National Museum of African American History
Regina Taylor and Ekundayo Bandele visit the Oprah Winfrey Theatre at the National Museum of African American History
National Museum of African American History
National Museum of African American History
Clutch Productions Presents Limited Engagement Run Of Tira Palmquist’s THE WORTH OF WATER
Clutch Productions presents a limited engagement run of THE WORTH OF WATER, a new play written by Tira Palmquist and directed by Mêlisa Annis that will be presented Friday, October 4th through Sunday, October 20th, Off-Broadway at HERE, 145 6th Avenue, (on Dominick St., one block south of Spring St.).
This is the second commission of a new, full-length play from blank page to its world premiere on a New York stage by Clutch, the inaugural commission being the world premiere of Every Good Girl Deserves Fun by Heidi Armbruster (upcoming Dairyland at Playmakers Rep, Mrs. Christie at Dorset Theatre Festival). https://www.clutchproductions.org/theworthofwater
Elle is a struggling singer-songwriter in California. Rebecca is an unhappy homemaker in Wisconsin. And Ethel is bringing her daughters together for her 70th birthday to be momentary mermaids in the springs of Weeki Wachee. But as the fantasy dissipates, will they be able to swim back to shore?
“After receiving submissions from dozens of playwrights throughout the country and a rigorous vetting process, Clutch was thrilled to select Tira for our second commission cycle,” says Producing Artistic Director, Christianne Greiert. “Not only is she a skilled collaborator, playwright, and dramaturg, she is also an inspirational bad-ass. We were drawn to her pitch for The Worth of Water, not just because it involved mermaid camp and all the theatrical delight that could provide, but also because of the timely and provocative juxtapositions she was eager to explore with her narrative.”
The cast of THE WORTH OF WATER features Kim Crow (Wit, American Stage; Doublewide and Golda’s Balcony, Florida Studio Theatre); Clare Latham (Currently in the Soho Rep company of Fairview (TFNA) // Two-time Off West End Award Nominee for Best Female Performer (Danny and The Deep Blue Sea; Southwark Playhouse, 2012) and Best Supporting Female Performer (Doubt, A Parable; Southwark Playhouse, 2017); Christianne Greiert (Every Good Girl Deserves Fun, Clutch/Walkerspace; Foreign Bodies, NYTW); dL Sams (Dietland on AMC); Michael Billingsley (The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, dir. Estelle Parsons, La Mama); Miranda Noelle Wilson (Ryan Rafferty is the Most Powerful Woman in Fashion, Joe’s Pub); and Morgan Sullivan (Aunt Jack, Theatre for the New City).
The creative team features scenic design by Jessie Bonaventure, costume design by Johanna Pan, lighting design by Kelley Shih, and sound design by Brian Heveron-Smith. Lisa Stafford is the Production Stage Manager.
Playwright Tira Pamlquist is known for plays that merge the personal, the political and the poetic. Her most produced play, Two Degrees, premiered at the Denver Center, and was subsequently produced by Tesseract Theater in St. Louis and Prime Productions at the Guthrie (among others). Her newest play The Way North was a Finalist for the O’Neill and an Honourable Mention for the 2019 Kilroys List. While working on THE WORTH OF WATER for Clutch Productions, Tira was also working on a commission for Lower Depth Theater Ensemble in Los Angeles. Safe Harbor, a play about sex trafficking, will premiere in November in LA. Tira has also been commissioned to write new work for the University of California, Irvine graduate acting students. Her play Hold Steady was workshopped at UCI in January 2019, and she is currently working on All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, to be workshopped in January 2020. Her other plays include Ten Mile Lake (Serenbe Playhouse), Age of Bees (NYU Stella Adler Studio, MadLab Theater, Tesseract), And Then They Fell (MadLab, Brimmer Street, New York Film Academy) and This Floating World.
Director Mêlisa Annis has had the pleasure of working with and at Primary Stages, The Ambassadors Theatre Group (London), The Arcola Theater (London), Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Shadowland Stages, Tangent Theater, Queens College, Rebellious Subjects, The Playground Experiment, New York University, and Theater Masters FL as a director and dramaturg. As a writer, Mêlisa’s plays have been developed at and with Parity Productions, The Lark and Dorset Theater Festival at the Theresa Rebeck Writers Colony, The New School, Primary Stages, ESPA*Drills (2014), The Lark, The National Arts Club NYC, The Playground Experiment, and RAL. She also had the joy of writing an episode for Amazon Studio’s upcoming series for children (to be announced soon). Mêlisa is currently working on a new musical with Grammy Award Nominee Jamie Floyd (details to be announced soon). Personal essays have been published in several major publications, and she is a frequent contributor to the BBC. Mêlisa also teaches at the NYU Tisch Dramatic Writing program in NYC.
Performances of THE WORTH OF WATER are on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 6:30pm, Saturdays at 1:30pm and 6:30pm, and Sundays at 1:30pm. There is no 1:30pm performance on Saturday, October 12. HERE is located at 145 6th Ave. (Enter on Dominick St., 1 Block South of Spring St.).
Article from Broadway World.
David Sumner Nominated for the 2019 Gregory Awards for Outstanding Scenic Design
For the production of I Do! I Do! at the Village Theatre in the Puget Sound, David Sumner has been nominated for Outstanding Scenic Design. The award ceremony will be held at the Marion Oliver McCa Hall on OCtober 28, 2019, hosted by Alexandria J. Henderson and Jimmy Shields.
