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On the Scene: ‘Springsteen on Broadway’ 🎸Michael PaulsonReporting on theater Even before entering the St. James Theater, the theater district was clearly more alive than it was a year ago, at the height of the pandemic. Times Square, even with all but one theater still closed, was mobbed. More
Torrey Townsend’s backstage fiction is an indictment of the real world’s overwhelmingly white, disproportionately male theatrical establishment.It is the fall of 2020, and the American National Theater is desperate to survive the pandemic.In Torrey Townsend’s blistering and hilarious satire “Off Broadway,” presented by Jeremy O. Harris and streaming free on Broadstream, this tenaciously middling nonprofit is millions of dollars in the red, and operating with only a skeleton crew.But it sees one route out of financial calamity. When it finally reopens, it will do so with a surefire smash: Al Pacino in “Othello,” playing the title role. In blackface.Andy, the company’s staggeringly underqualified artistic director, doesn’t recognize this as regressing to a shameful and banished tradition. Rather, he frames it as a brilliant provocation, a metatheatrical challenge to quaintly limited thinking.“Y’all are gonna get eaten alive,” Marla, his horrified associate producer, warns during a Zoom meeting, but no one pays the slightest heed. She is Black; the others are white. They are happy to rationalize the idea.And that, like most of what happens in “Off Broadway,” doesn’t seem at all far-fetched.Directed by Robert O’Hara, who also directed Harris’s “Slave Play” and is an accomplished satirist in his own playwriting (“Bootycandy”), this backstage fiction is both raucously funny and devastatingly on point. It is an indictment of the real world’s overwhelmingly white, disproportionately male theatrical establishment — not just in New York, but nationwide.This spiky critique arrives with perfect timing: as the industry begins to emerge from well over a year of shutdown, with many companies having publicly pledged their allegiance to the goals of the initiative We See You, White American Theater. Will this indeed be a reset to a more vital, inclusive theater, or merely a blip? “Off Broadway” wants to know.Structured as a series of Zoom calls, it’s powered by a top-notch ensemble. The company’s ailing founder, Daryl, is deliciously played by Richard Kind as a shambling, pretentious gasbag, untethered from reality. He is on the verge of retirement when a ticked-off letter writer mocks him as a “morally insensitive, artistically incompetent fraud.” His rage kills him before his cancer can.Andy, played by Dylan Baker, is his chosen successor. That casting is our first clue that Andy will turn out to be a deeply unnerving guy. (This is a compliment; no one does creepy like Baker.) At least as thin-skinned as Daryl, and just as aggressively certain of his own laudable intentions, Andy shuts down any internal criticism of the company’s racism — in hiring, in programming and in what Marla calls its “fusty, elitist, Anglo Saxon neoclassical fetish.”He sees himself as a hero for retaining two people of color, Marla (Jessica Frances Dukes) and Steph (Kara Wang), on his ravaged staff. He is thrilled at “the optics” of promoting Marla from literary manager, and when he promotes Steph to replace her, he promises a raise — eventually. “Fingers crossed,” he says.The surprising beauty of Zoom here is that the format doesn’t prioritize one character over another. Even when Andy monopolizes a meeting, steamrolling Marla and Steph, the eye of the camera in their little rectangles is unblinking. We see in their faces how strenuous it is to endure him silently.And when he is alone online with Steph, we also see that working from home is no barrier to sexual harassment. With that plot twist comes a new layer of grievance. The company’s managing director, Betty (Becky Ann Baker), reflexively defends Andy. And when Steph takes graphic evidence to The New York Times, no #MeToo article comes of it.Well paced at nearly two hours, but segmented to allow watching in shorter chunks, “Off Broadway” entreats us to notice whose voices, perspectives and experiences are dismissed, talked over, ignored. It asks who in the theatrical establishment is willing to listen, and who is willing to act — and act differently — based on what they hear.That is the question of the moment. Whether we get a healthier, more urgent and empathetic American theater depends on the answer.Off BroadwayThrough Sunday; broad.stream/off-broadway More
