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October 8 - 28, 2020
I don't know about you, but it sure does feel like maybe Zoom is starting to lose it's charm. This week's article, pulled from Howlround, addresses that with a phrase I've heard a lot lately: "breaking Zoom." How about you? Are you still feeling grateful to have such an easy to use software to make connections in this time? Were you ever?
The next issue will include events through November 4. 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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MASK MAKING AND PERFORMANCE WORKSHOP
Sat. Oct. 24 3-5pm / Tues. Oct. 27 7-9pm / Fri. Oct. 30 7-9pm
Learn More
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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
Devised Experiments in Breaking Zoom
by Carrie Klewan Lawrence and Amy Clare Tasker
From the article:
While theatres are closed during COVID-19, we—Carrie Klewin Lawrence and Amy Clare Tasker—have been devising theatre on Zoom. We met during the pandemic at an online happy hour that Amy was hosting for Theatre Maker at the Cockpit. What clicked for us immediately was a sense of joyful experimentation: we were both trying to “break Zoom.”
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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Academy of Music Theatre and NEPM
Valley Voices Story Slam - Nailed It!
October 8 at 7:30 PM
Online - Virtual Performance
Valley Voices Story Slam-Nailed it! taking place on October 8th will now be fully virtual. Storytellers will be live-streamed from our beloved stage at The Academy directly to your favorite nook at home. Get ready to sit back, enjoy the show and vote in real time for your favorite storyteller!
A live-streaming link and voting info will be sent the ahead of the event.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/valley-voices-story-slam-nailed-it-tickets-88029646041?_eboga=610526108.1479232961
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Symposium Events
Free. Open to women and nonbinary people. Pre-registration required.
Click here for more information and to register.
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WORKSHOP - New Fables for a New World
Workshop facilitated by Dr. Terry Jenoure, Interdisciplinary Artist.
Thursday, October 8, 10 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. (ET) and Thursday, October 15, 1 - 3:15 p.m. (ET). |
PANEL - Creative Climate: Inspiration and Activation
Panel Moderated by Dee Boyle-Clapp, Director, Arts Extension Service, UMass.
Panelists: Emmalie Dropkin, Extinction Rebellion; Anais Reyes, Climate Museum; and Raquel de Anda, People’s Climate March.
Thursday, October 8, 12 - 1:30 p.m. (ET). |
PANEL - Climate Change and Communities of Color: How Artists are Responding
Panel Moderated by Hind Mari, Director, Women of Color Leadership Network, UMass.
Panelists: Dr. Diana Alvarez, Artist Scholar; Naya (Chelvanya) Gabriel, Artist; and Erika Slocumb, Artist.
Thursday, October 15, 3 - 4:30 p.m. (ET). |
Click here for more information and to register.
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Kand E Theater Group
"Whispers From the Wings" Spooky Storytelling Series
K and E Theater Group's Facebook page, IGTV and YouTube Channel
Fridays 10/9, 10/16, 10/23, 10/30 at 8:00 PM
After a successful, all-virtual Local Spotlight Series featuring over fifty theater personalities this summer and an ongoing virtual class series School’s In Session, K and E Theater Group is excited to produce online programming with an October-long presentation of Whispers from the Wings, a series of short terrifying stories presented by fifteen local storytellers.
These horrifying tales premiere every Friday night this October to set the mood and get our audiences psyched for Halloween. K and E Theater Group will present five original short stories that have been written and performed by fifteen local storytellers. Every storyteller will perform their written part of an original scary story without knowing what the preceding or next storyteller wrote or performed.
The local storytellers that are featured in this series include Ryan Bird, Emily Bloch, Stephanie Carlson, Cate Damon, Joe Dulude II, Lindel Hart, Peter Kennedy, Josh Mason, Howard Odentz, Lisa Parker, Josh Prouser, Konrad Rogowski, Kevin Tracy, Seana Walsh, and Christine Zdebski.
