Stream The Half-Life of Marie Curie directed by Dawn Monique Williams through December 20th from TheatreSquared HERE.
Through Dec. 20, Stream THE HALF-LIFE OF MARIE CURIE directed by Dawn Monique Williams
‘The Half-Life of Marie Curie’ directed by Dawn Monique Williams Review: Fallout of an Affair
Leontyne Mbele-Mbong as Hertha Ayrton
In spite of all the theater-related traveling I did in the years before the pandemic struck, there are still plenty of drama companies of consequence that I have yet to see. I’ve been hearing good things about Arkansas’s TheatreSquared for some time now, and it was long my plan to see a play there after paying a visit to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, which is just 30 miles away and which I also have yet to see. But life kept getting in the way, and the coming of Covid-19 finished the job: I haven’t seen a play in a theater, in or out of New York, since March. So when TheatreSquared announced that it would be webcasting a production of Lauren Gunderson’s “The Half-Life of Marie Curie” taped in an empty theater, I immediately put it on my schedule.
Ms. Gunderson’s work is rarely staged in New York, but she was the most frequently produced playwright in America (not counting Shakespeare) in 2017 and 2019, and it’s easy to see why. Not only does she specialize in feminist-angled plots whose protagonists are women, but she makes a special point of writing eminently practical plays that are carefully tailored to the specific needs of theater companies. Like all prolific artists, Ms. Gunderson’s work is uneven—she can be earnest to a fault when she has a political point to make— but at her best, she is a fine craftsman whose shows are always solidly made and on occasion inspired.
“The Half-Life of Marie Curie,” a two-hander first performed off Broadway in 2019, falls somewhere in between the extremes of over-earnestness and inspiration. It’s a bioplay that tells how Mme. Curie (Rebecca Harris)—the Polish-French physicist who discovered radium, coined the word “radioactive” and won two Nobel Prizes, in 1903 and 1911—was persecuted by France’s press when it became known that she was having a passionate affair with a married man. Hertha Ayrton (Leontyne Mbele-Mbong), a British colleague and part-time suffragette, comes to France to look after her old friend as the action gets under way. Alas, much of the dialogue that ensues amounts to little more than undramatized pulpit-pounding and ill-digested biographical data (“I’m sorry—you won another Nobel Prize?”) with a few glaring anachronisms thrown in for good measure (I cannot imagine that a Brit with so well-bred an accent would have used the word “bullshit” in casual conversation in 1911). Nevertheless, the situation portrayed by Ms. Gunderson has the advantage of being inherently dramatic, and “The Half-Life of Marie Curie” is the kind of story that can easily take wing so long as the two actors are first-rate.
This brings us to Ms. Harris and Ms. Mbele Mbong, both of whom (as theater people like to say) really know how to deliver the mail. Not only does Ms. Harris bear a striking resemblance to Mme. Curie, but her binational accent is impeccable and her performance is both compelling and entirely believable. So fully does she embody her role that it hardly seems as if she’s acting at all. (Newsreel footage of Mme. Curie exists, and I’d be surprised if Ms. Harris hadn’t screened it while preparing for this show.)
Ms. Mbele-Mbong is no less convincing, and the production, whose skeletal sets are by Ashleigh Burns and whose sound design is by Michael Prie to, is spare but exceedingly handsome. Dawn Monique Williams, the director, is the associate artistic director of Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre Company. Her work is new to me, but if this beautifully staged show is representative, then I’ll definitely seek it out in the future.
I also plan to keep an eye on TheatreSquared, which is clearly worthy of its fine reputation. I can’t wait for the pandemic to subside so that I can resume seeking out first-class theater all over America—especially from outstanding drama companies like TheatreSquared.
Review by Terry Teachout for the Wall Street Journal.
Black Girl — and Nonbinary — Magic at Helm of Bay Area Theaters, featuring Khalia Davis
Bay Area theater saw the promotion of three new Black female or femme-identified nonbinary leaders in rapid succession this year.
In August, Khalia Davis became the artistic director of Bay Area Children’s Theatre, with Nina Meehan changing titles from executive artistic director to CEO.
Q: Has each of you always seen yourself as a leader?
