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NYCPlaywrights April 5, 2025
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NYCPlaywrights
Apr 5, 2025, 5:03:03 PMApr 5
to NYCPlaywrights
Greetings NYCPlaywrights
*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
MACBETH
NYU's Shakespeare in the Square
Macbeth focuses on the corrupting power of ambition and fate’s guilty hand in the downfall of prosperity. This production explores Macbeth’s role as a power-hungry cult leader in the lawless American expanse.
Schedule:
Friday, 4/11 - 6:30pm - Riese Lounge, 721 Broadway, New York, NY 10003
Saturday, 4/12 - 1:00pm - Garibaldi Plaza, Washington Square Park, New York, NY, 10012
Saturday, 4/12 - 5:30pm - Garibaldi Plaza, Washington Square Park, New York, NY, 10012
Sunday, 4/13 - 6:30pm - Riese Lounge, 721 Broadway, New York, NY 10003
To waitlist for any SOLD-OUT show, email shakespearei...@gmail.com
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/macbeth-tickets-1295234353819?aff=ebdssbdestsearch
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
BabelFest: A Festival of New American Plays - Redhouse Arts Center is seeking groundbreaking new plays and musicals that feature new voices and new perspectives. The festival will be curated by respected arts leaders in the Central New York area and around the country. One new play and one new musical will be selected for two public staged readings at Redhouse Arts Center in Syracuse.
***
Missed the Boat Theatre’s inaugural New Works Festival will take place with staged readings in September 2025 at a venue to be determined in the Twin Cities, Minnesota. This festival is an opportunity designed to support and encourage the development of new plays and musicals from a Catholic Christian worldview. 2-4 scripts will be selected to receive a rehearsal workshop with a director and performers culminating in a public staged reading followed by a moderator-led talkback.
***
OnyxFest - scripts submissions should be relevant to experiences, themes, stories, perspectives, issues, challenges, and celebrations that relate to Black life, history, social and/or cultural impact. However, we support and encourage representation from all ethnicities and allow for some of that to be incorporated in submitted material.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** THE FALLOUT ***
Trump also promised a "golden age of American arts and culture."
However, after Trump's firings and partisan appointments, producers canceled a planned staging of the Broadway musical "Hamilton" at the center.
Several European artists who regularly tour the United States have also axed performances.
Among them is Andras Schiff, the world-renowned Hungarian-British pianist. He canceled upcoming concerts with the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra in the US due to what he called the "brutal takeover" of the Kennedy Center in Washington."
Donald Trump is acting like "a crazy elephant in a china store," the 71-year-old virtuoso told DW.
More...
https://www.dw.com/en/european-artists-boycott-us-over-trumps-culture-policy/a-72040096
***
Like a general at war inspecting a ruined village snatched from the enemy, Donald Trump spent a few hours on Monday, March 17, at the Kennedy Center, Washington's main entertainment venue and the country's cultural beacon. The new US president carried out a putsch on the site, and he put it his way: "We've taken control of it."
It's as if Emmanuel Macron, unhappy with the programming at the Paris Opera or the Louvre, decided to fire the bosses and replace them himself. Exaggerated? No. Trump fired the director of the Kennedy Center, purged the board of directors and repopulated it with close friends, such as country singer Lee Greenwood (his hit "God Bless the USA" is a Trump campaign anthem) and two figures from the conservative Fox News channel. He made himself president of the cultural center after ousting the incumbent and has just held his first working meeting. As if he had nothing else to do.
More...
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2025/03/21/trump-staged-a-putsch-at-the-kennedy-center-and-he-didn-t-choose-this-cultural-jewel-at-random_6739400_23.html
***
The new chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts had a question for the board. Which musical is best, “The Phantom of the Opera” or “Les Misérables”? (Several trustees seemed to agree it was “Phantom.”)
He mused about how great it could be if he hosted the Kennedy Center Honors (“The king of ratings,” he called himself). And he floated the idea of giving awards to dead figures in culture and sports, including Luciano Pavarotti, Elvis Presley and Babe Ruth.
Monday was President Trump’s first visit to the Kennedy Center since he took it over last month by replacing all the Biden appointees on the board of the once bipartisan institution and having himself elected chairman.
As he gathered members of the new board on the stage of its opera house he expressed strong and sometimes surprising opinions on a variety of matters, according to an audio recording of his private remarks obtained by The New York Times, which was confirmed as authentic by a participant.
Asked about the recording, a Kennedy Center official pointed to a social media post by its new president, Richard Grenell, which said that Mr. Trump wants to save the center and “ensure it is the premier Arts institution in the United States” and a place where “EVERYONE is welcome.”
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/18/arts/music/trump-kennedy-center.html
***
That concern is compounded for organizations like GALA Hispanic Theatre, whose mission is to promote and share ethnically focused (in this case, Latino) arts and culture.
