An Inventory of Lost & Delayed Art

As the novel coronavirus COVID-19 continues its spread around the globe, its impacts can be felt in every aspect of daily life. For many in the New York performing arts world, the reality really set in on Thursday, March 12, when Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued emergency guidelines on public gatherings. While most of the attention has been paid to the closing of all Broadway shows, due to its large scale economic impacts, the affects on Off-off-Broadway, downtown, experimental theater, dance and performance are just as severe if not more so. Despite some additional flexibility for smaller organizations, many theaters and art spaces have followed suit and suspended programming out of an abundance of caution. The result is that many small, independent productions with limited runs, tight budgets, and slots in busy seasons have suddenly found themselves without a place to play. Touring productions may not make it back; some shows may never receive a presentation in NYC.

In response, Culturebot has decided – based on a suggestion by Kamila Slawinska – to do its best to produce a living document of the affected works. While this may seem of trivial importance in the face of the life-and-death realities of the global pandemic, we simply want to recognize some of the potentially lost work that creators have sacrificed for. Think of this as the Emergency INDEX of what’s not going up. While we have built this list off of publicity notices we’ve received, moving forward we invite anyone who wishes to list their work here to email details to cbot.covid(at)gmail.com. Please include a description of the show, including title, collaborators, the venue and dates it was originally scheduled to run, and the status of the production to the best of your knowledge (i.e., has it been cancelled by the presenter, has a potential future date been offered, etc), and preferably a photo.

For readers, there are several important things to note. First, while we endeavor to keep this list up-to-date, you should check the website of the presenter or company for the most accurate information. Second, all the information contained herein is conditional and subject to change; many organizations have suspended operations for at least a month, but that does not guarantee that conditions in April or May will permit for the resumption of normal activities. A postponement could become a cancellation, and so on. Again, please default to the applicable organization’s website for up-to-date information. Third, even if a work or presentation has not been cancelled or postponed, we encourage you to use your best judgment as to whether the risk of exposure is worth attendance, and please follow public health suggestions for protecting yourself and others from infection. Finally, we ask the any interested parties remember that Culturebot is a volunteer organization and our ability to respond to emails or to make updates can be limited.

–the Editors

March 2020

 

POSTPONED – Katie Capiello’s Now That We’re Men @ WNYC’s The Greene Space (March 12 & 13)

Had two performances planned for the release of the published play and essays Now That We’re Men: A Play and True Life Accounts of Boys, Sex, & Power. Cancelled the second performance, with plans to postpone if possible. Description: In the weeks leading up to prom, the close friendships of five high school guys are put to the test…’cause Andrew must be gay, Marcus knocked up his girl, Derek’s falling in love, Nick is a little too addicted to fetish porn, and Evan pushed a hook-up too far and downed a bottle of pills. Born from conversations with teenage boys, Now That We’re Men lays bare what’s happening in high schools across the country. Their unfiltered stories— of sex, power, consent, porn, manning up and getting girls (or maybe boys…)— come straight from the mouths of these guys, as they are figuring out what it means to be a man. Directed by Charlotte Arnoux.

POSTPONED – Heather Christian’s Oratorio for Living Things @ ArsNova (Minimum 30-day suspension of performances began Thurs., March 12)

In this sweeping world premiere, Heather Christian, “a composer of blazing creative ambition” (Ben BrantleyThe New York Times), imbues the classical oratorio with blues, gospel, jazz, and soul. Both otherworldly and achingly intimate, Oratorio for Living Things heralds Christian as an undeniable artistic force — and inspires us to reflect on the mystery of human experience, set against the vast scope of cosmic time. NOTE from Press Release: Ars Nova is hopeful that performances of Heather Christian’s Oratorio for Living Things will resume at Ars Nova at Greenwich House in mid-April, pending the status of COVID-19. Performances had just begun on March 10 and the commissioned world premiere was scheduled to open on March 30. Ars Nova is deeply committed to its core values, especially during difficult periods. Therefore all individuals who were scheduled to work on Ars Nova programming and operations—full and part-time staff, performers, house managers, ushers, bartenders, and custodial staff—including all involved with the production of Oratorio for Living Things, will continue to be paid even during this suspension of programming.