Khalia Davis: I have not always seen myself in a leadership position in the theater industry. I started out as a kid actor, from 6 years old. I thought I was going to be an actress for the screen. It was not until I was in high school and I booked TheatreWorks Silicon Valley that I thought, “Oh, you can make money being a theater artist.” But the problem was that I was not seeing myself reflected in spaces of leadership. (As my career progressed), I was recognizing that I have a lot of opinions about the theater for a young audience (TYA) industry. I was recognizing that I’m not seeing myself in these spaces, and that I’m not hearing particular things being voiced. That probably means that I need to be that person.
Q: Each of you is so new in your organizations that maybe this isn’t a fair question, but is there something you’ve already done — even if it’s something small or tough to quantify, that you wouldn’t necessarily put on a resume — that you’re proud of?
Davis: Something that I love that we’ve all adopted is this access check-in before all of our meetings, where we focus everybody on: What does everyone need? That could be as simple as, “My Wi-Fi’s spotty today,” to, during some of our darkest times in the last few months, I have been very honest and open about where my head was at, how it was hard for me to think when community members are being gunned down in the streets. I appreciated us having the space every single day before we got into the work to just say, “As a human, how are you?”
Q: What does Kamala Harris as VP mean to each of you?
Davis: It’s so refreshing and gratifying to witness someone who has continually owned both parts of herself in her identity throughout her whole life and who has done the work to learn more about that history so she can speak to those members of the community in a more educated, grounded, respectful way. I also think it’s great to see someone who appreciates and celebrates life. There is a joy that she brought. We have not seen that in four years.
Read the full interview by Lily Janiak from Datebook here.
Preview DEAR MAPEL, Written by and Starring Psalmayene 24
Reserve a FREE ticket here. Video event runs October 26th – October 31st.
At Mosaic Theater, a playwright asks: How do you mourn a man you barely knew?
On Oct. 26, when audiences get a first look at “Dear Mapel,” Psalmayene 24’s new one-man show about his relationship with his deceased father — currently in development at Mosaic Theater — the occasion will be no typical workshop.
For one, the familiar workshopping process — in which a scaled-down version of a play is staged and critiqued — has been set aside by Mosaic in favor of a virtual, multimedia-enhanced presentation because of the pandemic.
But Psalmayene 24 also says that this play is a particularly flexible work in progress because he’s still processing its inciting event: the 2014 death of his estranged father, Mapel. As writing the script has bred catharsis, that catharsis has engendered rewrites — with the cycle repeating indefinitely.
“There was just incredible grief, as you can imagine,” the 47-year-old writer-performer says of his father’s death, which he didn’t learn about until 2017. “So this play was created with the spirit of trying to get some sort of closure in that relationship. How can we alter and heal those relationships, even when a parent is deceased? I mean, that’s fascinating to me. I’m still in that process, and I’ve experienced a transformation of my relationship with my father through the making of this piece.”
Earlier this year, Mosaic Theater appointed Psalmayene 24 to a three-year position as playwright in residence, supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Emerson College’s HowlRound Theatre Commons.
Psalmayene 24 promptly identified “Dear Mapel” as the first project of that collaboration. When the pandemic brought on the widespread closing of theaters, he found that the sense of isolation only heightened his desire to complete a project about the thirst for human connection.
Read the full article by Thomas Floyd from The Washington Post here.
Psalmayene 24 Featured in Studio Theatre’s Virtual ‘Salons’ – Offering a Cultural Gathering Place During the Pandemic
Before he began hosting Psalm’s Salons for Studio Theatre, playwright and director Psalmayene 24 didn’t yearn to interview fellow artists in public — with or without his preferred soft drink (ginger beer) in hand.
“I had zero desire to do this,” the busy local theater-maker confesses, recalling his path to emceeing the monthly virtual event, which he describes as “a cultural space that celebrates excellence, unity and the spirit of joy through an unapologetically Black lens.” The latest installment streams Sept. 18 at 5 p.m. with a trio of high-profile guests: Will Power, Danny Hoch, and Jonzi D, pioneers of hip-hop theater.
