Happy Spring! Hopefully we can actually get some spring soon. In the meantime, check out a fantastic list of upcoming events (and auditions!) below.
The next issue will include events through April 18. Submit upcoming events via the link below or by emailing me before Tuesday at midnight. Any questions, comments or feedback? Email me at pioneervalleytheatre@gmail.com
I teach a class at New York University Abu Dhabi called Laughter. I hesitate to even say I teach—it’s more like… I lead a chaotic and artistic lab that produces different results every time, based on who is in the room.
Have you read an interesting article about theatre recently? Send it to me! pioneervalleytheatre@gmail.com
PERFORMANCES
Smith College Department of Theatre New Play Reading Series presents SHUT UP, EMILY DICKINSON Written by Tanya Ritchie (aka Tanya O’Debra), Ada Comstock Scholar ‘19. Directed by Mary Beth Brooker, MFA ‘20
Thursday, March 22 at 7:30 PM
Acting Studio 1
Mendenhall Center for the Performing Arts, Smith College
Emily Dickinson: poet, recluse, a**hole. Loosely based on the Master Letters, Shut UP, Emily Dickinson! is a pseudo-historical, quasi-biographical, hysterically existential psycho-romance about America's most brilliant and annoying poetess. Holed up for all eternity in the bedroom of our minds, the “woman in white” stretches into a projection screen for truths, half-truths, truthiness, and truth-less-ness. She’s whatever you want her to be and nothing you imagined. Emily Dickinson is the definition of a difficult woman.
Free and open to the public.
Majestic Theater presents Outside Mullingar West Springfield
March 22-31
The play was written by John Patrick Shanley, author of Doubt and Moonstruck, and follows the story of Anthony and Rosemary, two neighboring farmers who are clueless when it comes to love. Anthony's father and Rosemary's mother are rivals, locked in a bitter land feud, which challenges Rosemary's lifelong interest in Anthony, who seems either shy or unaware of her feelings. The pair must persevere to overcome the land feud, the family rivalry and their own romantic fears. Outside Mullingar is filled with dark humor and poetic prose as it conveys the message that it's never too late to take a chance on love.
Cast members include Jay Sefton (Antony Reilly), Margaret Reilly Streeter (Rosemary Muldoon), Ron Komora (Tony Reilly) and Sara Whitcomb (Aoife Muldoon). Danny Eaton, producing director at the Majestic, will direct the play. Set design is by Greg Trochlil and Dan Rist is the lighting designer. Costume design is by Dawn McKay, Laura Kathryn Gomez is stage manager and Stephen Petit is production manager.
Ticket for the play range from $23-$30 and are now available by calling or visiting the box office during its hours of operation, which are Monday through Friday 10am – 5pm and Saturday 10am – 1pm.
UMass Amherst Theater presents Infants of the Spring Adapted by Ifa Bayeza from the novel by Wallace Thurman
Directed by Ifa Bayeza
March 23, 24, 28, 29, 30 at 7:30 p.m.
March 24 at 2 p.m.
School Matinee March 30 at 10 a.m.
The Rand Theater
$5 per play students/seniors, $15 general admission
How does an artist pursue their passion amid social upheaval and oppression? How do they stay true to their art? Can art create social change? A group of African-American artists struggle to find the answers to these weighty questions in the Department of Theater's Infants of the Spring. Running March 21-30 in the Rand Theater, Infants extends its hand to the audience, promising them a journey back in time to the Harlem Renaissance, an iconic and complicated moment in our nation's history that continues to influence our popular culture today.
Adapted from Wallace Thurman's novel of the same name, Infants of the Spring follows the events that transpire in a Harlem boarding house for artists from spring to winter of 1929. Ifa Bayeza, playwright, director, and MFA graduate student, read the book years ago and decided there was a play trapped in those pages. Her immediate thought was, "I've got to liberate it!"
The plot follows a writer, Raymond, as he works to finish his novel, caught in the flow of events going on around him that lead him further and further away from his creative endeavors. He shares his life with a multicultural group of friends at the boarding house, most of them artists in their own right. Students of black history will recognize some characters as thinly-veiled takes on people like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, who were Thurman's contemporaries. Bayeza has masterfully transferred the satirical depiction of these Harlem Renaissance luminaries to the stage.