CANCELLEDEn Garde Arts‘ Fandango for Butterflies (And Coyotes (Citywide tour cancelled March 12; originally scheduled through March 28)

Called “rapturous” by the New York Times (Critic’s Pick), Fandango For Butterflies (And Coyotes) takes place on the eve of city-wide ICE raids. A group of immigrants gathers in an undisclosed community center in NYC for a fandango. As fear encroaches — fear for family left behind in their home countries, fear for loved ones in the middle of their dangerous journey to New York, fear of leaving the sanctuary of the community center simply to get a bag of ice — a sense of camaraderie builds between the participants. Strangers become friends, friends become family, and the fandango plays on. Fandango For Butterflies (And Coyotes) was in the middle of a tour to all 5 boroughs, with The Bronx (The Point, March 20 – 21) and Brooklyn (Irondale Center, March 26 – 28) remaining The tour was officially suspended on March 12, with their canceled performance at Lehman Stages in the Bronx. En Garde Arts is hoping to remount the show sometime in the future. NOTE: En Garde Arts is paying the actors, the creative team and production staff for what would have been the remainder of the run.

POSTPONED – Ren Dara Santiago’s The Siblings Play @ Rattlestick (postponed following preview on Sat. March 14)

Set inside a rent-stabilized Harlem apartment in 2014, The Siblings Play delves deep into the psyche of a teenage girl and her two brothers left to raise each other in their parents’ absence. The play looks at the ways these three teenagers protect, love, fight, and diminish in the wake of their family history and the complexity of growing up with parents who are too young to be parents in the first place.

Autumn Knight. Photo by Lynn Lane

INDEFINITELY POSTPONED/SUSPENDED – Emily Johnson’s Kinstillatory Mappings in Light and Dark Matter, Autumn Knight’s M _ _ _ ER & Transport Group’s Unsinkable Molly Brown, all at Abrons Arts Center.

Emily Johnson/Catalyst: Kinstillatory Mappings in Light and Dark Matter (): “A ceremonial fire outdoors in the amphitheater at Abrons Arts Center centering Indigenous protocol and knowledge. Sit by the fire and welcome the evening with neighbors, stories, songs, and food (bring some to share).” Autumn Knight’s M _ _ _ ER (): “M _ _ _ ER considers how the concepts of “mother,” “murder,” and “matter” shape experiences of intimacy.” Transport Group’s Unsinkable Molly Brown (Feb 8 – Mar 22): “Transport Group presents a revitalized version of the musical tale of Margaret “Molly” Brown — still the character you know and the songs you love but a story that’s new and true. This is Molly as she really was: vibrant, progressive, and ready to fight for the underdog as a champion of women’s rights, labor rights, and immigration reform.”

SUSPENDED/POSTPONED – New York Neo-Futurists‘ The Infinite Wrench (Suspended for two-weeks) and Smash the Patriarchy (Postponed)

The New York Neo-Futurists are suspending The Infinite Wrench for the next two weeks. This suspension is effective immediately: we are canceling this week’s regularly scheduled performance (3/13 & 3/14) and postponing next week’s specialty show, Smash The Patriarchy (3/20 & 3/21). Depending on how the situation develops, we understand we may need to continue our suspension beyond these weeks. We hope to resume performing new plays for you as soon as possible and will keep you informed as to when that might be.

CLOSED – J. Julian Christopher’s Bundle of Sticks @ INTAR (Originally scheduled to run through March 22)

Gay men from across the globe go deep into the outback of Australia for a secret gay conversion therapy retreat. When they arrive, they are not only challenged by Otto, their toxically masculine group leader, but also by an underground Rainbow Serpent responsible for the protection of water and erections. Director by Lou Mareno.