“Chicken & Biscuits,” a new comedy by Douglas Lyons, will star Norm Lewis and Michael Urie. Performances will begin on Sept. 23.Plays by Black writers have been few and far between on Broadway over the years. The coming season will feature at least seven.The latest entrant is “Chicken & Biscuits,” a new comedy that last year ran for two weeks at Queens Theater before the pandemic forced it to close.Much of the creative and producing team will be in leadership roles for the first time on Broadway — the playwright, Douglas Lyons, was previously in the ensemble of “Beautiful” and “The Book of Mormon,” while the director, Zhailon Levingston, is an assistant director of “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical.”Onstage, there will be some familiar faces: Norm Lewis and Michael Urie, both well-known and well-liked by theater audiences. Lewis, a Tony nominee for “Porgy and Bess,” is best known as a singer, and this will be his first Broadway play; Urie is on more familiar ground as a comedic actor, and he was featured in a virtual reading of the play during the pandemic.Three of the show’s lead producers, Pamela Ross, E. Clayton Cornelious and Leah Michalos, are in that role for the first time. A fourth, Hunter Arnold, has producing credits on 29 shows, and is one of the lead producers of “Hadestown.”These plays arrive at a time of intensified attention on racial inequity in many corners of society, including the theater industry. Lyons founded the Next Wave Initiative, a scholarship program for Black theater artists; Lewis is a founding member of Black Theater United; and Levingston is the director of industry initiatives for the Broadway Advocacy Coalition. The coalition will be recognized with a special Tony Award this fall.“Chicken & Biscuits,” which is about a family that gathers for a funeral and is forced to reckon with a secret, is scheduled to start performances Sept. 23 and to open Oct. 10 at the Circle in the Square Theater. The play will be the first to move to Broadway from Queens Theater, a nonprofit performing arts center in Flushing Meadows Corona Park.“This show was the one that Covid-19 interrupted for us,” said the theater’s executive director, Taryn Sacramone. “To go from that moment — abrupt shutdown — to now seeing ‘Chicken & Biscuits’ move to Broadway in this moment of reopening for the city — this feels incredibly meaningful.”The other plays by Black writers scheduled to run next season are “Pass Over,” by Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu; “Lackawanna Blues,” by Ruben Santiago-Hudson; “Thoughts of a Colored Man,” by Keenan Scott II; “Trouble in Mind,” by Alice Childress; “Clyde’s,” by Lynn Nottage; and “Skeleton Crew,” by Dominique Morisseau. More
Terrence McNally’s farcical “It’s Only a Play,” the revue “After Midnight” and productions from Russia are among the highlights.Theater is slowly returning to what it knows best: actors and audiences in the same room at the same time.Yet digital initiatives endure. Companies in Britain appear to be ahead of their American colleagues when it comes to putting on physical shows while also catering to audiences who, for one reason or another, don’t have access to them in person. As the Southwark Playhouse in London says on its website, “This is the beauty of online stuff *waves furiously to all our international pals.* You can view this show from anywhere in the world.” That company will livestream two performances (on the same day) of its production of the Charles Dyer “Staircase,” a 1966 drama about a couple of gay men at a time when their relationship was vilified. July 3; southwarkplayhouse.co.uk‘It’s Only a Play’Terrence McNally’s 1980s farce is set at the opening-night party (remember those?) of a Broadway show (they’re coming back, you know). To work at all, the play needs a cast of ace comedians who can milk the assembled egos and their petty feuds. Luckily, the George Street Playhouse in New Jersey has wrangled crackerjacks, including Andy Grotelueschen (a Tony Award nominee for “Tootsie”), Julie Halston, Christine Toy Johnson and Triney Sandoval. Through July 4; georgestreetplayhouse.org‘After Midnight’Sophia Adoum and Solomon Parker III in “After Midnight.”Christopher MuellerThe Signature Theater in Arlington, Va., is presenting an