid from Bloomberg Philanthropies for digital innovation.The Queens Museum is among 46 cultural nonprofit organizations selected for a new $30 million program by Bloomberg Philanthropies that is intended to support improving technology at the groups and helping them stabilize and thrive in the wake of the pandemic. A Bloomberg Tech Fellow is being appointed at each organization, the philanthropies announced Tuesday.Heryte Tequame, assistant director of communications and digital projects at the museum, was chosen as its fellow in what is known as the Digital Accelerator program and will be in charge of developing a digital project of her choice. In an interview she said that in 2020, the museum “realized where we needed to expand our capacity and invest more.”“I think now we’re really taking the time to see what we can do that has longevity,” Tequame said. “And not just being responsive, but really being proactive and having a real future-facing strategy.”The organizations don’t know exactly how much of the $30 million each will receive yet, but Tequame said she wants to use at least some of it on the museum’s permanent collection.Another recipient, Harlem Stage, selected Deirdre May, senior director of digital content and marketing, as its tech fellow.That performing arts center — which largely focuses on artists of color — aims to use the assistance in part to increase accessibility, Patricia Cruz, its chief executive and artistic director, said in an interview. “People who cannot leave their homes, for example, would be able to see some of the finest artistic performances that could be made,” Cruz said, because “that’s the core of what we do.”The 46 organizations selected for the program include nonprofits in the United States and Britain. Among them are 26 in the United States, and 17 of those are in New York City, including the Apollo Theater, the Ghetto Film School and the Tenement Museum. The chief executive of Bloomberg Philanthropies, Patricia E. Harris, said in a statement that when the pandemic hit, cultural organizations had to get creative to keep their (virtual) doors open.“Now we’re excited to launch the Accelerator program to help more arts organizations sustain innovations and investments,” Harris said, “and strengthen tech and management practices that are key to their long-term success.”As Cruz from Harlem Stage put it, “We’re ready to be accelerated.” More

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      Review: ‘Schmigadoon!’ Has a Song in Its Heart, and Everywhere Else

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      The Apple TV+ series both mocks and embraces the glories of classic musicals like “Brigadoon,” “Oklahoma!” and “Carousel.”Welcome to Schmigadoon, “where the men are men, and the cows are cows,” a magical musical land where Melissa and Josh (Cecily Strong and Keegan-Michael Key) find themselves stranded during a trip meant to rehabilitate their romance. At first they think it’s like Colonial Williamsburg, or a warped Disney experience, but they quickly buy into their new reality: They’re trapped in this wholesome, old-timey parallel universe until they learn the lessons about true love it is meant to impart. More

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      Covid Surge Shuts Down West End Shows

