NYCPlaywrights February 10, 2018
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Nancy
Feb 10, 2018, 5:25:14 PM2/10/18
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Greetings NYCPlaywrights
*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
February 15, 2018, 3:00 PM
Checo, Albany
by Hadasa Mercado Cortes
Directed by Luis Salgado
MTC Studios
Studio 2
311 West 43rd Street, 8th floor
To reserve a seat, please email
*** TICKET GIVE-AWAY: THE BENCH, A HOMELESS LOVE STORY ***
THE BENCH, A HOMELESS LOVE STORY
Inspired by Real People and True Stories
A voucher good for a pair of tickets for next Friday’s 9PM performance, February 16, is being offered on a first-come, first serve basis to members of this NYCPlaywrights mailing list.
If you don’t claim the voucher this week there will be other chances - there will be a voucher for a pair of tickets given for this show each week during the show’s run from now until to April 13th!
To receive the voucher contact galin...@gmail.com as soon as you receive this email, and good luck!
Written and Performed by ROBERT GALINSKY
Directed by JAY O. SANDERS
Presented by Golden Globe Nominated CHRIS NOTH,
Drama Desk, Obie, and Olivier Award winner BARRY SHABAKA HENLEY and Tony
Award Winning Producer TERRY SCHNUCK
You can find out more about the show at https://nycp.blogspot.com/2018/02/free-ticket-give-away-bench-homeless.html
*** PLAYWRIGHTS OPPORTUNITIES ***
BINGHAM CAMP THEATRE RETREAT
BCTR is looking for playwrights, composers, and lyricists of color interested in developing their new musical or play. The work must be able to be performed with a multiethnic cast. The winning musical submission will have a two-week workshop this fall at the Bingham Camp in Salem, Connecticut culminating in a staged presentation to an invited audience.
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Pipedream Productions presents: Piping Hot New Works–In the Dark
We are looking for short play submissions (10-15 minutes MAX).
Easy enough? Well, there's a catch. The audience will be blindfolded; therefore, your play will be read to an audience in total darkness. If your play does not take this into consideration, we will not accept your submission. Get creative, get wacky, and show us what you've got!
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THE 2018 THEATRE503 PLAYWRITING AWARD
The Theatre503 Playwriting award is now open for entries. The Theatre503 Playwriting Award is made possible by the long term support of Carne Trust.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see http://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** BLACK HISTORY MONTH ***
“It’s very popular to be a black actor in January and February,” says Deondra Kamau Means, the Children’s Theatre of Cincinnati’s artistic coordinator of education and outreach.
He’s referring, of course, to the public’s seemingly insatiable appetite for tales about African-American history during that period from mid-January’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday to the end of February – Black History Month.
Black History Month has been controversial ever since it was formally recognized by President Gerald Ford in 1976. On the positive side, it has encouraged the American public to broaden its definition of “American History.” On the flip side, it sometimes feels like African-American history has been relegated to a six-week ghetto.
Since mid-January, for instance, Means has been touring in a one-man show called “Martin’s Dream.” The production, a part of the Children’s Theatre’s TCT on Tour program, will keep the actor on the road until Feb. 28. Then, it’s back to his desk. Black History Month is done. And so, apparently, is interest in Dr. King.
More…
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10 CONTEMPORARY BLACK PLAYWRIGHTS YOU SHOULD KNOW
In honor of Black History Month, we are celebrating black excellence by highlighting some of the very best black artists producing and creating work today. This week we’re focusing on 10 contemporary black playwrights you should know:
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
Named a MacArthur Genius in 2016, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is on his way to being a household name but has been well-known in Boston for some time now. Company One first produced his work in 2011 with Neighbors, a play about a group of rowdy and shameless black actors that move into a white neighborhood. SpeakEasy Stage Company produced Jacob-Jenkins Appropriate in Fall 2015, just before Company One and ArtsEmerson collaborated for a sold-out run of An Octoroon — Jacobs-Jenkins won Obies for both works when they were in New York. His work is renowned for its dark humor, explosive surprises, and commentary on race in America.