“Just our name alone, GALA Hispanic Theatre, puts us in a different category already,” says Abel Lopez, associate producing director at GALA and also a board member of Theatre Washington. He observes that President Trump’s executive order making English the official language of the United States (for the first time) is especially problematic for a theater dedicated to producing Hispanic and Latino playwrights in their native language.
“It is another way to make us feel that we don’t belong, or that one doesn’t belong unless you speak or perform in English,” Lopez says. “So how that order is interpreted could affect us as well as our community.”
More...
https://dctheaterarts.org/2025/03/31/how-can-theater-talk-back-to-trump/
***
At the Kennedy Center, Trump installed as president his envoy for special missions, Richard Grenell, a man with no experience in arts administration, and most recently in the news for helping the avowed misogynist influencer Andrew Tate, and his brother Tristan, leave Romania, where they face charges of human trafficking, rape, forming a criminal gang, and money laundering. Grenell’s latest special mission is apparently to protect audiences in Washington, DC, from the perils of sequins and feather boas.
“NO MORE DRAG SHOWS, OR OTHER ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA,” Trump crowed in a post welcoming Grenell to his new job. Engagements that run afoul of MAGA dogma were quickly canceled, among them the comedy show “Riot! Funny Women Stand Up,” the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, DC, and Finn, a children’s show about a young shark who discovers and embraces his difference from other sharks. The International Pride Orchestra, which was completing a contract for a concert scheduled for June as part of WorldPride events, found itself abruptly disinvited.
More...
https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/trump-kennedy-center-arts-funding/
***
“They were treating me good because I was a young star,” he theorized, while strongly implying that he had attended the play with someone other than his wife. He fondly recalled the “gorgeous” young dancers lying onstage and the brilliance of the star singer, Betty Buckley. “Is Betty Buckley still alive?” he asked, mid-soliloquy. (She is, and is not a Trump fan.)
The point, such as it was, seemed to be that he wanted to have a lot more “Cats”-style shows at the Kennedy Center, and a lot fewer of the “totally woke” modern productions that one of his fellow MAGA board members complained about during the meeting. Getting down to business, Trump volunteered to host a revamped version of the Kennedy Center Honors, minus the “radical-left lunatics” who had been given the prestigious award in recent years. This, he assured the board, would be good for the center, since he is “the king of ratings, right?”
We know the President of the United States said all this because someone had the presence of mind to secretly tape this inanity and send it to a reporter at the Times. As scoops go, the news value might have been minimal, but the illumination value was high—this is Trump as he sees himself, a brilliant showman who once dreamed of being a Broadway producer, an avatar of middle-brow theatrics indifferent to the arbiters of good taste and trapped in a vision of America rooted in his nineteen-eighties heyday. If the crowd loved it, then so did he. The great Times photographer Doug Mills captured Trump during his Kennedy Center visit, standing on the balcony of the Presidential box, staring down at the orchestra below in a pose that evoked his all-time favorite Andrew Lloyd Webber show, “Evita.” This was no accident. C-span footage shows that Trump produced the shot himself, directing Mills and others to come and get it. “Do you want a little picture like this?” he called down to the journalists. “Perfect,” one responded.
More...
https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/donald-trump-producer-in-chief
***
The New Yorker's Updated Kennedy Center 2025 Schedule
June 3-7 — ICE Capades: An evening of hilarious bodycam bloopers of bungled busts and deportation hiccups
June 10 — Joe Rogan Stunt-Double/Human-Shield Contest (all entrants must be over 54 and under 5'4")
June 11 — Joe Rogan “Bum Fights” (over $35 in prize money!)
June 13 — Night of 100 Caving Journalists!
June 14 — (Flag Day) Official reopening! Two Oath Keepers (T.B.A.) with reverse drill bits take name off front of building
June 17-July 3 — “Shen Yun” (ticket tariff lifted)
July 4 — All-American Fourth of July Musical Salute to the Kremlin
July 5 — Roseanne Sings Sondheim (tentative)
July 8-11 — (Exclusive opening) Exhibit of Brass Calf made from returned Kennedy Center Honors medals
July 14-16 — “Honey, Where Are My Pants?”: The Bruce Jenner Anti-Trans Musical (tentative)
July 18-19 — “Come F.A.A. Away” (a new play) (tentative)
July 23-24 — H. R. Frackenstuff (fossil-fuel-based marionettes)
August 5-9, 12-16 — Red Man Group
August 19-24 — Sylvester Stallone, Jon Voight in “Doomsday Clock Cowboy” (a new play)
August 29-30 — Earth, Wind, Fire, Drought & Mudslides
Labor Day Weekend — Hotel workers’ trade union sponsors the musical reboot “Visa Las Vegas”
More...