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      Many London theaters are canceling performances, and people in the industry fear that more productions will have to close when England ends distancing and mask-wearing requirements next week.LONDON — The cast and crew of “Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner,” an experimental play at the Royal Court, were just two weeks into their run when they received some bad news: One member of the company had tested positive for the coronavirus, and everyone had to quarantine.On July 4, the theater canceled performances for a week.The next day, the producers of “Hairspray” at the London Coliseum announced that they were canceling nine days of shows, because a member of the production team had tested positive, and later that week the Globe called off a performance of “Romeo & Juliet,” because an actor in the show had, too.This Monday alone, “The Prince of Egypt” at the Dominion Theater; another “Romeo & Juliet,” at the Regent’s Park Theater; and “Bach and Sons,” at the Bridge were all canceled for at least five days because of confirmed or potential cases.The spate of abandoned shows comes at what was supposed to be a celebratory moment for British theater. Starting Monday, playhouses in England will be allowed to open at full capacity for the first time since the pandemic began, as the country ends restrictions on social life in an effort to restore normalcy while living with the virus. Audience members will no longer have to wear masks inside theaters, although many are encouraging patrons keep them on.Yet with coronavirus cases soaring in Britain because of the more contagious Delta variant, theaters fear more cancellations, given that many young actors and crew members are not yet fully vaccinated. “We are all ready for it to happen again,” Lucy Davies, the Royal Court’s executive producer, said in a telephone interview. “It’s going to be fragile all summer.”“The Prince of Egypt,” at the Dominion Theater, shut down on Monday along with two other London shows.Matt CrockettCalled-off shows will cause further financial stress on cash-strapped theaters, Davies said, especially because no commercial insurers in Britain offer cover for coronavirus-related cancellations. And producers say the British government’s coronavirus rules are part of the problem. When people test positive here, they are required to quarantine for 10 days, as must all of their “close contacts” — defined as anyone who has been within about six feet of an infected person for 15 minutes.In Britain, more than 42,000 new coronavirus cases were recorded on Wednesday, a number last seen in January when the country was in lockdown to prevent its health system from being overwhelmed. Sajid Javid, the health minister, said on Monday that daily numbers were likely to rise to over 100,000 a day during the summer, although hospitalizations and deaths are expected to be much lower than in previous waves of infection, because two-thrids of adults have been fully vaccinated.In the first week of July, more than 520,000 people in England were told to quarantine as close contacts, according to official figures. They have to isolate even if they test negative for the virus or have had two vaccination shots.Eleanor Lloyd, a producer who is the president of the Society of London Theater, said that most of the cancellations were because of close contacts who were told to isolate, rather than positive cases.The Regent’s Park Theater said in an emailed statement that several of its staff members had been told to stay at home and were still in quarantine, despite later testing negative. “We do need an alternative to automatic self-isolation for our acting company and crew, as the current situation is simply unsustainable,” the statement said.Starting Aug. 16, fully vaccinated close contacts will no longer need to quarantine. “It’ll be better from then,” Lloyd said. But that is still a month away, and the risks may continue longer. So she is considering employing more understudies for a forthcoming production of Agatha Christie’s “Witness for the Prosecution.” That would have a cost, too, she said.London theaters have adopted safety measures to try to limit the risk of outbreaks. In most, casts and crew are tested several times a week, and masks and distancing are typically required offstage. But “people are traveling to and from the theater, and that is a risk, however safe our environment is,” Davies said.Joel MacCormack and Isabel Adomakoh Young in the title roles of the Regent’s Park Theater production of “Romeo and Juliet.” The show’s producers also had to call off performances.Jane HobsonThe safest productions seem to be those created especially for these pandemic times, with social distancing among the players both onstage and behind the scenes. The Globe has used this approach for shows like its “Romeo & Juliet.”Even so, last Saturday, Will Edgerton, who is playing Tybalt, learned that he had the virus after performing a home test.The Globe canceled that afternoon’s show so that a new actor could rehearse the role, then went ahead with the evening performance. “We are unique, as Shakespeare’s plays can be presented with distancing,” Neil Constable, the theater’s chief executive, said in a telephone interview. “But when you’ve got a major musical like ‘The Prince of Egypt,’ which costs millions of pounds and has lots of people onstage, you don’t have that option.”He said the British government should underwrite theaters’ risks, a sentiment that echoes calls by other leaders from Britain’s theater industry for a state-run insurance program. Last year, the government introduced a similar initiative for TV and movie shoots, but it has not announced anything for other forms of cultural life, as European governments like those of Germany and Austria have done.“We understand the challenges live events have in securing indemnity cover and are exploring what further support may be required,” a spokeswoman for Britain’s culture ministry said in an email.Davies, the Royal Court executive, said a safety net was badly needed, especially for commercial theaters that don’t receive public subsidies.She had a recent experience of the benefits of insurance, she said. On Monday, the cast and crew of “Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner” were scheduled to return to the stage for their first performance since completing their quarantines — but then a severe storm flooded the theater’s basement and the show was canceled again.“It was devastating — it was their comeback,” Davies said, before adding that the theater’s insurers had covered some of its losses that night. “We’re insured for flooding,” she said, “just not Covid.” More

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      Playlist: ET radio show 14 July 2021