energetic full production of the revue “After Midnight,” which ran on Broadway in 2013. Christopher Jackson (“Hamilton”) leads the cast through a whirlwind of jazzy Cotton Club-era songs, held together by Langston Hughes texts. The show has many pleasures, like the heavenly vocal harmonies in “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” and a timely reminder that tap is exhilarating. Through Aug. 4; sigtheatre.org‘The Bitch Is Back: An All-Too Intimate Evening’Sandra Tsing Loh’s 2015 solo show tackled the subject of menopause. Anybody familiar with Loh’s bitingly funny essays will know that for her, tackling means wrestling to the ground. After all, her memoir on the subject was titled “The Madwoman in the Volvo: My Year of Raging Hormones.” In Los Angeles, the Broad Stage is bringing the show back for a digital encore, because Lord knows a lot of women out there need that outlet. Through June 30; thebroadstage.org‘The Third Day: Autumn’Created by Felix Barrett of the British company Punchdrunk (whose “Sleep No More” opened in New York just over 10 years ago) and Dennis Kelly (“Utopia”), “The Third Day” is a cryptic hybrid of serial television and theater starring Jude Law. “Summer” and “Winter” are available on HBO; the middle part, “Autumn,” was done last fall as a live theatrical broadcast, and is now streaming for free. In typical fashion for the envelope-pushing Punchdrunk, “Autumn” goes on for 12 hours. punchdrunk.com‘The Oresteia’Theater for a New Audience presents Ellen McLaughlin’s adaptation of this ancient Greek trilogy, which she has streamlined into a single piece. Of course this only means a more concentrated dose of murder, palace intrigue and revenge (Friday through June 29; tfana.org). Keeping busy, McLaughlin has another classic coming up this summer: the Jacobean play “Pericles, Prince of Tyre,” presented into consecutive streamable “episodes” for the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival (starting July 2; sfshakes.org).‘Tiny House’It’s a safe bet that when the Westport Country Playhouse in Connecticut opened in 1931, its founders did not expect the 90th-anniversary season would be taking place in a virtual universe even H.G. Wells couldn’t imagine. But here we are, and Michael Gotch’s new play, about folks discussing retrofitting their lives and best environmental practices at a Fourth of July picnic, uses green screens for the sets. June 29-July 18; westportplayhouse.org‘Where We Stand’Steppenwolf, in Chicago, concludes its virtual season with Donnetta Lavinia Grays’s fable of community and forgiveness, directed by Tamilla Woodard. When the solo show premiered at the WP Theater in New York early last year, it ended with the audience voting on a tough decision. That element is maintained in this digital capture, perhaps without the emotional impact of everybody being in the same room at the same time, but preserving the play’s anguished questioning. Through Aug. 31; steppenwolf.org‘Clubhouse’This spring, the Yangtze Repertory Theater commissioned five playwrights to adapt tales pulled from Pu Songling’s classic, often supernaturally tinged collection “Strange Stories From a Chinese Studio.” (The wonderful 1987 movie “A Chinese Ghost Story” was loosely inspired by Pu.) Now the company is streaming the results, with contributions by Stefani Kuo, Yilong Liu, Han Tang, Minghao Tu and Livian Yeh. Through July 18; yzrep.org‘Ghosting’This play, by Anne O’Riordan and Jamie Beamish (Nigel Berbrooke in “Bridgerton”), is less about abruptly ending a text chain than the lies we tell others and ourselves. The Irish Repertory Theater is now streaming the Theater Royal, Waterford, production, directed by Beamish and starring O’Riordan. Through July 4; irishrep.orgStage RussiaRussian theater productions are among the most creative in the world, but even at the best of times it’s been difficult to see them in the United States. This company is making it a lot easier by offering live captures and documentaries like “Rezo,” about the brilliant Georgian puppeteer Rezo Gabriadze, via various streaming options. One of them is Kanopy, which is free through many public libraries (though not, alas, New York’s). On-demand platforms include Stage Russia’s Vimeo channel and Digital Theater. stagerussia.com More
Author: Everything Theatre
in Features and Interviews, Radio playlist
24 June 2021
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Interview with Tom Foreman on his play Big Boys