Our scary stories can be found on the K and E Theater Group Facebook page, IGTV or their YouTube channel at 8:00 PM every Friday in October.
Our production is in part supported by Easthampton City Arts through the Easthampton Artist Grants Initiative. K and E Theater Group welcomes and appreciates any donations throughout the series and future programming that will help us fund our 2021 season, By Invitation Only. To learn how to help, please visit www.KETG.org.
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/kandetheatergroup
IGTV https://www.instagram.com/kandetheatergroup/channel/
YouTube www.youtube.com/channel/UCjboOVgFra2Ef1DL0X6PXPA
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| UMass Theater announces a slate of digital projects for Fall 2020 |
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Launches Oct. 9
When The Soul Looks Out: Selections from Dr. Yusef Lateef’s Creative Writing
Oct. 29 &31 at 7:30, Oct. 30 at Midnight:
COVEN-19, Or, Magicks for Unprecedented Times
Nov. 12, 15, & 19 at 7:30 p.m.:
Visionary Futures: Science Fiction Theatre for Social Justice Movements
Dec. 1, 2, & 3 at 7:30 p.m.:
Café Subterrain
Launch date this winter:
Pandemic Podcast
All events free, check our 2020-2021 Season page for registration information as each production nears!
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This semester, our venue is a space online instead of a stage. We invite you to join us as we fuse theatrical creativity with modern technology to safely reach the farthest corners of our community.
We look forward to bringing theater to you in new ways, whether it's the lesser-known literary side of a jazz giant, using science fiction conventions to dream a better future into existence, telling stories about current issues, or visiting the coolest Zoom rooms ever as artists evoke magic to incite change or empower us all to perform acts of resistance.
All events are free of charge (although we gratefully accept donations from those who are able to give).
When The Soul Looks Out: Selections from Dr. Yusef Lateef’s Creative Writing
Curated and directed by Priscilla MarÃa Page
Dr. Yusuf Lateef is a towering figure in jazz, a deeply spiritual and philosophical man whose recordings and teachings have left a lasting imprint in the world of music. We are proud to be a part of the Centennial Celebration of Yusef Lateef, coordinated by Glenn Siegel as part of the Magic Triangle Series out of the UMass Fine Arts Center. To honor Dr. Lateef’s legacy, Dr. Page has curated a filmed presentation of his writings, Midnight in the Garden of Love, Spheres, and Another Avenue, performed by Five College and UMass Theater alumni, faculty, and students with guest artists Miles Griffith, Mary LaRose, and Fay Victor.
Presented by the UMass Fine Arts Center’s Magic Triangle Series and UMass Theater.
When the Soul Looks Out will premiere online on Oct. 9 and will remain accessible to viewers afterward. Visit the Fine Arts Center Box Office for information on this curated reading, as well as the other presentations that are part of Dr. Lateef's Centennial Celebration.
COVEN-19, or, Magicks for Unprecedented Times
Produced by Maegan Clearwood, Percival Hornak, and Helen Rahman
2020 is on fire, and more than ever, we are being called upon to own our individual and collective powers, make meaning out of utter chaos, and manifest tangible, seismic change. In late October, when the veil between our world and the other is at its very thinnest, our Coven will perform a live, remote ritual for the community that addresses the grief and pain we are all experiencing — but also the potential for transformation in these strange times. The time is ripe for magick-making: join us.
Presented live online Oct. 29 and 31 at 7:30 pm and Oct. 30 at Midnight.
Visionary Futures: Science Fiction Theatre for Social Justice Movements
Conceived and directed by Josh Glenn-Kayden
This project takes its inspiration from the Octavia’s Brood anthology, which explores the connections between radical speculative fiction and movements for social change. We are commissioning three professional playwrights to each write a 30-minute play of visionary fiction that confronts urgent issues of our time. Each writer will be paired with an activist whose work intersects with the play's subject matter. These writer/activist teams will collaborate to create work that is visionary in its approach while also grounded in contemporary activist thought.