This season, over 130 productions were submitted for Gregory Awards consideration – 10 Nominators are randomly assigned to each production to provide scores on all eligible elements. For more details on the Nomination process, go to http://nominate.gregoryawards.org
World Premiere of Barbara Hammond’s TERRA FIRMA Finds Its Off-Broadway Cast
The production will be the first from the new NYC-based company The COOP, founded by Andrus Nichols.
The world premiere of Barbara Hammond’s Terra Firma, scheduled to open Off-Broadway in October, has found its cast. As previously announced, the production is the inaugural show from the new theatre company, The COOP, founded by Andrus Nichols earlier this year.
A commission from London’s Royal Court, Terra Firma is set in a not-so-distant Beckettian future, years after a conflict known as The Big War. There, a tiny kingdom wrestles with the problems of running a nation and spars with different concepts of what makes a citizen, a country, and a civilization.
Shana Cooper directs a company made up of John Keating as Jones, Daniel José Molina as Teddy, Nichols as The Queen, Tom O’Keefe as The Hostage, Gerardo Rodriguez as Roy, and T. Ryder Smith as The Diplomat. Mark Bedard will be the understudy.
Performances of Terra Firma will begin September 27 at The Rose Nagelberg Theatre at the Baruch Performing Arts Center (55 Lexington Avenue), ahead of an October 10 opening.
The world premiere is a co-production with Baruch. The design team includes set designer Andrew Boyce, costume designer Ntokozo Fuzunina Kunene, lighting designer Eric Southern, and sound designer Jane Shaw.
Hammond’s other plays include We Are Pussy Riot Or Everything Is P.R.; Visible From Four States; and The Eva Trilogy: Eden, Enter the Roar.
READ: New Theatre Company The COOP to Launch With World Premiere of Barbara Hammond’s Terra Firma
Article Playbill.com.
Review: ‘Gertrude and Claudius @ Barrington Stage, 7/21/19
The most theatrically engaging and emotionally complete production I’ve seen so far this summer, “Gertrude and Claudius” combines the brawn of a medieval history play with the intelligence of a contemporary revenge drama.
Commissioned by the Orlando Shakespeare Theatre, where it had its world premiere last year, “Gertrude and Claudius” is receiving a rousing production at Barrington Stage Company, with which its author, Mark St. Germain, has a long artistic association. (The company’s smaller stage was named after him seven years ago.)
Essentially a prequel to Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” that explores the origins of the relationship between the title characters – the mother and stepfather of the moody Danish prince – “Gertrude and Claudius” was adapted by St. Germain from John Updike’s best-selling 2000 novel of the same name. According to Updike’s son David, a writer who happened to be sitting in the same row as me at Sunday’s opening performance, St. Germain was chosen by Updike’s estate from among multiple proposals to adapt the book for the stage.
St. Germain succeeds brilliantly, crafting language that synthesizes the formality and eloquence of Shakespeare with a modern, accessible vernacular. At one point, a character says, “I got away with it!,” an exclamation rather more contemporary than anything from pre-Renaissance Denmark or Elizabethan England but which sounds perfectly right here, in a production directed by the finesse and acuity we’ve come to expect from BSC’s artistic director, Julianne Boyd.
Covering about 30 years, “Gertrude and Claudius” begins with the arranged marriage of Gertrude to Hamlet’s father, King Amleth. It continues over the decades while the king, a generally caring and considerate husband distracted by affairs of state, misses the affair of the heart between his wife and his world-traveling brother, Claudius. The unfulfilled lovers see one another occasionally, building their bond primarily through letters, until Gertrude asserts her royal prerogative and essentially orders Claudius to return, starting them toward regicide and the beginning of the story in “Hamlet.”
Performed on a handsome, imposing set of high castle walls, designed by Lee Savage and lit to perfection by David Lander, with gorgeous costumes by Sara Jean Tosetti, BSC’s “Gertrude and Claudius” has an outstanding title pair in Kate MacCluggage and Elijah Alexander. Both acutely aware of the constraints of the era and the weight of their respective places in the royal family, they nonetheless build a deeply affecting connection. Claudius wanders the globe because the only thing harder than being away from Gertrude would be to see her daily; she is a proper, strong queen, wife and mother, but, her mind often far away, she also comes to consider Elsinore as much prison as castle, haunting its hallways as her husband’s ghost will after his murder.
With an excellent Douglas Rees as Amleth, guilty of little more than neglect on the domestic front, Berkshires veteran Rocco Sisto as the chattering royal adviser Polonius, reliable and comedic Mary Stout as Gertrude’s matronly handmaiden and Nick LaMedica as vital though largely silent Hamlet, the production moves toward its inevitable end. Though the conclusion is foregone, the journey there is not, and some of its stops offer surprise and insight. The best of them is a scene that closes the first act, when Claudius introduces Gertrude to his trained falcons. (The puppetry is by Brandon Hardy, who also worked on BSC’s season-opening “Into the woods.”)
Rich in metaphor and emotion, the falcon scene ends with a moment of theatrical magic that it would be unfair to reveal further. St. Germain is said to have been pacing at the back of the balcony, agonizing that the essential moment would work as intended. It does. Gertrude and Claudius together make an irrevocable choice, forever altering lives and history.
Review by Steve Barnes from the Times Union. Link to the full article can be found here.