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June 11 - July 1, 2020
You'll have to scroll all the way to the bottom (or better yet, click to view the whole email on a website) but there are a bunch of great workshops and classes available online that are coming up soon.
If you haven't yet, read this powerful testimonial and sign the petition here - We See You, White American Theatre.
The next issue will include events through July 8. 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
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YOUR EVENT HERE
$5 per week for your poster and ticket link in top billing!
Email me to reserve your dates.
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THIS WEEK IN THEATRE NEWS:
from Howlround
A Mortal Theatre
by Caridad Svitch
From the article:
Theatre has been “dying” for centuries. Yet, it somehow still manages to be with us. Even now, when theatre buildings have been shut down due to COVID-19. In the last ten weeks or so, for example, there has been a plethora of work presented in the online theatre environment—plays written for Zoom (Richard Nelson’s What Do We Need to Talk About? at the Public Theater), streamed on Zoom, re-conceived for Zoom (Jonathan Tolins’ Buyer and Cellar presented by Broadway.com as a Living Room Livestream); plays to be downloaded and read and/or played at home; and more, as well as the streaming of recently recorded or archival recordings of productions from, among others, theatres in Europe, the UK, Russia, France, Italy, Canada, Poland, China, and the United States. The Theatre Times’ second edition of the International Online Theatre Festival has curated more than twenty-five streamed productions but also accompanying live conversations and artist talks.
Have you read an interesting article about theatre recently? Send it to me! pioneervalleytheatre@gmail.com
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PERFORMANCES and COVID-19 RESOURCES
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K and E Theater Group Presents Local Spotlight Series this Summer!
K and E Theater Group is excited to present its LOCAL SPOTLIGHT SERIES on Facebook, IGTV and YouTube celebrating Pioneer Valley’s theater artists. KETG Artistic Director Eddie Zitka hosts the summer series streaming online every Tuesday and Friday starting on May 26th and through the rest of the summer!
Stay tuned and check out our lineup by liking us on Facebook and Instagram, and subscribing to our YouTube channel! See you in the spotlight!
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National Theatre Live YouTube Channel
Streaming will begin at 2 PM EST.
The Madness of George III
Mark Gatiss, Adrian Scarborough and Debra Gillet feature in the acclaimed Nottingham Playhouse production of Alan Bennett's award-winning drama.
Streaming from 7pm UK time on 11 June, until 7pm UK time on 18 June.
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SILVERTHORNE THEATER ANNOUNCES
2020 THEATER THURSDAY PLAY READING SERIES
Following up on its highly successful Theater Thursday play reading series last year, Silverthorne Theater Company will take advantage of the use of online streaming to bring three new plays to the Valley and beyond this summer through the 2020 Theater Thursday Play Reading Series. All three plays in this year’s series will be streamed free to Silverthorne’s Facebook page and will feature live discussions with the playwrights following the readings. The series is funded in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council through the generous support of the Greenfield, Hadley and Buckland Cultural Councils.
The first in the series is Daniel Elihu Kramer's Pride@Prejudice, an online reimagining of the classic Jane Austen novel, directed by Chris Rohmann. The reading will be streamed on on Silverthorne’s Facebook page and YouTube channel on Thursday, June 18 beginning at 7 pm EDT. There is no charge to view the reading. Viewers can visit https://www.facebook.com/silverthornetheater/ to access the performance.
Following the reading, playwright Kramer will join the cast and director to talk about the play. Kramer says, "I'm excited to see Pride@Prejudice in this online setting. The internet combined with Jane Austen's brilliance inspired this script in the first place, so it feels like Chris Rohmann and Silverthorne are bringing the play full circle."
About the play: Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy fall in love all over again -- this time filtered through the world of the internet. Modern students in a FaceTime group discuss and build on this classic love story while acting it out, interjecting questions and opinions, quotes from movie versions, and even letters from Ms. Austen herself, to create a delightfully postmodern view of 19th century England. With five actors playing 22 roles, Pride@Prejudice is a unique and hilarious homage to Austen's most beloved novel, and to our love affair with reading. Available online only on STC's Facebook page or YouTube channel.