SUSPENDED – Martyna Majok’s Sanctuary City @ Lucille Lortel (New York Theatre Workshop) (Originally scheduled Mar. 4- April 12; all NYTW operations were suspended March 12 for 31 days)

DREAMers. Love(r)s. Life-long friends. Negotiating the promise of safety and the weight of responsibility, they’ll fight like hell to establish a place for themselves and each other in America. 2018 Pulitzer Prize winner, NYTW Usual Suspect and former 2050 Fellow Martyna Majok brings us an unforgettable story that asks what we’re willing to sacrifice for someone we love. Rebecca Frecknall, director of the 2019 Olivier Award-winning Summer and Smoke, helms the production. NOTE: NYTW has communicated that they intend to continue paying all artists and staff during the suspension.

CLOSED EARLYThe Bushwick Starr and National Black Theater’s presentation of Jillian Walker’s SKiNFoLK: An American Show at the Bushwick Starr (originally extended through March 21st, closed on March 12th).

YOU. Yes, you. Whoever and however you are. You follow me through low-hanging roots and vines. Are you in ancestral woods? A juke joint? All of the above/below? YOU are in SKiNFoLK: An American Show, a wide-sweeping concert/play structured in seven movements that explores the questions and limits (?) of blackness, performance, and country in a sensuous and reflective cabaret experience. As the music sounds, you drop down into this ritual of liberation, bearing witness to the playwright-performer’s identity, heritage and legacy as a black woman in this America. This play collides with blues, jazz, neo soul, pop, rock and spiritual black legacies. What will you see in the archive? Who will you meet? What is down at the root? What color is the sky again?

POSTPONEDThe Chocolate Factory and Knockdown Center’s presentation of Guadalupe Maravilla’s Disease Thrower (originally scheduled for March 14th, no new date announced.)

Disease Thrower is the final work of a performance trilogy based on Gaudalupe Maravilla’s autobiography. The first part, titled The OG of Undocumented Children (performed at the Whitney Museum in 2018) told the story of how Maravilla became an undocumented and unaccompanied child immigrant. The second part, titled Walk on Water (performed at the Queens Museum in 2019), focuses on Maravilla’s past as an undocumented immigrant, the deportations his family endured, and methods for healing. The final performance of the trilogy, Disease Thrower, will center on how the trauma of Maravilla’s border crossing manifested into cancer and the ways he overcame the disease.

Stephanie Acosta

POSTPONED – Stephanie Acosta’s Good Day God Damn at the Chocolate Factory (originally scheduled for March 19-28, 2020, new dates TBD)

In a multi-frame assemblage of video projection, the cinematic lens, and the theatrical frame, the performers of Good Day God Damn – four dancers, an opera singer, and an ill fated director – move as an organic sentient mass through multiple atmospheres and states, exploring ideas of the cinematic thriller and extraterrestrial hope in an attempt to disassemble, rebuild, and hold onto the very notion of survival in an absurd multi-crisis reality, asking: What does it mean to get through it? Dissonant sounds and images give way to choral moments in a darkly thrilling and dynamic disarray.

POSTPONEDTeleviolet’s production of Islander at NYTW Next Door (originally scheduled to run March 27 – April 11, new dates TBD)

The 2017-2018 NHL season was an embarrassment for the New York Islanders. Displaced from their home rink and in danger of losing their captain, they never made it to the playoffs. In ISLANDER, Playwright Liza Birkenmeier and director Katie Brook repurpose commentary from this abysmal season, to explore the crisis of the team as the crisis of white male American identity.

Peter Michael Marino/PM2 Entertainment

POSTPONED – Lizzie Donahue’s A Barn Play @ UP Theater Company (Originally scheduled Mar. 18-Apr. 4; tentatively postponed until Apr. 2)

The darkly comic fable “A Barn Play,” presents a group of farm animals rehearsing a show. Owl attempts to rehearse his new play with a lively and opinionated ensemble of farm animals: Chicken, Pig, Dog, Cow, Sheep), and Cat. Tensions flare when a crisis befalls the animals and the ensemble rejects Owl’s arty attempt for one of their own devising – one that sheds light on our own relationships with animals, children, and art. This provocative dark comedy asks, “At a time of crisis, who will stand up and be the pig, and who will be the owl?” Directed by Melissa Moschitto.