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      Author: Everything Theatre

      in Features and Interviews, Radio playlist

      15 July 2021

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      Interview with Noga Flaishon of Harpy Productions

      You can find the full interview broadcast during the show here

      Shows, venues, etc mentioned

      Music Playlist

      R.E.M. – It’s The End of The World As We Know ItBig Country – One Great ThingElvis Costello – Pump It UpRailway Children – Every Beat of My HeartMalcolm Middleton – Blue Plastic BagsTerry Hall – Ballad of a LandlordTom Bailey – Science FictionFrazier Chorus – Cloud 8Guy Garvey – Belly of the WhaleThe Lightning Seeds – All I WantSuper Furry Animals – Hometown UnicornKate Bush – The Sensual WorldJJ72 – October SwimmerCat’s Eyes – Be Careful Where You Park your CarCocteau Twins – Pearly-Teardrops’ DropsSoak – B A NobodyBeth Orton – Someone’s DaughterPortishead – Sour TimesPhoebe Bridgers – PunisherMartha Wainwright – Bleeding All Over You More

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      Interview: Noga Flaishon takes us deep into the Bunker

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      Listen to our recent chat with Noga Flaishon from Harpy Productions, where she tells us all about upcoming show, Bunker, as well as discussing her love of post apocalypic stories, the lack of sci-fi on the stage and why too many TV series overstay their welcome.

      This interview was originally broadcast on Runn Radio on 14 July.

      Bunker

      BUNKER is an original theatre production that explores the cruelty and perseverance of the human mind. The story focuses on two women, Maya and Alex, who are trapped inside the titular Bunker after an apocalyptic event known only as ‘The Collapse’ claimed all civilization. One of them is desperate to leave; the other will stop at nothing to keep them there.

      Bunker draws from the post-apocalypse sub genre of science fiction (as seen in films and books such as The Road, The Walking Dead, and Cloverfield Lane) to examine mental illness through an allegorical lens. The show has gained support from groups such as BORDERLINE ARTS (the only Charity in the UK that focuses specifically on Borderline Personality Disorder) and STEPPING OUT THEATRE (the country’s leading mental health theatre group).

      Staying true to their motto of “Wicked Women Telling Weird Tales”,HARPY PRODUCTIONS is creating BUNKER with an entirely female team. Bunker will be Directed, Produced and Cast by a strong crew of women from various backgrounds within the creative arts industry.

      BUNKER was written by NOGA FLAISHON, who is a graduate of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. She’s been involved in various theatre productions, as well as short films. With a strong vision for her story, Noga is the driving force behind this production.

      Director CORAL TARRAN is a graduate of The American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York and has recently returned to the UK. As well as having advanced training in acting and dancing, she has a strong background in improvisation and has acted in various Theatre Productions. She is now looking to kick-start her career as a Theatre Director.

      Producer KATIE PRATTEN is a Writer, Assistant Producer and Trainee Assistant Director at ‘Pixeleyed Pictures’, a production company dedicated to tackling current socio-political issues, and who are at the heart of the British Film / Broadcast Industry in Pinewood Studios.

      Bunker will play at the Lion and Unicorn Theatre between 8 and 11 August. Tickets can be purchased via the below link. More

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      In ‘Bach & Sons,’ a Composer Stares Down Death