You can also read more from Tom Foreman here
Shows, Venues & Theatre Companies mentioned
Music Playlist
Dorothy Trogdon – Under A Graphite Sky (taken from Diagrams album, Dorothy)Prefab Sprout – Faron YoungThe Drums – Let’s Go SurfingJim Bob – Kidstrike!Red Box – New EnglandDiagrams – I Tell MyselfKing Creosote – BetelgueseIsobel Campbell – Ant LifeKing Krule – Easy EasyThe Cure – Boys Don’t CryTrampoline – The Boy That Life ForgotPenfriend – SeventeenPete Wylie – People (The Rise of DunningSufjan Stevens – All of Me Wants All of YouKing Creosote – BetelgueseBright Eyes – At The Bottom Of EverythingBaby Bird – King Of NothingThe Anchoress – 5AMThe Flaming Lips – Race For The PrizeIan McNabb – Great Spirit More
Iris Theatre, located at The Actors Church in Covent Garden, is always a joyful place to visit, especially when the sun is out. Their summer season promises more great shows presented outside in the churches wonderful gardens. One of which is Shoes To Fill. So it seemed a good chance to catch up with writer Tanya Bridgeman to find out more about having your debut show performed in such a lovely location and the strong woman who inspired her to write it.
First things first, what’s Shoes To Fill all about then?
Shoes to Fill is about a young, mixed woman of Bajan and Irish heritage who is trying to find herself. At the start of the play she struggles with her mental health and all of her shoes go missing, leaving her confined to her bedroom. She uses the stories that her grandmothers tell her to escape from her sense of entrapment and find freedom in being who and what she wants to be. She fights against the imposter in her head to take up space and thrive for a fulfilling life as her grandmothers taught her.
The play draws on both Irish and Bajan culture, what were the reasons in using those two?
My Grangran is Bajan and my Granny is Irish. Both women had a huge impact on my life in different ways. I grew up hearing their stories and have always thought that these are stories worth sharing.
These cultures are my personal heritage, and I do not think there has ever been a character specifically written with this in mind. I started writing because I want to create more roles for black and mixed actors, I want these roles to be specific so that everyone can see themselves reflected on the stage. For me it is about getting specific, my mix of Bajan and Irish heritage play a huge role in how I relate to the world, this would differ from a person of Greek and Trinidadian heritage. Culture runs through our veins and makes us see things differently from our neighbours. From the food we eat, to how we socialise, a lot of this stuff is ingrained from cultural traditions passed down to us.
The story features a character only known as “Granddaughter”, but appears to never be named, is there a reason for this approach?
Granddaughter is unnamed because I want her to remain relatable. Pretty much everyone has a shared experience of being a grandchild or hearing stories from older relatives, and although the story is specific to someone of a mixed heritage there is something powerful in knowing that a lot of people can connect to this character. Not everyone will relate to everything but hopefully they will relate to just one experience or emotion expressed by granddaughter.
The play promises spoken word and elements of music; are these genres you have explored previously? Did you start with the idea of using them or did they develop as you wrote the play?
I wanted to use spoken word and music when I set out to write Shoes to Fill. When I started my writing journey a lot of what I was writing was spoken word, as I feel like this is a really freeing form to write in. I enjoy rhythm, flow, and rhyme and this is something I wanted to incorporate into the play. I also feel like spoken word has less rules. I’m not, and have never been, great at grammar and structure but by using a form such as spoken word I’m able to just let the words just fall out of me. –(sounds cringe I know! But it’s true!)
For the elements of music, firstly- I just love moving and singing to music – in particular, the bass of a song. But music also encapsulates different cultures so well and to transport audiences to the worlds of Granny and Grangran music was always going to lend a helping hand! Plus, music is fun and can move us in so many ways, it can make us sad, happy, angry, determined!
