Classic Stage Company

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Television

      Tavi Gevinson Finds Comfort in Legal Pads, Canned Fish and Rumi

      by

      Writing for magazines while acting in “Gossip Girl” and “Assassins” has the 25-year-old staying up too late and looking for ways to quiet her mind.At 25, Tavi Gevinson finds herself caught between worlds.There’s the world of acting — where, starring in both Classic Stage Company’s upcoming “Assassins” revival and HBO Max’s “Gossip Girl” reboot, she already straddles stage and screen — and the world of writing. Launched into the public eye in 2010 when she founded the now-defunct fashion blog Rookie, she continues to write for herself and for magazines, notably when expressing her regrets in Vulture for working with the abusive producer Scott Rudin.But the preternaturally busy digital native is also at a crossroads when it comes to how to best use her time. She says she longs for the 3 a.m. sleepovers of her childhood, an hour which now sees her “sitting at my desk and working on different projects that no one asked for.”It’s not surprising then, that on a video call from her apartment in Brooklyn, Gevinson discussed 10 things that ease her mind and help her feel productive. (An earlier list she’d shared before our conversation was meant to be satirical, but she wasn’t sure how well a shout-out to “rugged individual queen” Ayn Rand would read, and recanted.) These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. Canned fish Once I realized I was the first person ever to try canned fish — and that it’s such an easy way to feel like I’ve made something, even though I haven’t done much — it became very pleasurable. It gives me a lot of energy, which is kind of annoying, because when it turns out things are good for me, I’m like, “Damn it, now I have to keep doing this.”2. Google Keep It’s basically Google’s Notes app, but I feel like the Notes app has become such a loaded medium: It makes me feel like I’m writing an apology, and I have nothing to apologize for. So I needed a different app to trick myself into writing by starting on my phone, instead of sitting down at my computer and seeing a blank document and getting freaked out. Plus, Google really needs our help, and really needs the shout-out, so I wanted to include them.3. Legal pads Journals give me anxiety, especially if they’re really nice; even picking out a new journal can take all the fun out of keeping one for me. These are more like my diary. When I was in high school, I would write my diary during class, in my notebooks, and then tear out the pages and compile them. “Books” would be a strong word for what they are.4. The are.na app and website It’s sort of like Tumblr, but more organized; you create different channels, and then you upload blocks with photos, videos, links to articles, PDFs, anything. I don’t know if the good people at are.na would object to this, but the easiest way to describe it is actually as a kind of Pinterest for ideas. I follow channels where people compile readings about subjects I’m interested in, or images that follow a certain theme. Then I use it to organize ideas for things I’m writing. It’s very calming to use.5. Turning childhood keepsakes into jewelry I’ve never made my own clothes or anything, but I found these broken necklaces I made when I was a kid and realized it would be pretty simple to fix them. So I got supplies from a bead store across from Bryant Park, and now I can wear these necklaces I made when I was 5, but have turtles on them. I kind of pile up a lot of DIY projects that sound nice in theory and then rarely follow through.6. Upcycling brands The Series and ThereIsNoMoreStudio! on Etsy are brands that upcycle materials they find, while Samavai makes dresses and shirts out of saris. I have a couple of things from each, and it feels special to wear something that has a built-in history and that someone has very creatively reinvented.I don’t do a lot of browsing on Etsy, though, because I think it’s kind of stressful. More than once, I’ve bought a piece of furniture and then realized, once it came, that it was for a doll house.7. Abandoning books I started finishing a lot more books once I started abandoning ones that I wasn’t compelled to finish, but would just carry around with all of this guilt, and then I would end up looking at my phone instead. So, if by page 30, I’m not interested in turning the page, or I feel I’m not being enriched, then I let it go and I trust that it will either come back to me at the right time, or I’ll die never having read it.8. Conair face steamer A makeup artist on “Gossip Girl” gave this to me and I went, “OK, Amy …” but then I found it really helpful and soothing. You use it and it’s like, “Am I in a spa, or am I on my toilet?” It also seems to be good for your skin — which is the point, yes — but the ritual is also really pleasant to me and feels like it’s helping my skin even more.9. Running to slow songs If I listen to fast songs, I try to run at the pace of the music and can’t keep up. So I like to listen to songs that go at a steady clip, or ideally craft a playlist that starts a little more hyper and then reaches some kind of slow catharsis, with everyone in Prospect Park loving and understanding that I’m having a meaningful experience.Some of the music is excruciatingly sincere, singer-songwriter music. Some is ambient and wonky — Brian Eno is reliable. Sometimes I do show tunes, too, and I’m mortified that people can hear it, and see that I’m angrily running to “The Light in the Piazza.”10. “Don’t Go Back to Sleep” I came across this Rumi poem a few weeks ago in the “Reality Streaming” Substack by Hawa Arsala. Whenever I’d hear people say that they wrote, or made art, in the morning, I would be like, “Well, good for you.” I was resistant to the idea of there being an advantage to waking up early, but I recently tasked myself with trying it for a week and, annoyingly enough, it is very magical to write in the morning. It feels like you have some kind of secret or something.This poem makes me much more eager to go toward that magical little space, because nothing else really gives me that feeling I get out of working alone. It isn’t really fair to be an unpleasant wench all the time, just because I’m mad that I didn’t spend enough time writing, so … yeah, that poem. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Theater