SUSPENDED – Taylor Mac’s The Fre at the Flea Theater (originally scheduled to run through April 12th, performances suspended on March 13th)

In the land of two bridges, THE FRE, a rambunctious group of fun-loving anti-intellectuals spend their days cavorting in the mud. Into their midst descends Hero, a dandy aesthete, who longs to cut the bridge and finally escape the mud pit.   But first he must convince the leader Frankie Fre and the other fatuous inhabitants that there is a better life outside of the swamp.  In this queer love story, audiences will literally and figuratively jump into the mud with the Fre to hash out the current cultural divide.  The play is set in a giant ball pit with audience seating inside and out.

CLOSED EARLY – Will Eno’s Gnit @ Theatre for a New Audience (was extended through March 29; closed Thurs., March 12)

Peter Gnit, a modern-day version of Ibsen’s heroic character Peer Gynt, is a carefree young man on a reckless search for Experience and the True Self. Armed with tales from his mother of his early greatness and his absent father, he heads out into the world. Like all true stories of human endeavor and adventure, Gnit is part horror story, part fairy tale, and part road movie. A timely reckoning with received notions of Rugged Individualism and the self-made person. Come see how it all turns out. Playwright Will Eno‘s recent plays include The Realistic Joneses (Broadway), which won a 2014 Drama Desk Award and was named USA Today’s “Best Play on Broadway.” The Paris premiere of Juste Les Jones, will be directed for the stage by documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman. The Open House (Signature Theater) won the 2014 Obie Award, the Lortel Award for Outstanding Play, and a Drama Desk Award, and was one of Time Magazine’s Top 10 Plays of the Year. Will wrote the book for the award-winning 2019 Skittles Commercial: the Broadway Musical. Director Oliver Butler‘s recent productions include What The Constitution Means To Me, which won a 2019 Tony Award nomination for Best Play. He has collaborated with Will Eno on the first NYC revival of Thom Pain (Signature Theater, starring Michael C. Hall) and The Open House (Signature Theater, Lortel Best Play, Obie Award); and The Plot (Yale Rep). He is a Sundance Institute Fellow and a Bill Foeller Fellow. Oliver is co-artistic director of The Debate Society.

POSTPONED – Hansol Jung’s Wolf Play @ Soho Rep (originally March 17-April 19; new dates TBD)

When a young South Korean boy—represented onstage as a puppet operated by a “wolf”—is ‘re-homed’ via a website chat room, he and his brand-new parents (a professional boxer, Ash, and Ash’s wife, Robin) undergo the strange, fraught process of becoming a family. A “sense of being unmoored affects the characters [Jung] writes about,” American Theater notes of the playwright, who was born in South Korea, spent part of her childhood in South Africa, returned to South Korea, before moving to New York in 2010. With a rivetingly unpredictable sense of theatrical invention, Jung (Wild Goose Dreams, Among the Dead, Cardboard Piano) has explored experiences of displacement across cultural, national, digital, and political realities. Wolf Play was inspired by a series of articles Jung read in Reuters in 2013 and 2014 about Americans using “Yahoo message boards, Facebook groups and other online sites to ‘re-home’ unwanted children”—most commonly international adoptees. This was also a time when the effort to legalize same-sex marriage in the U.S. was at a peak. Jung says, “I’ve always been interested in stories of departure and landing and the liminal spaces in between and was considering what roots a person to a place. And how do people make family when the idea of it is no longer bound by a traditional sense of biological family? In the queer community, people talk a lot about ‘chosen family’—in terms of how you create your own community and who you decide your family is. I was trying to answer those questions for myself through those characters, and in using the different framework of the wolf and the puppet, I could make something more kaleidoscopic out of the actual issue.”