There is a very feminine focus to things – granddaughter and grandmothers all get mentioned – was it a conscious effort to focus on the female side of family and culture?
Yes, this was a conscious effort! The Grandmother/Granddaughter relationship is so precious, and I wanted to highlight this. Also, Granddaughter is 26 and this whole idea of womanhood across different generations is really interesting. By the time both of my grandmothers where this age they had migrated to England, were married, had jobs, had homes and had children and the conversation around milestones in a woman’s life is a theme that the play looks at.
The play is being performed in the gardens of The Actors Church, does performing outside require a different approach to the final draft of the play?
The play has been written especially for an outside space! When we were awarded the Iris seed commission, I only had a rough draft of what the play was going to look like- so I have been able to write with this in mind. The biggest change in approach that we are having to keep in mind is the fact that we cannot use lighting to create atmosphere. But within the writing there is a sense of the classic, ‘’black out’’ or ‘’scene change’’. Getting creative with words and not relying on lighting has taken us back to the foundation of theatre.
You are part of Soho Theatre Writers Lab, how did you get involved in that and how has it helped you develop your writing?
I only started writing over the first lockdown, having not really written creatively since secondary school (ten years ago – gross!) A friend told me about Soho Writers Lab, and I had a piece ready to send in but did not really expect to gain a place. But I did earn a place and it has been so great! It has firstly giving me the confidence to say that I am a writer. I have learnt so much about structure, different techniques, ways of unlocking ideas and all the different forms that plays can be written in. I am learning and absorbing so much information that is aiding my skills as an artist. Being able to read some amazing plays by other amazingly talented new writers is so inspiring and really pushes me to produce my best work.
As well as Shoes to Fill I am writing another play which I am getting feedback for through the Soho writers lab and although the plays are separate, I can apply the dramaturgical advice to both. Doing so I can break down the play and really push the narrative to an exciting place.
So, how does it feel knowing your debut play is all set to be unleased upon the world?
Brilliant! I cannot wait to share Shoes to Fill with an audience. It’s a really fun piece and we have a lot of surprises in store! Also Shoes to Fill is not only my debut play as a writer but the debut show of my production company FAIR PLAY. It’s so exciting to see everything coming together and years of hard work paying off. Eeeakkk so many emotions right now!
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Thanks to Tanya for her time in chatting to us. Shoes To Fill will be playing in the gardens of The Actors Church in Covent Garden between 5 and 10 July. Further details and booking via the below link. More
“Exit,” a new musical production, uses the political drama both as a metaphor and as a backdrop for a cross-continental love triangle.PARIS — Brexit, Britain’s protracted disentanglement from the European Union, was always bound to appear onstage. It didn’t take long for productions to reference it in London or in Edinburgh. With “Exit,” a new show at the Théâtre de la Huchette here, the political drama has now reached French theaters — in the form of an effervescent mini-musical.There are sung poll numbers, trips across the English Channel, and plenty of French and British stereotypes. Yet “Exit,” which was co-written by Stéphane Laporte and Gaétan Borg, doesn’t dwell on politics. Instead, Brexit provides a backdrop and a metaphor for the play’s cross-border love triangle and journey of self-discovery.It is a mighty premiere for a tiny theater. The Théâtre de la Huchette boasts only 85 seats, and because of Covid rules, it can currently be only 65 percent full. (The restriction is tentatively set to be lifted next week.) It is best known for its cult, long-running productions of two absurdist plays by Eugène Ionesco, “The Lesson” and “The Bald Soprano.” Both have run for over six decades, with the pandemic the longest interruption in the theater’s history.Since 1981, however, La Huchette has also presented a third production after its Ionesco double bill. There is a touch of absurdity to “Exit,” too, most notably in the story line that brings the three main characters together.All