#and apparently my theatre rat days are relevant to this one???

[allalrightagain]

I see a lot of writing advice that I don’t click with, but the idea that you need to know everything about your character up to and including favorite colors and high school subjects always seems so unnecessary, because like, when is that ever relevant?

In unrelated news, my high school extracurriculars just came up in a job interview.

[newyorktheater]

  The city has announced plans  to build a performing arts center dedicated to Immigrants. The proposed Immigrant Research and Performing Arts Center will go up in Inwood, the northernmost neighborhood in Manhattan

Meanwhile, Waterwell theater company and the Broadway Advocacy Coalition launched the  Flores Exhibits, now available online, part of a national campaign to establish legal protections for immigrant children held in U.S. government facilities. Named after the  1997 Flores Settlement Agreement that set a limit on the length of time a child can be detained — an agreement that the Trump Administration wants to rescind — the exhibits are a series of videos read by about a dozen actors from David Schwimmer to Elizabeth Rodriguez and theater artists such as playwright David Henry Hwang and costume designer Clint Ramos, along with  lawyers and advocates. They each read aloud the sworn testimony of experts and also of young people detained at the Clint and Ursula border detention facilities that were collected in June of this year by a team of immigration lawyers.

“Many of the detainees were teen mothers, already being exposed to tremendous trauma in their home countries,” Kathleen Chalfant reads the testimony of  pediatrician Dr. Dolly Lucio Sevier, who examined the detainees…The conditions in which they are being held could be compared to torture facilities….extreme cold temperatures, lights on 24 hours a day, no access to medical care, basic sanitation, water or adequate food….To deny parents the ability to wash their infant’s bottles is unconscionable, and could be considered intentional mental and emotional abuse.”

Scene at Broadway Flea Market

Celebs like Brandon Uranowitz waiting to serve their Selfie duty

Adam Cohen, who plays the rabbi in Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish, baked cookies for the Fiddler table. Notice the clever brown paper poster behind him.

Staffing The Lion King booth at the Broadway flea is Local 1 stage hand Nick Liotta, who made up his own Lion King stage hand T-shirt

flea crowd

auctioning

swag from Roundabout

child buskers

a collage of The Cher Show by the entire cast, auctioned off for Broadway Cares/ Equity Fights AIDS

Broadway Live on Netflix and Audible and…

currently on Netflix

Thoughts on the new era of Broadway streaming on the occasion of the death of Betty Corwin, 98, the founder of Theater on Tape and Film (TOFT) at the Lincoln Center library.

. @MrJasonRBrown‘s 2008 musical “13” will be adapted as a family film for @Netflix by @rhorn1 (Tony-winning book writer for @TootsieMusical.) Added to my post about the evolution of Broadway stage-to- stream (@Netflix, @Audible, @BroadwayHD etc)https://t.co/xkhtfpiNV6 pic.twitter.com/uK97JPc4Ni

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) September 21, 2019

  The Week in New York Theater Reviews

Dimitri Moise and Brandon Gill. Photo by Gioncarlo Valentine.

As Much As I Can

“As Much As I Can,” a show that illustrates the continuing AIDS crisis among African-American men, exists on two different planes, which are not in complete alignment with one another. It is a work of theater, running for just five days at Joe’s Pub (two final performances this evening.) The 14-member cast is largely comprised of professional New York stage actors.