Daniel Elihu Kramer became Producing Artistic Director of Chester Theatre Company in fall of 2015, after four years as Associate Artistic Director, and produced his first season in 2016.. In 2011, CTC produced Pride@Prejudice which transferred to Capital Rep in 2012. He works nationally as a theatre director and playwright, and as a film director. He is Professor of Theatre and a member of the Film and Media Studies program at Smith College.
On Thursday, July 16, the second Theater Thursday play will be read as a co-production with the Chester Theatre Company and will be directed by CTC’s Danial Elihu Kramer. Northampton playwright Darcy Bruce’s Soldier Poet is a prize-winning piece that was premiered by Theatre Prometheus in 2017 at the Anacostia Arts Center in Washington D.C. The play centers on a gripping and timely story. In Aleppo two American Army Rangers rescue an injured Syrian woman about to give birth. At a nearby hospital, a neonatal nurse with an unwavering sense of duty struggles to save the lives of infants as her hospital is bombed.
The final 2020 Theater Thursday play, which streams on Thursday, August 20, is written by Northampton playwright, James McLindon – Distant Music. Penney Hulten directs this complex piece set in January 2000. On a snowy night in an Irish pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Connor, Maeve and Dev meet, each agonizing over an irrevocably life-changing decision. The three fight over religion and beer, whether truth exists at all, the differences between the Irish and Irish-Americans, the many failings (according to Dev) of the latter, and, finally, the capacity of stout to explain, metaphorically and metaphysically, most of life. The play, winner of numerous awards, has been produced across the country and is published by Dramatic Publishing. The playwright will join in for a live post-show talk about the play.
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SILVERTHORNE THEATER PRESENTS COMEDY LIVE (ALMOST!): An Evening with Ruth Draper Monologues
Silverthorne Theater Company will present a virtual live performance of comedy with An Evening with Ruth Draper via the LAVA Center in Greenfield on Friday, June 26, at 7:00 pm.
An inspired social satirist of the 1920s and beyond, Ruth Draper captivated audiences around the world with her one-woman monologues, often poking fun at the foibles of the bon vivant. Draper created whole casts of characters who would join her on stage, yet only in her – and the audience’s – imagination.
Actor Penney Hulten of Northfield will inhabit the world of Draper in two of her most delightful comedic monologues, The Italian Lesson and Doctors and Diets. The virtual fundraiser for Silverthorne Theater was an inspiration by Hulten, a 2009 graduate of the Ada Comstock Program at Smith College where she earned her bachelor’s degree in Theater. Coincidentally, Ruth Draper earned an honorary degree of doctor of humanities at Smith College in 1947.
A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Hulten has been involved with Silverthorne Theater since 2017 in myriad capacities including gala planning, admin support, and even modeling for a recent costume fashion show. Her most enjoyable assignment, she says, was assisting backstage with quick costume changes for GREATER TUNA in 2018.
“They say drama is easy and comedy is hard,” says Hulten. “For me it is the other way around. I’m always at my happiest when I can make people laugh. During the Great Depression film makers such as Busby Berkeley created films to bring spectacle and distraction from everyday life to audiences suffering from the aftershocks of the stock market crash. I hope to bring some comic relief to those of us struggling with the current pandemic and other concerns.”
Hulten’s early influences include Lucille Ball, Barbra Streisand, Carol Burnett, Katherine Hepburn and Gilda Radner. “I learned from these women that it was alright to be an attractive, independent, intelligent woman and yet do comedy that pokes fun at oneself. As a matter of fact, I found them more appealing for having done so. To be able to laugh at ourselves – and the human condition – is a gift to others letting them know it’s okay to be our own totally human selves: flawed, silly, hypocritical, klutzy, fearful, hilarious – all of it!”
Draper had her own sense of the absurd, yet never made fun with her characters. “Everybody is rather ridiculous, rather pitiful,” she said. Yet there isn’t any malice or acerbity in her portrayals. She is sympathetic to people while at the same time sublimely pointing out their inherent shortcomings. Audiences can see themselves – their neighbors, family members – in her characters. Draper’s alternating comedy and pathos in her tales evokes a knowing solace and understanding that comforts as well as entertains.