of them work in the video game industry. A French couple, Sybille and Antoine, co-founded a company called Anachronia, which makes intentionally dumb games like “Marie-Antoinette and the Danton Sheep” (in which the French queen is tasked with knocking off sheep) and “Marie Curie Super Radium,” with the famed scientist fighting the Nazis.Then, when Sybille goes looking for a designer for a new project, she finds Mark, an aloof, sarcastic Englishman. The twists and turns designed to bring them together are hardly subtle. Sybille’s enthusiastic yet half-baked pitch would be unlikely to convince a seasoned professional, yet that’s where “Exit” really shines.Pangos and Savary in “Exit.” Her character is French. His is English.Fabienne RappeneauEach game gets old-fashioned, two-dimensional credits on a screen above the cast, and the actors don campy wigs and costumes to demonstrate it, complete with musical numbers. “Trouba-Dance,” Sybille’s Eleanor of Aquitaine-inspired dance game, is an especially uproarious example, and Harold Savary (Mark) brings deadpan game character impressions to the table.The story is set in the run-up to the Brexit vote in 2016, but the political context is mostly mentioned in passing, as a way to signal how much time has passed as well as the cultural differences between Sybille’s French and British suitors. It does make for a few entertaining scenes, as when Antoine and Mark square off with mutual insults and each concludes that the other’s culture remains his “favorite monster.”Laporte and Borg’s songs, with music by Didier Bailly, are less consistent when it comes to character arcs. Antoine (played by the endearing Simon Heulle, a bright presence) is initially depicted as a goofy nerd, but his insistence that Anachronia must produce only inane games — the company’s tagline at one point is described as “Anachronia: 100 percent laziness” — grows somewhat ludicrous.Mark’s character is also seemingly bent to accommodate the plot. Near the end, after he and Sibylle admit their love for each other, he swiftly becomes controlling — a trait that isn’t really foreshadowed. “I just want to be your savior,” he tells Sibylle.The goal is clearly to set up the denouement, Sibylle’s decision to be “alone, standing and without fear,” as the final song puts it. This conclusion is meant to be uplifting, but given the all-male writing and directing team, it feels dictated by empowerment as a generic goal, rather than arriving organically. It’s not exactly a feminist statement for a female character to find self-revelation through a man, only for him to become a pantomime villain, thus justifying a solo ending.That’s a shame, because Marina Pangos carries much of “Exit” with her assured, vivacious performance as Sibylle, down to her interactions with the audience. Every time the character is on the Eurostar, she sits in La Huchette’s tiny auditorium, which stands in for a train car, and addresses audience members as fellow passengers, all with superb comic timing.Leïla Anis in her play “The Monstrous Ones” at the Théâtre Gérard Philipe.Xavier CantatWhile “Exit” was part of the wave of premieres after theaters were allowed to reopen in France last month, other productions are returning to a second life onstage. “The Monstrous Ones” (“Les Monstrueuses”), a play Leïla Anis first published in 2017, found an audience even while theaters were closed. Between January and March, Anis took it to high schools, where artists were allowed to perform.It was revived at the Théâtre Gérard Philipe in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis this month, and it is an eye-catching achievement. Anis performs the lead role and plays four different characters, all women from different generations within the same family, linked by difficult experiences of motherhood.Ella, the sole 21st-century character, learns at the start that she is pregnant and, after losing consciousness, finds herself in a psychiatric hospital, grappling with family memories. She becomes Jeanne, her great-grandmother, who loses her daughter Rosa after divorce; Rosa, who undergoes an illegal abortion; and Zeïna, from another side of the family, who hemorrhages during the delivery of her son in Yemen.There is at times too much back story packed into this one-hour show, to the point that Ella’s growth as a character remains limited. But Anis, who was named an associate playwright with the Théâtre Gérard Philipe in 2020, paints a vivid, often poetic picture of the women’s shared trauma, both in her writing and onstage.Her ability to physically transform from scene to scene — one minute a nearly feral presence with hair over