      Head of Classic Stage Company to Depart in 2022

      by

      The Tony Award-winning director John Doyle will leave after six years at the theater — but not before directing two musicals.John Doyle, the artistic director of Classic Stage Company since 2016, announced on Monday that he would step down from the Off Broadway theater next summer.“I feel like it’s somebody else’s turn,” Doyle, 68, said in a video interview from Britain. “It’s as simple as that. I think art is better with a kind of turnover.”Classic Stage Company on Monday also revealed its 2021-22 season, Doyle’s last with the company. The productions include: Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s “Assassins”; Marcus Gardley’s “black odyssey”; Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig’s “Snow in Midsummer”; and Lynn Ahrens, Stephen Flaherty and Terrence McNally’s “A Man of No Importance.”Doyle, a Tony Award-winner in 2006 for his revival of “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” will direct the musicals “Assassins” and “A Man of No Importance.”“Assassins,” which will be Classic Stage Company’s first in-person production since the start of the pandemic, was in rehearsals last year when New York theaters were closed to slow the coronavirus’s spread.Given the events of the past year and a half, Doyle said, storytellers “must be addressing the stories they tell.”“How they tell those stories, why they tell those stories, who are they for?” he said. “We have to pick up that responsibility very strongly.”Doyle has also asked of Classic Stage Company: What does it mean for a piece of theater to be a “classic” today?“It need no longer mean plays by dead, white, European men,” Doyle said. “Which is inevitably what most classical theater has been.”Two of the coming season’s works — “black odyssey,” directed by Stevie Walker-Webb, and “Snow in Midsummer,” directed by Zi Alikhan, both planned for the first half of 2022 — are by living artists of color. Both reimagine classic stories: Homer’s “The Odyssey” and Guan Hanqing’s “The Injustice to Dou Yi That Moved Heaven and Earth.”Those plays, Doyle said, are “trying to take the worldwide stories and make those available to the modern audience, in the hope and intention of bringing in new audiences into the theater.”“A Man of No Importance” resonates with Doyle. It’s a musical about a Celtic man (Doyle is Scottish) making theater for his local community (which Doyle once did).“It celebrates what theater can do, and it celebrates how theater can make change,” Doyle said. “And I’m hoping that my leaving will help to make more change. And I’m hoping that my doing a piece about how spiritual, in a way, the theater can be, in terms of how it touches our souls, is a nice way to leave.”Reflecting on his tenure, Doyle said he was especially proud of reconfiguring the physical space of the theater itself. “It really feels like a New York space to me now, not just a black box,” he said. “Plays come and go, but the space stays. And it is a truly remarkable space.”His departure is not a retirement. Doyle said that the pandemic made him realize the importance of family, self and quiet time, but that theater remains as important to him as ever. And although he would like to spend more time in the Scottish Highlands with his husband, he has no plans to leave New York any time soon.“I’m really hopeful that I could do another Broadway show or two, before I pop my clogs, as we say in Britain,” Doyle said. “I would love that.” More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Theater

      Theater to Stream: ‘Assassins’ and ‘Romeo and Juliet’