POSTPONED – Noche Flamenca’s Antigona @ La Mama. (Originally scheduled March 19-April 5; officially postponed due to President Trump’s limitations on European travel to the US).

Noche Flamenca, the renowned company founded and led by Artistic Director Martín Santangelo and dancer Soledad Barrio, performs its celebrated dance-theater work Antígona, March 19 – April 5 at La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theatre. This visually and aurally arresting adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone, which made its New York premiere in 2015, was declared a New York Times Critics’ Pick by Laura Collins-Hughes, who wrote that “a haunting, distant classicism coexists with sweaty, unmediated corporeality in this dance drama.” Apollinaire Scherr wrote in The Financial Times that Noche Flamenca “has created a powerful marriage of Greek tragedy and flamenco,” and Joan Acocella, in The New Yorker, pronounced, “Never, until I saw Santangelo’s ensemble, their heels stamping, their arms cutting through the air, had I seen a chorus whose physical force could support the fate-heavy songs that Sophocles wrote for his plays.” The impetus to create a flamenco interpretation of Antigone began when Martín Santangelo encountered the Living Theatre’s production of the classic play and was struck by the battle between an individual, disenfranchised woman and the authority of the patriarchal state. The idea resurfaced in 2010, when judge Baltasar Garzon was suspended from the Spanish court for his efforts to publicly honor those who fought against Franco, allowing families to bury their relatives previously left in mass graves. This breach of democracy struck Santangelo as similar to the conflict in Antigone, confirming his belief that the story remains relevant today. At its heart, the story of Antigone resonates with the roots of flamenco, which is based not in any one culture or region, but on the strength of family. Antigone’s story is her humanity and her quest to bury her brother, regardless of the circumstances.

Photo by Miguel Anaya

POSTPONED/CANCELLED – Colleen Thomas’s light & desire @ New York Live Arts (Originally Mar. 25-28; cancelled due to both travel restrictions and NYLA’s indefinite suspension)

light and desire calls upon family history, social politics, and personal experience to tell and uplift the narratives of women who have resisted oppression by creating their own forms of radical expression. The central question it addresses is how women hold, embody, and express power. Conceived and directed by Colleen Thomas, who also performs in it, light and desire features Carla Forte (Venezuela); a dancer-choreographer Ildiko Toth (Hungary / Germany); dance curator, critic, and choreographer Joanna Lesnierowska (Poland); filmmaker, dancer, and choreographer Ermira Goro (Albania/ Greece); and teacher, dancer, and filmmaker Rosalynde LeBlanc (USA). The piece is an homage to Women’s History Month and a celebration of the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

POSTPONEDPEAK Performances @ Montclair State University’s Spring Season.

Due to COVID-19 precautions and the suspension of most activities on the Montclair State University campus, PEAK is postponing their Spring 2020 presentations. They are working to reschedule the World Premiere of Kate Soper’s The Romance of the Rose, slated for April 2-5, to take place in the 2020-21 season; we will share new dates as soon as possible. Familie Flöz’s Hotel Paradiso (May 7-10) will also be rescheduled to next season (dates TBA).

Photo by Maria Baranova

POSTPONED – Yangtze Repertory Theatre + Gung Ho Projects’ Salesman之死: The (Almost!) True Story of the 1983 Production of Death of a Salesman at the Beijing People’s Art Theatre Directed by Mr. Arthur Miller Himself From a Script Translated By Mr. Ying Ruocheng Who Also Played Willy Loman @ Target Margin Theater.

In 1983, Arthur Miller traveled to Beijing to direct his most famous play, despite not speaking a word of Chinese. The Chinese ensemble, newly out of the Cultural Revolution, had never met “a salesman.” What could possibly go wrong? Sort of based on true events, Salesman之死 is an irreverent tale of cross-cultural mayhem in a time before Google Translate. Performed in both English and Mandarin (with surtitles!) by an all-female cast.