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      The new play at the Bridge Theater in London and two other productions on the city’s stages examine characters facing the end.LONDON — Few actors could stare down mortality better than Simon Russell Beale in “Bach & Sons,” a problematic new play at the Bridge Theater that benefits from a piercing central performance. Telling of the often testy relationship between the composer Johann Sebastian Bach and two of his 20 children, both sons who were musicians as well, the writer Nina Raine has come up with a research-heavy play that could be described as “Amadeus” lite. Like that play, Peter Shaffer’s celebrated take on Mozart, “Bach & Sons” features extended discussions of the nature of mediocrity, and also leans toward the scatological. Amid an expletive-heavy script, one character makes a passing reference to “a turd in the tureen.”Nicholas Hytner’s production boasts an evocative design from Vicki Mortimer, with cascading keyboards hanging above the stage; as in “Amadeus,” the dialogue often cuts off to make way for excerpts from the composer’s output. Beale with Racheal Ofori as Anna Magdalena Wilcke in another scene from “Bach & Sons.” Manuel HarlanOver time, Bach Sr. loses his sight and cedes ground to his son Carl (a vivid Samuel Blenkin), whom the father derides as musically “efficient” — a decided slight from a visionary who likes his art messier and more inspiring. Yet all Carl wants is simply to be loved. (Another son, Wilhelm, is played by Douggie McMeekin as an artistic prodigy doomed to failure.)The family chat consists largely of extolling the power of music, when you can’t help but feel that, really, they would have gotten on with making it. A climactic discourse on dissonance reminded me of Georges Seurat’s quest for harmony in the musical “Sunday in the Park With George,” to cite a more moving depiction of the creative process than “Bach & Sons,” with its boilerplate pronouncements about the value of art. Even so, Beale commands attention as the aging and worn Bach fades away. The composer’s canon, we’re told, can be characterized as a meditation on “the variety of grief,” and Beale communicates a man who has lived that grief himself: The actor cuts against the sentimentality of the writing to catch directly at the heart. “You can’t go on living and living and living,” says a character at the start of Nick Payne’s “Constellations” — and so it’s not altogether surprising when this 70-minute play turns toward confronting death in its second half.Payne’s one-act two-hander was first seen at the Royal Court in 2012 before transferring to the West End and then Broadway. The elegant staging from the director Michael Longhurst is now being revived at the Vaudeville Theater through Sept. 12, with the designer Tom Scutt’s buoyant cloudscape of balloons intact.Peter Capaldi and Zoe Wanamaker in Nick Payne‘s “Constellations,” directed by Michael Longhurst at the Vaudeville Theater.Marc BrennerThis time, there are four casts rotating across the run, and London theatergoers have so far had the opportunity to see two of them. (Among those still to come is a gay coupling that will feature the TV and stage name Russell Tovey.) The changing players reveal wildly contrasting takes on a tricky if accessible text in which events, large and small, are replayed with different outcomes, in accordance with Payne’s interest in the existence of a “multiverse.” That notion of alternate worlds coexisting alongside ours fuels a play that explores the infinite variability of life’s every moment, except the final one, which is always death.Peter Capaldi and Zoe Wanamaker, the oldest duo of the four, are also the more actorly of the two seen so far: You feel Wanamaker, especially, standing outside her character, Marianne, a Cambridge brainiac who holds forth on quantum mechanics and string theory. The parts don’t feel like a natural fit for either performer, though Capaldi, a onetime Doctor Who on TV, compensates with an abundance of charm. A much younger company brings together Sheila Atim (who won an Olivier for her role in “Girl From the North Country”) and Ivanno Jeremiah, who have a visceral connection onstage. Jeremiah is immediately likable as Roland, a beekeeper who meets Marianne at a barbecue and engages with her in a strange conversation about licking your elbow — to be honest, such exchanges work much better with the younger cast. Sheila Atim and Ivanno Jeremiah in “Constellations.”Marc BrennerAnd when Marianne confronts her possibly foreshortened life, the astonishing Atim communicates the gravitas of the situation even as Payne’s play makes clear that her fate can be rewritten with a happier ending in a parallel universe. These two are so good that, on a fourth viewing of the play, I felt as if I were seeing “Constellations” afresh: Atim and Jeremiah replay familiar material so it seems new — a virtue in a play that makes so much of repetition.If “Constellations” is late in raising the specter that its leading woman will die too soon, we know from the start that this is what will happen to the heroine of “Last Easter,” the 2004 play by Bryony Lavery at the intimate Orange Tree Theater through Aug. 7. (The show will be livestreamed on the theater’s website on July 22 and 23.) The director Tinuke Craig’s nimble production finds surprising levels of comedy in this story of June (the excellent Naana Agyei-Ampadu), a lighting designer with terminal cancer who goes on a pilgrimage with three friends to Lourdes, France, because — well, why not? Maybe a miracle will happen.June, it seems, is especially fond of the painter Caravaggio, and the first act veers away from anything maudlin toward lessons in art history one minute, a jaunty snatch or two from the song “Easter Parade” the next. The tone is unexpectedly breezy, and the camaraderie between June and her pals, also theater practitioners, is nicely done. These friendships keep June’s spirits buoyant, even as her body starts to let her down.From left, Naana Agyei-Ampadu, Jodie Jacobs and Peter Caulfield in Bryony Lavery’s “Last Easter,” directed by Tinuke Craig at the Orange Tree Theater.Helen MurrayYet after the intermission, as June’s condition worsens, the writing turns more self-conscious. June’s devoted buddy Gash (Peter Caulfield) twice calls out “cliché alert,” and several events are described as “undramatic,” an unusual choice of adjective for a dramatist. (The quartet also includes the character of a heavy-drinking actress who soon wears out her welcome, both as written and performed.)The imminence of death seems to defy this gifted writer, who goes for the sort of deathbed scene that has been seen onstage and in movies many times over. Whatever the reason for “Last Easter’s” prosaic closing scenes, they share with “Constellations” a sense that mortality comes best in good company.Bach & Sons. Directed by Nicholas Hytner. Bridge Theater, through Sept. 11.Constellations. Directed by Michael Longhurst. Vaudeville Theater, through Sept. 12.Last Easter. Directed by Tinuke Craig. Orange Tree Theater, through Aug. 7. More