her face, the next a shy young mother-to-be — is a rare gift, and the director of “The Monstrous Ones,” her frequent collaborator Karim Hammiche, makes way for her to explore it freely.Hammiche joins her onstage for a few scenes, as Ella’s doctor during her hospital stay, but this is very much Anis’s show. For French high school students, it offered an opportunity to explore a darker, rarely discussed side of being a mother. Now, at long last, productions like “The Monstrous Ones” are playing in theaters again.Exit. Directed by Patrick Alluin. Théâtre de la Huchette, through Aug. 28.The Monstrous Ones. Directed by Karim Hammiche. Théâtre Gérard Philipe. Further performances to be announced. More
A live theatrical event in the Meatpacking district, featuring several playwrights and sets by David Rockwell, “turns New York itself into the playhouse.”On a balmy weekday afternoon in Manhattan’s Meatpacking district, a small crowd gathered around a storefront window where a neon-lit pole dancer in purple platform stilettos performed an alluring routine. Passers-by stopped to gawk at the silent spectacle. Some took out their camera phones.There was no way for them to know that this was a rehearsal of a short play called “Lust,” or that soon the dancer would be performing it nine times a night. On the sidewalk, the director Moisés Kaufman sat in a bistro chair, surrounded by members of his Tectonic Theater Project. Through their headsets they heard what the pedestrians could not: pulsing music and the character’s narrated thoughts.Across the street, sleek installations in other vacant storefronts — a grave site, a dominatrix’s dungeon — were also sets for plays, one about greed, the other wrath. And that open storage container parked at the curb? It would become the stage for a piece about envy. Riffs on gluttony, pride and sloth would have wide windows in a disused space two blocks away.Ngozi Anyanwu’s play, inspired by gluttony, follows two women in a garden and explores the pitfalls of being overly curious.Dina Litovsky for The New York TimesMing Peiffer’s play, a riff on wrath, imagines an encounter between an Asian dominatrix and her white client.Dina Litovsky for The New York TimesAs New York embarks on its hot vax summer, Kaufman and Tectonic Theater are bringing “Seven Deadly Sins” to the streets. A carnal, high-gloss evening of short plays performed largely in storefronts to peripatetic audiences supplied with headphones to hear the dialogue, it started previews on Tuesday, part of the restless, exuberant rebirth of live theater — experimental and open-air.“The urgency that I feel about making these plays is something that I have not felt in years,” Kaufman said in an interview. “Because we — the artist, the actor, the playwright — we are needing it. We have this hunger. But I also profoundly believe that the audiences share that hunger.”Probably best known for the Matthew Shepard play “The Laramie Project,” Kaufman imported the concept for this show wholesale from Miami Beach, where Michel Hausmann, the artistic director of Miami New Drama, staged the first version of “Seven Deadly Sins” last fall.In the Florida iteration, Kaufman wrote and directed just one piece, “All I Want Is Everything,” about greed. For New York, he is directing the whole 90-minute evening, surrounded by a fresh crop of playwrights: Ngozi Anyanwu (gluttony), Thomas Bradshaw (sloth), MJ Kaufman (pride), Jeffrey LaHoste (envy), Ming Peiffer (wrath) and Bess Wohl (lust).With the eye of the Tony Award-winning set designer David Rockwell, the show has suited its aesthetic to the neighborhood, past and present. Once notorious for gritty sex clubs and streets puddled with animal blood, the Meatpacking district has evolved into a chic backdrop for modeling shoots and the home of the High Line and the Whitney Museum of American Art.Jeffrey LaHoste inside the set for “Naples,” about bisexuality in the French aristocracy, inspired by envy.Dina Litovsky for The New York TimesThe plays of “Seven Deadly Sins” tend toward the political, which is in keeping with Tectonic’s tradition. And as a note on the show’s website warns, some of the content may be upsetting, such as a venomous confrontation between the two characters in Peiffer’s play. Children under 13 are not allowed.When Kaufman contacted Peiffer about “Seven Deadly Sins” — at what she called “the height of the Asian hate,” right after the Atlanta shootings left six women of Asian descent dead — she knew that she would choose to write about wrath. In “Longhorn,” she imagines an encounter between an Asian dominatrix and her client, a white man.