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/03/24/updated-kennedy-center-2025-schedule
*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
MACBETH
NYU's Shakespeare in the Square
Macbeth focuses on the corrupting power of ambition and fate’s guilty hand in the downfall of prosperity. This production explores Macbeth’s role as a power-hungry cult leader in the lawless American expanse.
Schedule:
Friday, 4/11 - 6:30pm - Riese Lounge, 721 Broadway, New York, NY 10003
Saturday, 4/12 - 1:00pm - Garibaldi Plaza, Washington Square Park, New York, NY, 10012
Saturday, 4/12 - 5:30pm - Garibaldi Plaza, Washington Square Park, New York, NY, 10012
Sunday, 4/13 - 6:30pm - Riese Lounge, 721 Broadway, New York, NY 10003
To waitlist for any SOLD-OUT show, email shakespearei...@gmail.com
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/macbeth-tickets-1295234353819?aff=ebdssbdestsearch
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
BabelFest: A Festival of New American Plays - Redhouse Arts Center is seeking groundbreaking new plays and musicals that feature new voices and new perspectives. The festival will be curated by respected arts leaders in the Central New York area and around the country. One new play and one new musical will be selected for two public staged readings at Redhouse Arts Center in Syracuse.
***
Missed the Boat Theatre’s inaugural New Works Festival will take place with staged readings in September 2025 at a venue to be determined in the Twin Cities, Minnesota. This festival is an opportunity designed to support and encourage the development of new plays and musicals from a Catholic Christian worldview. 2-4 scripts will be selected to receive a rehearsal workshop with a director and performers culminating in a public staged reading followed by a moderator-led talkback.
***
OnyxFest - scripts submissions should be relevant to experiences, themes, stories, perspectives, issues, challenges, and celebrations that relate to Black life, history, social and/or cultural impact. However, we support and encourage representation from all ethnicities and allow for some of that to be incorporated in submitted material.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** THE FALLOUT ***
Trump also promised a "golden age of American arts and culture."
However, after Trump's firings and partisan appointments, producers canceled a planned staging of the Broadway musical "Hamilton" at the center.
Several European artists who regularly tour the United States have also axed performances.
Among them is Andras Schiff, the world-renowned Hungarian-British pianist. He canceled upcoming concerts with the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra in the US due to what he called the "brutal takeover" of the Kennedy Center in Washington."
Donald Trump is acting like "a crazy elephant in a china store," the 71-year-old virtuoso told DW.
More...
https://www.dw.com/en/european-artists-boycott-us-over-trumps-culture-policy/a-72040096
***
Like a general at war inspecting a ruined village snatched from the enemy, Donald Trump spent a few hours on Monday, March 17, at the Kennedy Center, Washington's main entertainment venue and the country's cultural beacon. The new US president carried out a putsch on the site, and he put it his way: "We've taken control of it."
It's as if Emmanuel Macron, unhappy with the programming at the Paris Opera or the Louvre, decided to fire the bosses and replace them himself. Exaggerated? No. Trump fired the director of the Kennedy Center, purged the board of directors and repopulated it with close friends, such as country singer Lee Greenwood (his hit "God Bless the USA" is a Trump campaign anthem) and two figures from the conservative Fox News channel. He made himself president of the cultural center after ousting the incumbent and has just held his first working meeting. As if he had nothing else to do.
More...
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2025/03/21/trump-staged-a-putsch-at-the-kennedy-center-and-he-didn-t-choose-this-cultural-jewel-at-random_6739400_23.html
***
The new chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts had a question for the board. Which musical is best, “The Phantom of the Opera” or “Les Misérables”? (Several trustees seemed to agree it was “Phantom.”)
He mused about how great it could be if he hosted the Kennedy Center Honors (“The king of ratings,” he called himself). And he floated the idea of giving awards to dead figures in culture and sports, including Luciano Pavarotti, Elvis Presley and Babe Ruth.
Monday was President Trump’s first visit to the Kennedy Center since he took it over last month by replacing all the Biden appointees on the board of the once bipartisan institution and having himself elected chairman.
As he gathered members of the new board on the stage of its opera house he expressed strong and sometimes surprising opinions on a variety of matters, according to an audio recording of his private remarks obtained by The New York Times, which was confirmed as authentic by a participant.
Asked about the recording, a Kennedy Center official pointed to a social media post by its new president, Richard Grenell, which said that Mr. Trump wants to save the center and “ensure it is the premier Arts institution in the United States” and a place where “EVERYONE is welcome.”
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/18/arts/music/trump-kennedy-center.html
***
That concern is compounded for organizations like GALA Hispanic Theatre, whose mission is to promote and share ethnically focused (in this case, Latino) arts and culture.