The plays, written to be performed digitally, will be in conversation with each other and will present three different visions of future worlds. Join us for staged readings of excerpts in the fall, with full productions during the spring semester.
Presented live online: Play 1 on Nov. 12 at 7:30; Play 2 on Nov. 15 at 7:30, Play 3 on Nov. 19 at 7:30 pm, play titles to be announced
Café Subterrain
Devised and directed by Rudy Ramirez, with coordinator Yao Chen
Immersive theater works by placing its audience amid the action; we’re taking this concept remote. Café Subterrain invites audience members to gather in a digital café where they’ll journey through virtual rooms to meet resistance agents from across time and space who will share their stories and empower audience members to commit small acts of change in their home communities. The idea: to give comfort and hope that the world can emerge from hardship to a better place, and that the struggle can feel like celebration.
Presented live online: Dec. 1, 2 & 3 at 7:30 p.m. A second iteration of this production is planned for spring, dates to be announced.
Pandemic Podcast
Conceived and produced by Bianca Dillard
What are the stories behind the staggering numbers? Theater is about storytelling, and this podcast will draw on theater to tell the story of this pandemic from a multiplicity of perspectives, interviewing experts and folks with first-hand experience of the disease, whom we might not otherwise encounter in our isolation. Together, a team of interviewers, writers and sound design students and faculty mentors will look at topics such as how the pandemic is disproportionately adversely affecting populations of color; how mask wearing has become a polarizing political issue; and what healthcare workers are experiencing.
Look for this series to be posted online this winter. |
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From the New England New Play Alliance:
Virtual Theatre and Podcasts
Huntington Theatre Company presents
Dream Boston
now-October 28
Dream Boston is a series of short audio plays that asks local playwrights to imagine favorite locations, landmarks, and their friends in a future Boston, when we can once again meet and connect in our city. New performances are released each Wednesday.
Virtual Attendance
by Miranda ADEkoje
directed by Pascale Florestal
Two white women in their 20s are on their way to an exercise class in a gentrified Nubian Square. Streaming from October 7.
feeling now
by J. Sebastián Alberdi
directed by Caley Chase
Friends decide whether to part for the night after dancing at Machine, right outside Fenway Park on August 23, 2023. Streaming from October 14.
Echoes
by Patrick Gabridge
directed by Rosalind Bevan
Friends make a late-night visit to the Old State House on the anniversary of the Boston Massacre on March 5, 2025. Streaming from October 21.
The Moment Before the Lights Went Out on the Rothkos
by John Kuntz
directed by Rebecca Bradshaw
Museum visitors encounter two Rothko paintings and discover the mystery of each other at the Harvard Art Museums on January 22, 2022. Streaming from October 28.
To watch previous episodes, click here.
Charlotte Meehan writes multimedia pieces that play with form and speak about today’s issues, but she insists it isn’t surreal but how she views the world. Her play Cleanliness, Godliness, and Madness: A User’s Guide is a prime example. Written to be performed by her company, Sleeping Weazel, it might seem like a broadside attack on Trumpism but it’s rooted in Meehan’s unique family history. Stream the podcast.
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Theatre of War presents Antigone in Ferguson.
Antigone in Ferguson is a groundbreaking project that fuses dramatic readings by acclaimed actors of Sophocles’ Antigone with live choral music performed by a diverse choir, from St. Louis, Missouri and New York City culminating in powerful, healing discussions about racialized violence, police brutality, systemic oppression, gender-based violence, health inequality, and social justice. The project was conceived in the wake of Michael Brown’s death in 2014, through a collaboration between Theater of War Productions and community members from Ferguson, MO, and premiered at Normandy High School, Michael Brown’s alma mater, in September of 2016, and has since toured the country and the world.
In light of the uprising and protests catalyzed by the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Tony McDade, Dion Johnson, and many others; and the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on black and brown communities, Antigone in Ferguson aims to generate dialogue, consciousness, compassion, outrage, understanding, and positive action at this critical moment.