But it is also an effort at outreach. The script, credited to Sarah Hall, is based on interviews with hundreds of men in two communities hard hit by HIV — Baltimore, Maryland and Jackson, Mississippi

Ken Barnett, Justin Genna

Novenas for a Lost Hospital

How do people care for one another in dangerous times? That’s the still-relevant question underlying this beautiful, sad, enraging, uplifting, and awesomely staged theater piece that sweeps through the 161-year history of St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village, dwelling on two traumatic periods – the cholera epidemic, during which four nuns from the Sisters of Charity founded the hospital in 1849, and the AIDS epidemic that surrounded it in the 1980s and 90s….There are many personal reasons why I considered “Novenas” a must-see…

Madelyn Rose Robinson, Susan Ly, Mirra Kardonne, Alice Marcondes, Drita Kabashi, Ana Semedo, Macy Lanceta, Sophia Aranda, Zoe Zimin | Photo by Hunter Canning

The Invention of Tragedy

“The Invention of Tragedy,” a 70-minute excursion into a puzzling world of word play, cat ears, and synchronized neon footwear, is the third of the five plays in the Mac Wellman festival at The Flea. What I like best about it is the title. This would not be the work I would personally choose as the ideal introduction for a first-time Wellman watcher. Yet there are three ways of looking at “The Invention of Tragedy” that offer some satisfactions – as a political parable, as a metaphor for Western theater,  or as entertaining nonsense full of such surface pleasures as colorful design, pleasing music and an appealing cast.

Book: Discovering the Clown

Christopher Bayes, founder of the Funny School of Good Acting in Brooklyn and professor and head of physical acting at the Yale School of Drama,…offers  many zany Zen-like observations and instructions in “Discovering the Clown,” a brief, off-beat book that attempts to translate Bayes’ teaching to the printed page, but is more effective as a tease for his classes.

entrance to the exhibition

The “Theatre is a Gamble” roulette wheel that Prince’s associate producer Ruth Mitchell created for him as a gift in 1998, with the names of his shows.

Michael Bennett, Ruth Mitchell and Harold Prince during rehearsals for the stage production Company, around 1970.

Exhibition: Harold Prince at Lincoln Center Library

The Week in Awards

New York Independent Theater Awards

Multiple-winning shows include “Eight Tales of Pedro” by The Secret Theater; “Shinka” by Ren Gyo Soh, “Electronic City” by New Stage Theatre Company. Special awards went to Magie Dominic, one of the founding members of the Off-Off Broadway movement; playwright Barbara Kahn; La MaMa curator and long-time downtown figure Nicky Paraiso,  and TOSOS – The Other Side of Silence, the first professional gay theatre company in NY

Broadway at the Emmys: Billy Porter wins 

Billy Porter is now an O away from an EGOT.

— Mark Peikert (@MarkPeikert) September 23, 2019

Celebrate @theebillyporter‘s big five-o today by rewatching his AMAZING karaoke of “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” during a #TonyAwards commercial break – captured by @JKCorden & @latelateshow. Happy birthday to a Tony Award-winning #Broadway superstar! https://t.co/4QahcPrmy1

— The Tony Awards (@TheTonyAwards) September 21, 2019

74th Annual Tony Awards will be held once again at Radio City Music Hall —  on Sunday, June 7, 2020. The eligibility cut-off date will be Thursday, April 23, 2020 — earlier than in the past (which may mean a very crowded schedule of openings.) Nominations will be announced April 28th.

LaTanya Richardson Jackson and Leslie Uggams at the 9th annual Salute Her Awards

Black women of Broadway were honored at the 9th annual Salute Her awards:  Leslie Uggams (Legend Award), LaTanya Richardson Jackson (Director’s Award), Lynn Nottage (International Playwright Award), Alia Jones-Harvey (Broadway Producer Award), Dominique Morisseau (Playwright Award), Dr. Indira Etwaroo(Theater Community Award), Cookie Jordan (Woman of Style Award), Linda Stewart (Trailblazer Award).

The Week in New York Theater News

NYC Off-Broadway Week

Beginning today, 33 participating shows, 19 of which are new to the program this season, offer 2-for-1 performances through October 6

Added to my Broadway 2019-2020 Season Guide

“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” the fifth Broadway production of Albee’s 1962 play about George and Martha (& Nick and Honey) w/ Rupert Everett, Laurie Metcalf, Patsy Ferran, Russell Tovey. It opens April 9th at the Booth

Laurence Fishburne and Sam Rockwell will star in the fourth Broadway production of David Mamet’s rat-a-tat 1977 play about three low-level crooks conjuring up a get-rich-quick scheme. It opens April 14, though no theater yet (nor website nor Twitter!)