An internationally acclaimed diseuse (a woman who is a skilled and usually professional reciter), Ruth Draper was born in 1884 in New York City. She began displaying her talents early, delighting her siblings by imitating the adults in their lives. Later, she began giving monologues at private parties and schools. In 1920 she made her professional debut at London’s Aeolian Hall. Her skits, as she called them, and her proclivities expanded as she extended her cast of characters.
Creating her own original material while keeping it all in her head, she entertained audiences around the country and around the world; most notably to King George V and Queen Mary of Britain, as well as the royal families of Spain and Belgium. World renowned artist John Singer Sargent created charcoal portraits of her, and she was a favorite among actors such as Katherine Hepburn, Helen Hays, Sarah Burnhardt, and Laurence Olivier. Shunning interviews, she disliked publicity yet filled theaters for runs on Broadway, in the West End and the like. Draper continued acting into her 70’s and died in her sleep after a performance in 1956 during the run of a Broadway engagement.
Henry James was a friend of the Draper Family, and Ruth asked him if she should pursue a career as a professional actress. He said to her, “No, my dear child. You have woven your own beautiful little Persian carpet. Stand on it.”
Draper brought humor and magic to her patrons, and Hulten hopes to bring some of that same enchantment to local audiences via Facebook Live. Hulten says, “Laughter is the best medicine, so I invite you for a spoonful. Broadway character Auntie Mame said, ‘Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death.’ I say – come to the table and feast!”
As well as the live broadcast, the evening’s performance will be filmed and available on the Silverthorne website: https://silverthornetheater.org/.
For more information about Silverthorne Theater or this performance, please call Lucinda Kidder at (413) 768-7514 or email silverthornetheater@gmail.com.
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From the New England New Play Alliance:
Virtual Theatre and Podcasts
Playwrights Platform presents
Welcome to week two of the Playwrights' Platform virtual festival, which is also serving as a fundraiser for organizations that support the BlackLivesMatter Movement: NAACP Boston Branch, Black Lives Matter Boston, Massachusetts Bail Fund, Black and Pink, Violence in Boston Inc. The festival will present one play each evening at 7:00 pm, followed by a Q&A with the playwright. Festival lineup for Week Two:
Is It Me?
by Lawrence "Nick" Hennessey
directed by Mark Davis
June 11
Jenny Must Die
by Bill Lattanzi
directed by Alexandra Smith
June 12
Vendetta
by Andrea Aptecker
directed by John Minigan
June 13
Heart Broker
by Maryanne Truax
directed by Francis Norton
June 14
The Wilbury Theatre Group in Providence presents
Conversations with Heshie
by Nick Malakhow
June 11 and streaming after
Meet Heshie Cantankorwitz. His nursing home is in lockdown. His neighbor Gloria is keeping him up all night with her coughing. His neurotic grandson Asher says it's the end of the world. They've even closed off-track betting. Who can figure it out? All Heshie knows is that he's got a few things he'd like to get off his chest. Over the course of three Zoom calls, the not-so-wise old man schools his grandson on the meaning of life and love, making a fast buck in the garment industry and the importance of a high-fiber diet. Conversations with Heshie is "The 2,000 Year Old Man" for the age of COVID-19 — chicken soup for the soul in our crazy, dark times. RSVP here.
Metropolitan Area Planning Council presents
The Medfield Anthology
by Hortense Gerardo
June 11
First created as an immersive walking play through the Medfield State Hospital grounds, The Medfield Anthology portrays the hospital in its many facets - not only a place where patients went for psychiatric care, but also where community members attended an annual Harvest Ball, young lovers went to movie screenings in the chapel, and youngsters competed in Little League games. This online presentation features a new scene about the 1918 flu pandemic, and a movement piece adapted for viewing on computer screens. RSVP here.
Cue Zero Theatre presents
A workshop reading of
A Series of Inelastic Collisions
by Eugenie Carabatsos
June 12
After the death of her husband, Rain moves in with her estranged son, whose recent religious conversion has brought on major life changes, including fostering two teenagers. Isolated from her family, Rain finds connection and intimacy with the strangers she encounters while phone-banking for her preferred presidential candidate. RSVP here.