“The thing that I kind of wanted to get at with my play is the ways in which different people, depending on their identity — their cultural identity, their racial identity, their gender identity — are allowed to express their rage in different ways,” Peiffer said.Or in the case of women, she added, not allowed, “because, you know, you’re called crazy or you’re emotional or you’re on your period or whatever the hell.”Wohl, who wrote the pole-dancing play and is a Tony nominee for “Grand Horizons,” said she picked her sin because “you can’t turn down lust when it’s on the table.” She, too, has used the project to examine sexual politics and violence, as well as the voyeuristic element of storefront performance.“There was something really evocative to me about creating these little spaces and trapping performers in them and asking them to repeat the action over and over for different audiences,” she said.“You can’t turn down lust when it’s on the table,” Bess Wohl said about the sin she picked for her play.Dina Litovsky for The New York TimesThomas Bradshaw’s play, about a couple working through their sexual slump, deals with sloth.Dina Litovsky for The New York TimesKaufman’s own play occupies the same city block as “Lust” and “Longhorn.” Given where it falls in the rhythm of the evening, he decided he needed to reshape his script from what it had been in Miami Beach.“The playwright Moisés Kaufman had to talk to the artistic director Moisés Kaufman,” he said, deadpan, “and the artistic director said to the playwright, ‘I love your play, but all the other plays that are here are very dark and very difficult. You have to make your play a comedy.’”But his play’s set has the same designers that it had in Florida: the brothers Christopher and Justin Swader. Rockwell did all the others — his first collaboration with Kaufman, though they had been talking about working together for more than 16 years, ever since Rockwell saw Kaufman’s Broadway production of “I Am My Own Wife.”Rockwell, an architect who spent a chunk of the pandemic immersed in outdoor dining design and navigating New York City rules about it, said he was drawn to the logistical design challenges of “Seven Deadly Sins.” He used his bureaucratic know-how to get clearance for audiences to be seated in the same curbside zone where restaurant sheds tend to be.The return of live theater to the city is a “collective healing process,” Rockwell said, one that, in getting people into public spaces this summer, “turns New York itself into the playhouse.”Each of the three nightly showings will accommodate 66 ticketed audience members, split into three smaller groups that watch the plays in a different order, with 22 spectators per storefront. Gigi Pritzker, whose entertainment company Madison Wells is producing the show with Tectonic, envisions its format as “something that could be done all over the world.”“The urgency that I feel about making these plays is something that I have not felt in years,” Moisés Kaufman. His short play was inspired by greed.Dina Litovsky for The New York TimesTo Kaufman, who said that “Seven Deadly Sins” has gone “a bit over” its $500,000 budget, the project is also a way “to jump-start our community” post-shutdown.“To be able to hire 100 theater makers for these plays is one of the greatest joys of my life,” he said. “After the year that theater makers have had? It’s been horrific, horrific, horrific.”A publicist later updated the number of theater makers to 123.Wohl, for one, said she blinked back tears as she headed to a rehearsal of “Lust.” But she also spoke of the poignancy of seeing how the pandemic has changed the city: all the places that used to be and no longer are.“It’s just one heartbreak after another walking through the streets of Manhattan right now,” she said. “So something about animating those empty spaces feels really meaningful. It kind of breathes some life back into those spaces, or allows them to have potential rather than just loss.”The Meatpacking district is of course pocked with dormant real estate. On the other hand, when Kaufman and I popped into a restaurant in the neighborhood to talk over a drink on a recent Friday evening, the place was humming with activity.Kaufman, too, was practically vibrating — delighted to be throwing himself into a big production again, eager to unleash his show on audiences and unsuspecting pedestrians.“My husband keeps telling me, ‘Temper your excitement,’ but I am Latino, Jewish and gay,” he said. “It’s very hard to temper my excitement.”He finished his gin on the rocks. Then he headed out the door, back to his colleagues, back to work.Seven Deadly SinsThrough July 18; sevendeadlysinsnyc.com. More