While the setting is a period of revitalization and creativity and the play starts on a decidedly comic note, the harsh reality of living in a racist society intrudes upon the artistic idyll. Through Raymond and his compatriots, Bayeza depicts the struggle of the Harlem artists. Do they join in the Harlem Renaissance cause of elevating the prestige and respect for their race, or do they heed the call of their art, privileging creativity and freedom in their lives?
With brilliant characters and sparkling wit, Thurman's work is that rare tragicomedy — equally hilarious and poignant. Under Bayeza's hand, this glimpse of America's first "black arts movement" jumps off the page into living color! Join us and take the journey with them as they look for the answer.
For tickets, visit the Fine Arts Center Box Office in person, online, or by calling 1-800-999-UMAS
Smith College Department of Theatre New Play Reading Series presents Four Short Plays
Written and directed by Marty Bongfeldt, Ada Comstock Scholar ‘19.
Thursday, March 29 at 12:00 PM
Acting Studio 1
Mendenhall Center for the Performing Arts, Smith College
ALWAYS Lovers reunite over coffee after 25 years.
MOOSE & GROUSE A truant officer encounters something odd in the woods.
INTERRUPTED An after-school encounter in 1975.
PARENT/TEACHER CONFERENCE A High School mom tries to check in with her son's chemistry teacher.
Free and open to the public.
No Theater presents google gogol
Friday, March 30 & Saturday, March 31, 8:00 PM
open rehearsal Wednesday, March 28, 8 PM
at A.P.E. Gallery, Northampton
All performances and rehearsal are Free
No Theater presents google gogol, inspired by Nikolai Gogol’s Ревизор, (Revizor - The Government Inspector), the 19th Century comedy about how the corrupt officials of a small Russian town, headed by the Mayor, react with terror to the news that an incognito inspector (the revizor) will soon be arriving in their town to investigate them.
No Theater rarely performs locally. During the 70s and 80s they regularly performed on Thornes Third Floor such original works as The Elephant Man, DFS (de fiance suction), Last Resort, and Dupe. Their most recent local production was Richard Maxwell’s Cave Man, which previewed here for several months before its run in New York. No Theater’s work has been performed throughout Europe and also in Japan and Australia.
The cast of google gogol includes Barton Byg, James Emery, Tony Giardina, Charles Holt, Jane Karakula, Tom Mahnken, Tom Schieding, Peter Schmitz, and Sheena See. Directed by Roy Faudree. No Theater is in residence at APE the month of March creating the new work.
Smith College Department of Theatre presents WORD! Festival April 5 at 7:30 PM in Acting Studio 1
Mendenhall Center for the Performing Arts, Smith College
The annual WORD! Festival, now over 30 years old, will present staged readings of short poly-cultural plays (or excerpts of plays) by Five College students awarded the 2018 James Baldwin Playwriting Prize.
Free and open to the public.
Happier Valley Comedy presents We Made a Thing: a Tiny Audience Show every Monday (except March 26, April 2, April 30) at 9:00 PM
Northampton Senior Center
We Made a Thing, a tiny audience show: Super casual, weekly improvised theater show every Monday at 9pm (except March 12, March 26 and April 2) at 67 Conz Street, Northampton. Free. More info.
AUDITIONS & OPPORTUNITIES
Pioneer Valley Theatre Companies Is your theatre company missing? Email me!
Hampshire Shakespeare Company is holding an additional round of auditions for the 2018 Season of Shakespeare Under the Stars of Twelfth Night and Othello.
March 29 at 6:00 PM
Additional Information regarding location will be shared shortly.
Please prepare one monologue and bring your headshot & résumé if you have one. You can sign up for an audition slot using this link, but walk-ins are also welcome.
Performers who are people of color and/or trans are strongly encouraged to audition.
Callbacks will be on April 7.
If you are unable to attend the auditions: we are also taking video submissions. Please send a video of one monologue to hampshire.shakespeare.company@gmail.com along with a copy of your headshot and résumé.
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