If Psalm (as he’s known to colleagues) acquired his new gig by default — answering “an opportunity and a need,” he says — he has come to relish it, and has arguably reinvented the online theater-chat format along the way. Free, and streamed live on Studio’s Facebook and YouTube pages, the salons have featured such guests as playwright James Ijames, actors Natalie Graves Tucker and Justin Weaks, and playwright-performer Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi. Conversations cover substantive and urgent issues — from the interviewees’ artistic processes and philosophies; to systemic racism in America; ongoing activism for social justice; the death of Rep. John Lewis; and recent calls for the American theater field to acknowledge and rectify its own racism.AD
But while the discussions tend overall toward seriousness, the salons often boast an upbeat, even celebratory vibe. D.C.-based DJ Nick “tha 1da” Hernandez spins original live music. Participants regularly exchange toasts during a “Mental Health Drink Break,” allowing Psalmayene 24 to indulge in the aforementioned ginger beer, and everyone else to swig beverages of choice. Shout-outs to Black-owned restaurants — host, DJ and guests dish about dishes they have ordered that day — add a sense of community, even as participants zoom in from shelter-in-place locations.
Speaking by phone from Silver Spring — “Piscataway land,” he stresses, acknowledging the Indigenous residents — Psalmayene 24 says there’s no contradiction between the salons’ buoyancy and intense content. The episodes mirror life, he observes, “where you have comedy and tragedy. It’s like the iconic mask of theater.” He adds, “Black people in this country — we have dealt with a lot of pain.” But to find meaning in life, he notes, “You have to find joy. You have to find laughter.” Indeed, he says, “Joy is part of how we fight.”
Psalm’s Salons launched in June, three months after covid-19 forced Studio to suspend performances of Antoinette Nwandu’s play “Pass Over,” which Psalmayene 24 had directed. The pandemic also affected a planned outreach series, aimed at deepening Studio’s connections with Black millennial audiences. On board as host, Psalmayene 24 envisaged conversations fused with music, with touches of dance party.
When the series had to move online, he drew inspiration from the popular “Verzuz” Instagram musical battles launched early in the pandemic by superproducers Timbaland and Swizz Beatz. “Two hip-hop artists who are re-creating how people commune — I thought that was fascinating,” Psalmayene 24 says. He’s a hip-hop-theater eminence himself; he even wove hip-hop touches into “Les Deux Noirs,” his play about Richard Wright and James Baldwin, staged last year by Mosaic Theater Company. The “Top Five” feature in Psalm’s Salons, in which guests name favorite theater works, nods to a hip-hop tradition of ranking rappers, he says.
For tunes, he turned to Hernandez — a frequent collaborator, who had designed sound for Theater Alliance’s “Word Becomes Flesh,” winner of five 2017 Helen Hayes Awards, including for Psalmayene 24’s direction. Mixing his own material with audio from the Library of Congress’s Citizen DJ tool, Hernandez creates the salons’ introductory and incidental music, catchy enough that participants can be seen nodding to the beat.AD
The music adds palpable energy and a sense of “exciting connection,” notes Studio associate artistic director Reginald L. Douglas. “Having Nick is such a boon,” he says.
Hernandez also creates a Spotify playlist for each episode. There’s space for uplift, even alongside weighty talk about societal issues, he thinks, especially because the current moment of national reckoning could lead to a better future. “A lot of times people associate change with being in turmoil, where it should be more about a blooming process,” Hernandez says.
When it comes to guests, Psalmayene 24 says the aim is to recruit people who can speak “eloquently about their art, but also can speak to the times.” (At next month’s salon, on Oct. 22 at 5 p.m., Mildred Ruiz-Sapp and Steven Sapp, of the Universes theater company, will fit that bill. The salons will run at least through November.) The key to interviewing, Psalmayene 24 has found, is not only the preparatory research he loves to do, but a willingness — as with good acting — to listen and “relax in the moment, love the moment.”AD
So, while the covid-19 era finds the 47-year-old busier than ever — among other projects, he has contributed to Arena Stage’s in-house film series and Round House Theatre’s Web series “Homebound” — he has time for the “high wire” of hosting.
Salons are, in their way, an artistic genre. “To experiment and explore form as an artist — that’s something deeply important to me,” Psalmayene 24 says.
Where to watch
Psalm’s Salons
Studio Theatre’s Facebook and YouTube pages: facebook.com/the.studio.theatre and youtube.com/studiotheatredc.
Dates: Friday at 5 p.m.
Admission: Free.
Read the full article by Celia Wren from the Washington Post here.