More…
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During a month that celebrates the trails blazed by African Americans, a group of black high school students is making history. Selena Jackson-King, Allen Pettis, Jordan Smith, Robert Dennis, Tarin Woodard, Alanna Groves and Jaime Young Irvin are the leading cast members of the first play about an African American family to be told on the stage of Jeffersonville High School.
“The Watsons Go To Birmingham” opens Thursday and follows Daniel and Wilona Watson as they pack up their family and head to Birmingham, Ala., from Flint, Mich., during the “Jim Crow” South. The plot is funny until suddenly, and tragically, there is a turn and the family and audience are reminded that, as one student put it, “it’s all fun and games… until it’s not.”
“One of the things we’ve talked about is Jeff High theater has always had, as long as I can remember, diversity and you see that diversity on stage, but I think for these students, one thing they expressed to me that’s different is it’s great to be an African American student playing a traditionally white role. It’s an entirely different thing to be an African American student telling an African American story that was written by an African American playwright,” Patti Miller, theater teacher and director of the play, said.
More…
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'Flight': Slavery Narratives Onstage
The Los Angeles Center Theatre Group’s youth theatre program P.L.A.Y. (Performing for Los Angeles Youth) recently commissioned writer and performance artist Charlayne Woodward to create a play about the African-American storytelling tradition. The only catch was the play had to appeal to both adults and children.
Woodward happily accepted the offer — after all, she will tell you that storytelling is in her blood. After some searching, she centered on an oral tradition that was both theatrical and stirring: slave narratives, the testimonials about slavery by the slaves themselves.
More…
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For Lorraine Hansberry, ‘A Raisin in the Sun’ Was Just the Start
A few months before her death from pancreatic cancer in early 1965, the playwright Lorraine Hansberry spoke about a letter to the editor that she sent to, but that was ultimately rejected by, The New York Times. Standing before a racially integrated Town Hall audience in New York, Ms. Hansberry, then 34, sought to counter the growing white liberal criticism of the racial militancy expressed by a younger generation of African-Americans.
“And I wrote to The Times and said, you know, ‘Can’t you understand that this is the perspective from which we are now speaking?’” Hansberry said. “It isn’t as if we got up today and said, you know, ‘what can we do to irritate America?’ you know. It’s because that since 1619, Negroes have tried every method of communication, of transformation of their situation from petition to the vote, everything. We’ve tried it all. There isn’t anything that hasn’t been exhausted.”
This image of Hansberry — exasperated, fatigued and sympathetic to the nationalist ideologies that would later blossom in the Black Power movement — might surprise those who know her only through the success of “A Raisin in the Sun.” With that much-lauded play, about a working-class African-American family on the verge of racially desegregating a Chicago suburb, Hansberry became the first African-American woman to have a show produced on Broadway, in 1959.
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ONE DROP
WRITTEN BY ANDREA J. FULTON
DIRECTED BY SABURA RASHID
The politics of "passing" in post-war Louisiana come to life through the story of a young man who could be held back by hate, but is led forward by love.
"One Drop," a family drama with music by Andrea J. Fulton, brings to life the politics of a young mixed-race man's "passing" for white in post-Civil War Louisiana, illustrating the risks taken by those not afraid to love despite bigotry. The piece, inspired by the playwright's actual family history, tells the story of a family torn apart by racism but ultimately reunited. It debuted in Theater for the New City's Dream Up Festival in 2010. TNC will present a revival of the play, directed by Sabura Rashid, from February 1 to 18 in honor of Black History Month.
Born out of wedlock to a white woman and a Black man in 1876, the play's central character, Charley Cade, is exiled from his biological mother's plantation home before he was even born. Raised by an adoptive Black mother, adolescent Charley inherits the task of "passing" for white because of his light skin. Instead of "passing" to gain stature in a white-dominated society, Charley passes to "make a point" to friends, with whom he jokes about how easily he can appear as white. Beneath the jokes, however, lies a crucial choice-- to whom is Charley loyal? His adoptive mother, LaTessa, who withheld knowledge of Charley's biological past for his life's sake, and who represents to him the Black community that nurtured him? Or to his white peers, to whom "one drop" of non-white blood is enough to justify murdering him for the sake of preserving the legacy of slavery-era racism?
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