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August 13 - September 2, 2020
Plans are changing slightly for theatres in the Berkshires. There are more details in Chris Rohmann's latest article. Please wear a mask.
The next issue will include events through September 9. 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
"The Count" for Liberal Arts Colleges
by Sharon Green, Landin Eldridge, Clare Harbin, Sungmin (David) Lee, Katie Stewart
From the article:
In 2015, The Dramatist published the findings of a study that sought to answer the question, “Who is being produced in the American theatre?” The findings, called “The Count,” documented the underrepresentation of women and playwrights of color on professional American stages. This study revealed that about 21 percent of plays professionally produced were written by women and about 12 percent were by playwrights of color. Reprised in 2019, “The Count 2.0” expanded the scope of the research and also sought to investigate any progress over the preceding four years.
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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Eggtooth and Jack Golden Productions are proud to present Under the Stars, a Covid-friendly outdoor performance for two shows a night (at 8 pm and 9 pm) on August 13, 14, 15 to take place at top floor of the Greenfield Parking Garage. With one of the most beautiful views in the Valley eight cars per performance will be welcomed to enjoy an original performance by the movement artist, Jack Golden commissioned by Eggtooth Productions. Tickets are available here.
Under the Stars is a tale of three journeys. It captures the struggles and possibilities of our unusual times through a triptych of unlikely stories: epic, improvisational, and comic. Created by Jack Golden and produced by Eggtooth Productions, this performance is set, as the title suggests, in the fresh evening air, reminiscent of drive in theaters of days gone by, except the show is live. Audience members remain in their cars, provide stage lighting with their headlights, and watch this 25 minute one man show from behind the safety of their windshields.
Jack Golden starts with “Just in Case”, the story of an archetypal journey told by a lost traveler and inspired by the prologue from Dante’s Inferno.
From there he drops his script and opens his mind to whatever comes to him in the moment. This improvisation is impossible to describe ahead of time, but it’s sure to be a delightful surprise for all, including Jack. “The Big Sweep” is the final piece, a shadow play filled with hilarious banter and acted out by a troupe of cleaning closet characters.
Where else can you get Shakespearean drama, celestial guidance, and bathroom humor kicking it together on the same stage?
Jack states that his is a “performance that respects all “social distancing” standards while allowing for an intimate theatrical experience in a time when online-virtual artistic expression carries the day. I welcome participants to Under the Stars! This performance takes place in a parking garage on the top floor where the audience drives in their cars and watches the show from inside their vehicles.
The piece utilizes shadow play, improvisation and text, and presents three separate journeys that reflect the uncertainty of our times in an upbeat and uplifting way. Heart leads to humor and returns to the heart.”
Jack Golden began his career as an actor-mime-juggler-movement artist, improvisor and clown in 1983. He has been the featured clown with the Pickle Family Circus of San Francisco and a founding member of The Wright Brothers, a new vaudeville touring company that was voted “Best of Fest” at the 1987 International Clown and Mime Festival.
In 1989 he embarked on a solo career that has led him to create and perform several nationally touring shows for schools and family audiences including the award winning Garbage Is My Bag. He studied physical theater and improvisation extensively with the world-renowned director and performer, Tony Montanaro. Additionally he trained with the San Francisco School of Dramatic Arts. He has taught physical theater and improvisation at Savannah College of Arts and Design, New England Center for Circus Arts, the University of Massachusetts and Boston University.
More recently, he created the one person performance “You Don’t Know Jack”, which debuted at the Shea Theater and Art Center and went on to Baltimore’s Charm City Fringe Festival. In addition he played Atigonus in John Bechtold’s “A Winters Tale”, Night Custodian in “Deus ex Machina” as well as roles in Gem of the Valley and Sam’s Place.
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On August 15th, 2020, Real Live Theatre presents a live “Zoom-staged” reading of our original feminist epic The Life & Death of Queen Margaret.
A patchwork of text written mostly by William Shakespeare, as deconstructed and augmented by Toby Vera Bercovici and Dan Morbyrne.
Directed by Toby Vera Bercovici
With Choreography by Annelise Nielsen
Stage Management by Ezekiel Baskin
Sound Design by Catherine McCurry
Featuring an original song by Cynthia Zaitz, Ph.D
Featuring a reunion of our 2017 cast: Myka Plunkett, Linda Tardif, Kate Hare, Annelise Nielsen, Ellen Morbyrne, Emily Tanch, Jeannine Haas (AEA), and Lisa Abend (AEA).
Saturday, August 15th, 7pm.
Mature content.
www.RealLiveTheatre.net for all the info.
Email reallivetheatre@gmail.com with any questions.
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Each year the Northampton Arts Council raises funds for arts enrichment in Northampton Public Schools. It’s time again for THE end-of-the-summer benefit music festival! On Tuesday, August 18, 2020 Transperformance 30: LIVE AID will celebrate a global jukebox of solidarity while raising funds for arts enrichment programs in our schools. Your favorite local bands will transform into the same acts who graced the stages in London and Philadelphia at Live Aid 35 years ago such as Queen, Madonna, The Beach Boys, Pretenders, The Four Tops, Black Sabbath, Phil Collins, Judas Priest and more!
Unfortunately this year, due to COVID-19, we are not able to present Transperformance at the Pines Theater at Look Park in Florence. We will be live-streaming on Facebook Live, YouTube Live, and Twitch from The Workroom/Theater@33 Hawley.
The lack of ticket and food sales will really hamper our fund-raising efforts this year. Help us honor 30 years of bringing our community members together to support music and the arts by donating to this dynamic community event. Your generosity of $25, $50, $75, $100, or more enables us to continue this special musical tradition and furthers our mission of providing direct financial assistance for arts enrichment activities in the public schools and to local artists.