Arlekin Players Theatre presents
State vs Natasha Banina
by Yaroslava Pulinovich
June 14
In State vs Natasha Banina, based on Natasha’s Dream by Yaroslava Pulinovich, a girl tells the story of her life in a small-town orphanage, and of her desire to be free. From the inside of a “ZOOM” court room, she will make twists and turns through her unique appeal to audiences as the jurors, letting them into her world where she dreams about love, family, acceptance, adjusting, and her future. Ultimately the two worlds collide and you get to decide her fate. RSVP here.
Open Theatre Project presents
Community Write: Week 6
Streaming now
Playwright Andrew Siañez-De La O has chosen "Seedlings & Sidwalk Chalk" as the themes for week six. To stream some of the creative writing that this theme inspired, or to watch performances of writing from previous weeks, click here.
Craving silence, a successful entrepreneur buys a remote Pacific island as the ultimate sound-proof getaway in Entitled. How far would you go to stop global warming? A teenage environmental activist explains her choices to her priest in The Greening of Bridget Kelley. stream now.
The Hear Now National Audio Theater Festival for 2020 presents
The Mooncusser's Tale,
a radio play
by Lee Roscoe
A lyrical maritime tale of 19th century Welfleet, Cape Cod, about mooncussers and the conflicts between those who live within nature and those who use her forces against man. Listen to the podcast.
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MAJESTIC THEATER ANNOUNCES REOPENING PLANS
West Springfield Venue Plans to Resume Performances in January, 2021
West Springfield's Majestic Theater, which was temporarily closed on March 14 in response to COVID-19 safety guidelines, has announced its reopening plan.
According to Producing Director Danny Eaton, the theater will resume performances in January 2021. “There are so many unknowns at this time, but listening to our local and state leaders we have planned out a schedule we think is reasonable and hopefully achievable. We want to make sure our subscribers and patrons will feel safe coming back to the Majestic Theater,” he said.
The first production will be a three-week run of The Pitch, the drama that was in mid-run when the theater was closed in March. The closing occurred when the play had three weeks left on its schedule. Eaton noted that “All current ticket-holders for The Pitch, even those who generously donated their tickets to the Majestic, will be able to see this show when it returns in January.”
Following The Pitch, Eaton will produce an abbreviated season before the Majestic's summer 2021 lineup takes place. The rest of the season will include:
- Murder for Two (February 11 – March 21); a musical comedy whodunit
- Betty & The Patch (April 1 – May 9); a new original play by Danny Eaton
- 9 to 5 (May 20 – June 27); the musical comedy originally scheduled for May 2020 (ticket-holders for this show will also see their tickets honored for new dates in 2021)
In addition, the St. Patrick's Day-themed productions that were canceled in the wake of the pandemic have been rescheduled for 2021. They are:
- Craig Eastman (March 9); live music
- Bo Fitzgerald & The Yank Celt Band (March 15); live music
- Misgivings (March 16); one-man comedy
Eaton noted that people who were current ticket-holders for the St. Patrick's shows would also be able to have them honored for the rescheduled dates in 2021.
Following the close of 9 to 5 in June 2021, the Majestic will present summer concerts and the Majestic Children's Theater lineup as well.
Eaton announced that the Majestic Theater box office is scheduled to reopen on August 3, 2020. Staff will be able to sell tickets over the phone, but the box office will not be open for walk-in customers at that time. Transactions will not be possible before August 3, as business machines required for selling tickets are located on-site.
In the interim, the Majestic has been presenting online programming at majestictheater.com. Behind the Curtain at the Majestic is an hour-long live program in which Eaton interviews a Majestic veteran performer about their onstage experiences. The show had previously run on Sundays at 2:00 p.m., but will switch to its new time slot of Thursdays at 7:00 p.m. effective June 4. On Sundays, at 7:00 p.m., Majestic Children's Theater Director Stephen Petit gathers the cast of a previous Children's Theater show to discuss that particular play and take questions from the online audience. The play in question is posted online a week prior to the show for free viewing. Both Behind the Curtain and the Majestic Children's Theater Show are archived and available for free viewing at majestictheater.com, where visitors will also see the upcoming show topics and interviewees.
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