This apparently takes up the slot planned by the same producers for the all-female production of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glenn Ross? Its producers say it has been delayed until the 2020-2021 season.

Sara Holdren is leaving her post as the theater critic at New York Magazine in early October to go back to directing.  She was hired in July 2017.

Top 14 Most Produced Plays in 2019-2020…and 22 most produced playwrights in America

“A Doll’s House, Part 2” by Lucas Hnath and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Simon Stephens have tied as the most produced plays scheduled for the 2019-2020 season, according to the annual compilation of Top 10 Most Produced by American Theatre Magazine.

Tony Kushner at the Public

Cast for Public Theater’s revival of Tony Kushner’s A Bright Room Called Day: Michael Esper, Grace Gummer, Nikki James, Crystal Lucas-Perry, Mark Margolis, Nadine Malouf, Michael Urie, Max Woertendyke added to the previously announced Linda Emond, Jonathan Hadary, Estelle Parsons.

Quincy Tyler Bernstine

Sean Carvajal

Liza Colon Zayas

Playwright Stephen Adly Gurigis

Terrific cast announced for Stephen Adly Guirgis’s new play “Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven” at Atlantic: Victor Almanzar, Quincy Tyler Bernstine, Elizabeth Canavan, Sean Carvajal, Molly Collier, Liza Colón-Zayas, Esteban Cruz, Greg Keller, Kristina Poe, Neil Tyrone Pritchard, Andrea Syglowski, Benja Kay Thomas, Pernell Walker, and Kara Young.

Choreographer Raja Feather Kelly

What a pairing – playwright Young Jean Lee and director/choreographer Raja Feather Kelly in a new production of Lee’s rock concert/confessional “We’re Gonna Die” performed by Janelle Mcdormeth at Second Stages Feb 4 – March 29

Full schedule of plays-in-progress, panels and a party, etc. at @segalcenter‘s #Prelude2019 Oct 3 – 5 mostly at @GC_CUNYhttps://t.co/luZQtHekG5 pic.twitter.com/RmXVJH62uS

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) September 16, 2019

The difference between principals, swings and standbys

Scenes at Broadway Flea. Immigrants Get Their Own Theater, and a Voice. Billy Porter Wins at 50. #Stageworthy News of the Week The city has announced plans  to build a performing arts center dedicated to Immigrants. The proposed Immigrant Research and Performing Arts Center will go up in Inwood, the northernmost neighborhood in Manhattan…

[londontheatre]

The Pulverised – Arcola Theatre – Kate Miles – Photo by Dashti Jahfar

There are some minor characters that are named in The Pulverised, which, as a title such as this suggests, doesn’t exactly end with the sheer jollity and exhilaration of 42nd Street. But the major ones as listed in the programme are known, in no particular order, as Factory Worker, Shanghai (Rebecca Boey), Quality Assurance of Subcontractors Manager, Lyon (Richard Corgan), Call Centre Team Leader, Dakar (Solomon Israel) and Research and Development Engineer, Bucharest (Kate Miles). It may be a tad demeaning to define people by what they do rather than who they are, but this is one of the points the play wishes to make: there’s a loss of identity, of sorts, in climbing the corporate ladder, in order to conform to what the company considers important.

I was never cut out for the corporate workplace, wanting to speak freely and doing so, even when warned that such frank and honest talk could ‘potentially damage the brand’. It comes as no surprise to former colleagues that I express my opinions by reviewing shows these days! I don’t think I really needed a reminder, especially one as stark as this play provides, of quite how horrific, idiosyncratic and contradictory the corporate world is. The Factory Worker, for instance, might as well be Fantine out of Les Miserables, such are her working conditions, described in almost excruciating detail. It has, I suppose, some relevance to today’s Britain, despite being a French play, what with lengthening working hours and food banks becoming increasingly commonplace. The world of The Pulverised is very much one where the poor get poorer and the wealthy get wealthier.