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DISTANT MUSIC
by James McLindon
Thursday, August 20
Launches at 7 pm on Facebook & YouTube
STC’s final Theater Thursday Play Reading series selection is Northampton playwright James McLindon’s Distant Music. Set in Cambridge in an Irish pub, three people with very different vocations keep company over their pints of stout as they wrestle with major life crises.
This will be a recording of a live reading of the play.
Following the Thursday viewing, audience members can attend a live Zoom discussion with the playwright, director and cast members. Links to the YouTube streaming and the live Zoom audience discussion on August 20 will be posted on Silverthorne’s web site – https://silverthornetheater.org.
At once dramatic and comedic, Distant Music involves themes of faith, law, romantic love -- and fish & chips! The full-length play features Silverthorne veterans Frank Aronson and Jarice Hanson, and newcomer Rocco Desgres under the direction of Penney Hulten.
On a snowy night in an Irish pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Connor (Aronson), Maeve (Hanson) and Dev (Desgres) 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.
Playwright McLindon graduated from Harvard Law School summa cum laude and was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He has been a Dramatists Guild Fellow and twice a Next Voices Playwriting Fellow at the New Repertory Theatre in Boston. He has also had residencies at the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, among others.
Links to the evening’s performance on Facebook and YouTube will be available on the Silverthorne website: https://silverthornetheater.org/ .
Silverthorne's Theater Thursday Play Reading series was made possible in part by support from the Greenfield, Hadley and Buckland Cultural Councils with funds from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
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In 2018, Silverthorne was thrilled to present the World Premiere of
WHITE, BLACK & BLUE
an original play by Steve Henderson and Will Chalmus. If you missed the performance on Silverthorne's stage, you have an opportunity to catch an online reading of the play on Saturday, August 22. We urge you to do so!!
This play provides a space for audience members to explore many taboo themes, beyond the obvious, in a way that is digestible and engaging. Unfortunately, the themes that we uncover about race relations and how the authority of police manifests in people's lives are constantly recurring. The creation of this play is an attempt to address how we can be agents of change in a problem that is in persistent rotation in the news and has become part of our daily lives.
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Chester Theatre Company presents THE STORY OF KING LEAR
August 27 at 7:00 PM available to watch through August 30
The Story of King Lear is a 50-minute telling of the Shakespeare classic adapted and directed by CTC Producing Artistic Director Daniel Elihu Kramer.
Stage, film and television veteran Michael Potts takes on the title role as Lear. Known to TV audiences for his arc as Brother Mouzone in the celebrated series The Wire, Potts is also in the upcoming film version of August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom starring Viola Davis. Broadway audiences will know him from August Wilson’s Jitney, and musicals The Prom, Book of Mormon, and Grey Gardens. Shelley Fort, who starred in CTC’s 2016 production of The Mountaintop, returns to the CTC “stage” for her second appearance with the company. Fort has also appeared in productions at Trinity Repertory Theatre, La Mama, The Bushwick Starr and others. Most recently, she was in the Broadway National Tour of The Play That Goes Wrong. She’s a graduate of Kenyon College and Brown/Trinity Rep. Berkshire Theatre Critics Association Award-winners Tara Franklin (CTC’s Associate Artistic Director and star of last season’s On the Exhale), and James Barry (CTC’s The Aliens, The Night Alive, and Sister Play) also star.
This event is a virtual benefit for Chester Theatre Company.
Watch here.
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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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From the New England New Play Alliance:
Virtual Performances & Theatre Discussions
The Forge Theatre Lab presents
LifeBlood
an online reading
by Erik Nikander
directed by Jack Crory
now-August 12
A miracle medical device has the country abuzz about an exciting female entrepreneur, but when a young journalist begins to dig deeper, she finds out the shocking truth about the company and its founder. A drama inspired by the true events of the Theranos scandal. Stream here.
SpeakEasy Stage presents
Celebrating the Black Narrative
a discussion series moderated by Crystin Gilmore
now-August 20
“Celebrating the Black Narrative” is the theme for the third installment of SpeakEasy’s Play Discussion Group, a series of free virtual events which returns on Thursday, July 30. Actress Crystin Gilmore will moderate the conversations, which focus each week on various plays by contemporary Black female playwrights.
Week Four: Dependently Yours
by Ruby O'Gray
August 13, 5:30 pm
Sign up here
The third of the “Holiday Theatre Trilogy,” Dependently Yours follows the Stevenson family, an upper-middle class African American family from Memphis, as they celebrate the 4th of July. Augusta and Calvin have recently completed college and are the last of the Stevenson family to be living in their childhood home. Things begin to go awry when the house of Ms. Mimms, the neighborhood “cat lady,” catches on fire.
Folks signing up will receive a PDF of Dependently Yours.
Tales from Camp Strangewood is an anthology, with every episode helmed by a new playwright, director, and team of actors. These chilling tales follow the eclectic inhabitants of Camp Strangewood as they encounter circumstances on the very edge of reality on the same particularly strange night. Over the course of six Sundays, audiences will follow campers and counselors coping with fear and isolation while the rules of the world they once knew fall apart around them.
August 16
The Rooster and the Magnet
by Marge Buckley
directed by Audrey Seraphin
A van is stolen. A killer is punished. And a trio of older campers says farewell to their summer home. Stream here.
Boston Podcast Players presents
Morir Soñando
by Manuel Lopez
Manuel Lopez is a bilingual Boston playwright by way of the Dominican Republic, Washington Heights, and Lawrence. His play Morir Soñando introduces us to El Cuco, a Latin American boogeyman/trickster type which Lopez intertwines into the lives of a group of friends. Stream the episode.
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