      by

      Highlights include a virtual production of Adam Rapp’s “The Sound Inside” and a new reading series by Roundabout Theater Company.In March of last year, Classic Stage Company announced that its revival of the Stephen Sondheim musical “Assassins” was postponed. “The production was to begin performances on April 2,” the email said. “C.S.C. intends to resume rehearsals and present ‘Assassins’ in the coming months.”Fast forward 13 months, and the company is indeed presenting “Assassins,” or at least a stopgap event until the director, John Doyle, can fully proceed. Still, fans will enjoy “Tell the Story: Celebrating Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s ‘Assassins,’” a tribute to the show — which is told from the perspective of people who have tried, successfully and not, to kill an American president — featuring chats (including with Sondheim and Weidman), performances and testimonies, with actors from the 1990 premiere and the 2004 Broadway production joining the Classic Stage Company cast.This is a rare opportunity to hear, for example, three John Wilkes Booths (Victor Garber, Michael Cerveris and Steven Pasquale) talk about their craft — and killing Lincoln. Among Doyle’s most alluring casting moves: Tavi Gevinson as Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme and Judy Kuhn as Sara Jane Moore. Even the theater superfan Hillary Clinton will weigh in on the show’s impact. Thursday through Monday; classicstage.orgMaggie Bofill, left, and Ephraim Birney “The Sound Inside.”Pedro Bermudez‘The Sound Inside’A drama as suspenseful as any thriller, Adam Rapp’s brilliant two-character Broadway debut considers how fiction can be uncomfortably close and personal. TheaterWorks Hartford’s digital version was hatched by the stage director Rob Ruggiero and the filmmaker Pedro Bermúdez, with Maggie Bofill as a Yale professor of creative writing and Ephraim Birney (the son of Reed Birney) as a student both troubled and troubling. Through April 30; twhartford.orgFrom left, Jessie Buckley, Lucian Msamati and Josh O’Connor in “Romeo and Juliet.”Rob Youngson‘Romeo and Juliet’With Jessie Buckley (“Fargo”) and Josh O’Connor (“The Crown”) as the unluckiest lovers ever, the swoon factor is high in Simon Godwin’s staging of Shakespeare’s tragic romance for the National Theater. Watch also for Deborah Findlay (a Tony Award nominee for “The Children”) and Tamsin Greig, who almost hijack the show as Juliet’s nurse and mother. April 23-May 21; pbs.orgSecond ChancesAfter a prologue set in 1600, the Chilean theater collective Bonobo’s “Tú Amarás” (“You Shall Love”) jumps to a present-day medical conference, where the arrival of aliens weighs on the proceedings. The Baryshnikov Arts Center captured the play’s New York premiere in February 2020, and is now featuring it as part of the center’s digital season. April 22-29; bacnyc.orgAnother small show getting a welcome encore online is Lizzie Vieh’s dark comedy “Monsoon Season.” All for One Theater is streaming a performance filmed during the play’s 2019 run at the Rattlestick Theater in Manhattan. Danny (Richard Thieriot) and his ex-wife, Julia (Therese Plaehn), live in a world of tech-support jobs, wannabe YouTube influencers and crummy apartments. The couple are almost never onstage at the same time yet share a weird chemistry, until an even weirder finale. Through Sunday; afo.nyc‘The Norman Conquests’In 2009, a terrific British cast led by Stephen Mangan and Jessica Hynes barreled through an inspired Broadway revival of this Alan Ayckbourn trilogy, in which each play offers a different perspective on the same hectic weekend in the country. If you want another take on these farcical shenanigans, the streaming platform Acorn and Broadway HD have made available the British mini-series adaptation from 1978. It’s deliciously drenched in 1970s aesthetics — behold the brown palette — with Tom Conti in the pivotal role of Norman. acorn.tv and BroadwayHDFrom left, Florencia Lozano, Jimmy Smits and Daphne Rubin-Vega in “Two Sisters and a Piano.”via New Normal RepNew Normal RepIt takes moxie to create a theater company these days. Welcome to the emerging New Normal Rep, which is presenting Nilo Cruz’s “Two Sisters and a Piano.” In the play, which predates Cruz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Anna in the Tropics” by a few years, the siblings of the title are under house arrest in the Havana of 1991. The cast of this virtual production, directed by the playwright, includes Daphne Rubin-Vega, a veteran of both shows, and Jimmy Smits, who was also in “Tropics.” April 21-May 23; newnormalrep.orgThe ReFocus ProjectThe powerhouse Roundabout Theater Company is launching an initiative to help rethink what constitutes the American theatrical canon. For the first year, which focuses on 20th-century works by Black playwrights, Roundabout has partnered with Black Theater United and unearthed promising texts for readings. The first is Angelina Weld Grimké’s “Rachel,” from 1916, which is thought to be the first professionally produced play by a Black woman in the United States (April 23-26). The following week brings Samm-Art Williams’s “Home,” originally produced by the Negro Ensemble Company before transferring to Broadway in 1980. (April 30-May 3). roundabouttheatre.orgThe Gay ’80sDid the recent Russell T Davies mini-series “It’s a Sin” leave you wanting more? Two solo shows explore a similar milieu: the lives of gay men in the 1980s. Ben SantaMaria’s semi-autobiographical solo play “Really Want to Hurt Me,” captured in 2018, depicts the coming-of-age of a young gay man (portrayed by Ryan Price) in 1984 Britain. bensantamaria.comThe protagonist of “Cruise” discovers he is H.I.V. positive in 1984 and spends the following four years living life to its fullest. Written and performed by Jack Holden, who was inspired by a story he heard while working at a hotline, this play is getting a digital run before a physical one (if all goes as planned) in May. Thursday through April 25; stream.theatreRosalyn Coleman in “The Woman’s Party.”via Clubbed Thumb‘The Woman’s Party’The Clubbed Thumb company, whose discoveries include “What the Constitution Means to Me” and “Tumacho,” is serializing Rinne Groff’s play, about the battle for the Equal Rights Amendment, over three episodes released weekly. The show, directed by Tara Ahmadinejad, tracks the arguments among feminist activists as they wrangled over goals and strategy. This should be catnip to the terrific cast, which includes Alma Cuervo, Marga Gomez, Marceline Hugot and Emily Kuroda. April 22 through August; clubbedthumb.orgBen Thompson, left, and David Ricardo-Pearce in rehearsal of “The Lorax.”Manuel Harlan, via The Old Vic‘The Lorax’As part of its In Camera series (“Lungs,” “Three Kings”), the Old Vic Theater in London is bringing back its 2015 production of Dr. Seuss’s “The Lorax” for a handful of livestreamed performances that jointly celebrate the book’s 50th anniversary and Earth Day. Max Webster directs David Greig and Charlie Fink’s adaptation of the eco-minded story. “I am the Lorax,” the title character says. “I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.” Wednesday through Saturday, with free performances for schools on April 22; oldvictheatre.com More