“Just our name alone, GALA Hispanic Theatre, puts us in a different category already,” says Abel Lopez, associate producing director at GALA and also a board member of Theatre Washington. He observes that President Trump’s executive order making English the official language of the United States (for the first time) is especially problematic for a theater dedicated to producing Hispanic and Latino playwrights in their native language.
“It is another way to make us feel that we don’t belong, or that one doesn’t belong unless you speak or perform in English,” Lopez says. “So how that order is interpreted could affect us as well as our community.”
More...
https://dctheaterarts.org/2025/03/31/how-can-theater-talk-back-to-trump/
***
At the Kennedy Center, Trump installed as president his envoy for special missions, Richard Grenell, a man with no experience in arts administration, and most recently in the news for helping the avowed misogynist influencer Andrew Tate, and his brother Tristan, leave Romania, where they face charges of human trafficking, rape, forming a criminal gang, and money laundering. Grenell’s latest special mission is apparently to protect audiences in Washington, DC, from the perils of sequins and feather boas.
“NO MORE DRAG SHOWS, OR OTHER ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA,” Trump crowed in a post welcoming Grenell to his new job. Engagements that run afoul of MAGA dogma were quickly canceled, among them the comedy show “Riot! Funny Women Stand Up,” the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, DC, and Finn, a children’s show about a young shark who discovers and embraces his difference from other sharks. The International Pride Orchestra, which was completing a contract for a concert scheduled for June as part of WorldPride events, found itself abruptly disinvited.
More...
https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/trump-kennedy-center-arts-funding/
***
“They were treating me good because I was a young star,” he theorized, while strongly implying that he had attended the play with someone other than his wife. He fondly recalled the “gorgeous” young dancers lying onstage and the brilliance of the star singer, Betty Buckley. “Is Betty Buckley still alive?” he asked, mid-soliloquy. (She is, and is not a Trump fan.)
The point, such as it was, seemed to be that he wanted to have a lot more “Cats”-style shows at the Kennedy Center, and a lot fewer of the “totally woke” modern productions that one of his fellow MAGA board members complained about during the meeting. Getting down to business, Trump volunteered to host a revamped version of the Kennedy Center Honors, minus the “radical-left lunatics” who had been given the prestigious award in recent years. This, he assured the board, would be good for the center, since he is “the king of ratings, right?”
We know the President of the United States said all this because someone had the presence of mind to secretly tape this inanity and send it to a reporter at the Times. As scoops go, the news value might have been minimal, but the illumination value was high—this is Trump as he sees himself, a brilliant showman who once dreamed of being a Broadway producer, an avatar of middle-brow theatrics indifferent to the arbiters of good taste and trapped in a vision of America rooted in his nineteen-eighties heyday. If the crowd loved it, then so did he. The great Times photographer Doug Mills captured Trump during his Kennedy Center visit, standing on the balcony of the Presidential box, staring down at the orchestra below in a pose that evoked his all-time favorite Andrew Lloyd Webber show, “Evita.” This was no accident. C-span footage shows that Trump produced the shot himself, directing Mills and others to come and get it. “Do you want a little picture like this?” he called down to the journalists. “Perfect,” one responded.
More...
https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/donald-trump-producer-in-chief
***
The New Yorker's Updated Kennedy Center 2025 Schedule
June 3-7 — ICE Capades: An evening of hilarious bodycam bloopers of bungled busts and deportation hiccups
June 10 — Joe Rogan Stunt-Double/Human-Shield Contest (all entrants must be over 54 and under 5'4")
June 11 — Joe Rogan “Bum Fights” (over $35 in prize money!)
June 13 — Night of 100 Caving Journalists!
June 14 — (Flag Day) Official reopening! Two Oath Keepers (T.B.A.) with reverse drill bits take name off front of building
June 17-July 3 — “Shen Yun” (ticket tariff lifted)
July 4 — All-American Fourth of July Musical Salute to the Kremlin
July 5 — Roseanne Sings Sondheim (tentative)
July 8-11 — (Exclusive opening) Exhibit of Brass Calf made from returned Kennedy Center Honors medals
July 14-16 — “Honey, Where Are My Pants?”: The Bruce Jenner Anti-Trans Musical (tentative)
July 18-19 — “Come F.A.A. Away” (a new play) (tentative)
July 23-24 — H. R. Frackenstuff (fossil-fuel-based marionettes)
August 5-9, 12-16 — Red Man Group
August 19-24 — Sylvester Stallone, Jon Voight in “Doomsday Clock Cowboy” (a new play)
August 29-30 — Earth, Wind, Fire, Drought & Mudslides
Labor Day Weekend — Hotel workers’ trade union sponsors the musical reboot “Visa Las Vegas”
More...
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/03/24/updated-kennedy-center-2025-schedule
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