DELAYED – Sarah Einspanier’s Lunch Bunch @ PlayCo. Previews now start April 1; this information is subject to change – check the company’s website.

Lunch Bunch—inspired by the lunches of the real-life Bronx Defenders, where Einspanier’s childhood friend works—is a tribute to the sacrifices public servants make every day. The play’s characters seek meaning, belonging, and some semblance of order in daily culinary minutiae amidst the failures and injustices of larger social systems around them, as the momentous (The Law) projects itself onto the mundane (lunch). Einspanier’s “charming and smart” (The New York Times, in a Critic’s Pick review) play kindly exposes the quirks of its characters’ coping mechanisms and communicates the dire circumstances their clients face.

SUSPENDED / CLOSED EARLYMa-Yi‘s production of Haruna Lee’s Suicide Forest at A.R.T. New York (originally scheduled to run through March 21st)

Directed by Aya Ogawa, Suicide Forest is a bilingual nightmare play excavating the Japanese-American consciousness and its intimate relationship with sex, suicide, and identity. Declared a “Best of 2019” production by New York Magazine and a critic’s pick by The New York Times and Time Out New York, the encore engagement of Suicide Forest opened on March 3 following a limited run at The Bushwick Starr in 2019.

CLOSED EARLYClubbed Thumb‘s production of Tumacho at The Connelly Theater (originally scheduled to run through March 21st)

Once again, the citizens of a frontier outpost are looking for someone to rescue them from the terrors of the local villain. Have they met their salvation–or an even bigger tyrant–when a fiend from the past comes to town?

CANCELLED -Cheryl West’s Before It Hits Home @ The Billie Holiday Theatre. (Originally scheduled Mar. 28-Apr. 26)

The production is an award-winning play and a profound story that ironically speaks to another pandemic that changed our world in the 1980s and 1990s. As this current challenging situation unfolds, we will seek ways to be ableto share this story with our audiences in the very near future. We are grateful to all the artists and craftspeople who are impacted by these upheavals in their professional schedules as they have been the embodiment of grace. Description: Before It Hits Home takes audiences through the last few months in the life of saxophonist, Wendal Bailey who is caught in between two worlds: one which revolves around his lovers, the other based in the home of his family. After a near death experience, Wendal goes home to regain his strength and find comfort, but his homecoming turns on its head into a tumultuous nightmare and love comes from an unexpected source.

POSTPONEDLEIMAY Ludus Weekly Community Classes

LEIMAY Ludus Weekly Community Classes cultivate imagination and a heightened awareness of gravity, friction, and weight. They nourish deep states of listening and explores potential connections between the body’s materiality, voice, thoughts; between spaces and materials; revealing domains of transformation and potentiality. LUDUS is the underlying methodology of LEIMAY’s practice. At some point, LUDUS will be shared online.

POSTPONED – March Programming at The Brick

INSCAPE // SOUNDSCAPE (Originally scheduled March 24)
DEVOTION DEVOTION by Lydia Mokdessi and Jason Bartell (Originally scheduled March 26-29)



April 2020

POSTPONED – Good Chance’s The Jungle @ St. Ann’s Warehouse (originally scheduled to open April 2; no alternate dates are yet available)