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      City Center Announces Its 2021-2022 Season

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      The theater will reopen for in‐person performances with the Fall for Dance Festival in October.New York City Center will resume live, in-person performances in October with the Fall for Dance Festival, one of its signature events. The dance showcase will kick off the theater’s 2021-2022 season, which is also set to include a Twyla Tharp birthday celebration, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s annual holiday season engagement and two new dance series.“We really wanted to reaffirm our commitment to New York audiences, as a very New York institution, and to New York artists,” Arlene Shuler, City Center’s president and chief executive, said of the ambitious season.“It’s such a huge opportunity for artists,” added Stanford Makishi, the vice president and artistic director of dance programs. “The ones with whom I’ve been speaking over the last 16 months, they’ve all been really dying to not only get back on the stage, but also to actually have the interaction with the audiences.”City Center announced four commissions for this year’s Fall for Dance on Tuesday. Ayodele Casel, Lar Lubovitch and Justin Peck will create new pieces that will be sprinkled throughout the festival’s five programs; and the Verdon Fosse Legacy, an organization dedicated to preserving the work of Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon, will reconstruct three dances for the festival. The full lineup and schedule will be released at the beginning of September.In November, Twyla Tharp will celebrate her 80th birthday with “Twyla Now,” a program featuring two world premieres as well as signature works. A host of stars, Sara Mearns and Robert Fairchild among them, will perform, supported by an ensemble of young dancers.City Center’s new dance programming will begin in 2022. Tiler Peck, a principal at New York City Ballet, will inaugurate Artists at the Center, which gives an accomplished dancer the opportunity to craft a program; Peck’s program, March 3-6, will feature works by William Forsythe, Alonzo King and others. City Center Dance Festival, a spring counterpart to Fall for Dance, will follow, March 24 to April 10. It will showcase several New York companies, including Martha Graham Dance Company, Dance Theater of Harlem and Paul Taylor Dance Company.The Encores! series, which revives rarely produced Broadway musicals, will also return in 2022. The three shows, “The Tap Dance Kid” (Feb. 2-6), “The Life” (March 16-20) and “Into the Woods” (May 4-15), were announced last year. The coming Encores! season will be the first under the artistic leadership of Lear deBessonet, who was announced as Jack Viertel’s successor in 2019.More information is available at nycitycenter.org. More