It is still difficult, however, to have much sympathy with the main characters, and I felt more convinced by a minor one than any other, an interviewee for a call centre position who refused to accept a more apparently palatable name than her native Senegalese one, a sort of stage name to be used when fielding calls. Needless to say, she didn’t get the job, but she came across as ultimately better off than she would have been if she was more agreeable. For in the world of the multinational corporation, everyone behaves as though walking on eggshells, with disproportionate responses to matters that arise. “If you don’t apply yourself to your job today, you will be applying for a new job tomorrow,” says a Dalek-like public address announcement boomed across the factory floor.

Rather distractedly, whenever one of the characters speaks, the others are lying on the floor. The structure of the play is such that it is necessary for all to be on stage, but the way in which they would shudder as though the beginnings of an epileptic fit were occurring before keeling over was unnecessarily bizarre and eventually comical. I doubt that was the play’s intention. The play does, however, succeed in asserting that everyone who works for this company just wants some peace and quiet, rest and recuperation. If that’s the extent of these people’s ambitions, I can only be grateful I’m not one of them.

Except the characters relentlessly attempt to put forward the notion that members of the audience are indeed being described, with the constant use of the word ‘you’ whenever a character is actually describing their own circumstances and working day. ‘You’ dream of better times when in the shower, says the Engineer. No, I don’t. I’m just having a shower when I’m having a shower. And the show flits too frequently between different narratives. I would have preferred a series of uninterrupted monologues. Here, the audience is just getting into one storyline, when, just a few minutes in – wham – a character hits the floor and someone else starts telling their story.

As everything is described with the level of detail found in the books of JRR Tolkien and JK Rowling, there seems little point in the other characters acting out what the speaking character is talking about. The music and sound effects add little to a script that in itself leaves nothing to the imagination anyway, and while the depictions of the corporate world are commensurate with what people who have come out of the ‘rat race’ testify, the play doesn’t offer anything new. People already know that losing their temper at the satellite navigation device, or any other inanimate object, is irrational, for instance. In a world where more and more people are going freelance, becoming self-employed, starting a ‘portfolio career’, and so on, it seems odd that The Pulverised takes a ‘Hotel California’ approach, where people can check out of the corporate working life, but never leave. The show is, at least, well cast and well paced.

Review by Chris Omaweng

A quality assurance officer from France, a call centre manager from Senegal, a factory worker from China, and an engineer from Romania. Each leads a life apart, but all work round-the-clock for the same multinational corporation.

When work has no borders, what’s the cost? Alexandra Badea‘s captivating drama is a powerful and disturbing portrait of globalisation and its far-reaching effects on our lives.

Following an explosive premiere at the National Theatre of Strasbourg, where it won the prestigious Grand Prix de la Littérature, The Pulverised arrives in the UK with a new English translation.

The production is generously supported by Arts Council England, the Romanian Cultural Institute and the Institut Francais.

Cast: Rebecca Boey, Richard Corgan, Solomon Israel, Kate Miles

Text Alexandra Badea Direction Andy Sava Translation Lucy Phelps Set and Costume Design Nicolai Hart-Hansen Lighting Design Tom Smith Sound and Video Design Ashley Ogden Sound and AV Associate Tom McKeand Movement Director Lanre Malaolu Producers Ellie Claughton and Lucy Curtis for Changing Face Associate Producer John Tomlinson Production Manager Suzy Somerville Stage Manager Tom Gamble Production Carpenter Nick Lundy PR Chloe Nelkin

2nd to 27th May 2017 http://ift.tt/15L2mCZ

http://ift.tt/2pMnsVy LondonTheatre1.com