The Jungle is an intense remembrance of the bulldozed camp in Calais, France, where thousands of refugees who had escaped drought, war, and strife in countries in Africa and the Middle East waited for their “good chance” passage to Britain. With minimal resources in the squalid, sprawling landfill-turned-makeshift-camp, immigrants and committed volunteers built a warm, self-governing society—with restaurants, shops, a school, a church, a sauna—from nothing. With the fervent hope that this short-term society would be remembered in all its complexity, Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson wrote The Jungle after going to Calais and constructing a theater in a geodesic dome they called the Good Chance Dome. Directed by Stephen Daldry (The Crown, The Inheritance) and Justin Martin (The Crown, The Inheritance), the play invites the audience inside a faithfully replicated Afghan restaurant where endless cycles of survival and threat, failed social contracts, creative thought and action, and acts of compassion unfold. The New Yorker wrote, “[The Jungle] does not so much present its story as plunge us directly into it, to astonishing emotional effect.” Most media coverage of refugees tends to focus on unfolding humanitarian crises and the rabid responses to them among rising nationalist movements and governments; the individual stories of the fleeing men, women and children, like those living in the Calais Jungle, are rarely heard. The Jungle centers these personal stories and the events leading up to the camp’s demolition by the French government in a sharp-eyed tribute to human resourcefulness and resilience against enormous odds.

POSTPONED – Lydnsey Bourne’s I Was Unbecoming Then at The Tank (originally scheduled to open on April 2nd, no new dates announced)

It’s 2006 and a high school choir is getting ready to compete. While the altos and sopranos tune and re-tune to changing harmonies and hormones, they learn to shape themselves in the dissonance.

I Was Unbecoming Then is a choral play-thing about the minefield of girlhood – when good hair was never so important. I Was Unbecoming Then is written by Lyndsey Bourne and directed by Ilana Khanin, with an original vocal score by Sam Kaseta. This piece was developed at Ars Nova’s ANT Fest 2018, and through developmental readings at The Joust Theatre Company.

CANCELLED – Noah Diaz’s Richard & Jane & Dick & Sally @ Playwrights Realm (Originally scheduled April 3-May 2)

Diaz’s play exposes the gap between the idealized and narrow archetypes we internalize as children and the painfully complex real-life experiences and social constructs that drive our development as adults. Created for a non-homogenous cast of actors, with the directive that Sally be played by a deaf actor, Richard & Jane & Dick & Sally is a co-production with Baltimore Center Stage—where it is currently being presented as part of Stephanie Ybarra’s inaugural season as the theater’s artistic director—as well as a collaboration with The Sol Project, a national theater initiative amplifying the voices of Latinx playwrights, founded by Jacob G. Padrón. The Realm engagement will feature two ASL-friendly performances, as well as a childcare matinee. The creative team includes Stephanie Osin Cohen (Scenic Designer), Alicia J. Austin (Costume Designer), Reza Behjat (Lighting Designer), Frederick Kennedy (Sound Designer & Composer), James Caverly (Director of Artistic Sign Language), and Ada Karamanyan (Casting), and stage management includes Kara Kaufman (Stage Manager) and Seth Betzler (Assistant Stage Manager). The play emerged as a pastiche of settings, emotional states, and social questions from a transitional stage in Diaz’s life. In the summer just as he was preparing to attend graduate school for playwriting—after having spent six years working in a program studying and helping with deaf adolescent language acquisition—his grandmother fell gravely ill. His family experienced three weeks of grief as she was dying, resuming the process all over again after she passed. He found himself writing amidst this time of mourning—experiencing firsthand how a nuclear family grieves collectively and individually—while also sorting through the reflexive perception of the middle class American nuclear familial experience as white. NOTE: The Realm will be honoring full fees for playwright, director, designers, and pay actors and stage management through what would have been opening.

CANCELLED – Ken Ludwig’s Lend Me a Tenor @ Little Radical Theatrics (Originally scheduled April 24-26)

Little Radical Theatrics, a non-profit Westchester based community theater, canceled the callbacks and entire spring production of Lend Me A Tenor. Performances would have been April 24-26 at the Grinton Will Library. It was canceled by the executive producer. The show will be added to next year’s season.

 

POSTPONED – April Programming at The Brick

A Scale Unfamiliar: OZET Songs (Originally scheduled April 1-April 5)
Envy on Fire by Asylos Theater (Originally scheduled April 8-11)
Against the Flesh by Nick Robideau (Originally scheduled April 16-24)
The Man Who Doesn’t Exist by Josephine Simple (Originally scheduled April 18-26)

 

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