Translated and directed, and facilitated by Bryan Doerries
Music composed and conducted by Dr. Philip Woodmore
Co-facilitated by De-Andrea Blaylock Johnson
Featuring performances by Tracie Thoms, Jason Isaacs, De-Rance Blaylock, Duane Foster, Willie Woodmore, Nyasha Hatendi, Marjolaine Goldsmith, Jumaane Williams, and The Antigone in Ferguson Choir.
Antigone in Ferguson
October 17, 2020
6:00 PM – 8:30 PM EDT
This special presentation of Antigone in Ferguson will foreground the perspectives of people in Baltimore, Maryland whose lives have been impacted by police brutality, community violence, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Co-presented by Theater of War Productions, the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, and the Johns Hopkins Program in Arts, Humanities & Health, in partnership with the American Society for Bioethics + Humanities.
RSVP: aifbaltimore.eventbrite.com |
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WAM Theatre presents a digital production of
ROE
by Lisa Loomer
Directed by Kristen van Ginhoven
October 17-20, 2020 (online)
Two Women. Multiple Truths. One Landmark Supreme Court Case.
ROE is an historically sweeping play with a large ensemble cast that illuminates the history of one of the most polarizing social issues of the modern era, the Roe v. Wade, U.S. Supreme Court ruling that established a woman’s right to an abortion. ROE explores the women behind the landmark case of Roe v. Wade, illuminating the heart and passion each side has for their cause, providing a reminder of where the debate began and how hard we have to work to communicate compassionately with people with whom we may disagree. Playwright Lisa Loomer says, "I wanted people to feel, as they watched the play, that their point of view was represented, if nothing else because that helps people be more open and willing to hear another point of view."
Tickets and more information: www.wamtheatre.com/showsandevents/roe/
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Eggtooth Productions, The Academy of Music Theatre of Northampton, and The Shea Theatre of Turners Falls present a Live Theatrical Video Game called Stagehand. The show takes place on Zoom on October 22, 23, 24, and 25th at 7 pm and 9 pm each night.
Tickets are $10 at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/stagehand-tickets-123681447539. Access to a computer with microphone, camera and speakers, a basic understanding of Zoom, and a good internet connection are required. Audience members should be 14 years and older.
Staged as a live performance, audience members of Stagehand join the show from home via Zoom to experience this intimate adventure from home. Discovering the unusual powers that come from exploring a live environment via a virtual interface, groups of four will be connected to an in-show avatar that allows the group to search an entire theater full of stories, objects, and characters.
Developing a relationship with their in-world avatar, audience members make choices about where to go, what to look at, and who to engage with, much in the style of a first-person video game. As director John Bechtold offered, “We are exploring that blurry line between a live action video game that blends into live theatrical experience. What stories are possible when you leverage the immedicacy of theater with the powers of virtual connections? We think there's an exciting playground here to bring the human dynamic into a remote world. We hope that theater lovers, gamers, and brave adventurers will come on this adventure with us. We've created this work at a time where two jewels of the Valley - The Shea Theater and the Academy of Music - sit mostly dormant. Even in this time, however, these theaters retain the power to inspire their visitors. Stagehand makes these spaces primary characters amidst an ensemble cast of wonderful Valley performers. We look forward to inviting you in."
Upon arrival, participants check in via a private Zoom call and are sent into this world as a character named Charlie - a stagehand put on a mission by their elusive director. Across the night, the members of the cast, who have taken to various corners of the building while the director is out. Very quickly, a host of mysteries and oddities surface for the audience to unravel.
Working from a new and exciting form, Stagehand offers live engagement with characters, explorable spaces, and a building full of questions waiting for answers. As a Valley-based theater company, Eggtooth is excited to produce a show that is also a love-letter to our local theaters that we love and miss.
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Smith College Department of Theatre
New Play Reading Series
HAVING THE GREYSONS and Other Food for Thought
Written and directed by Marty Bongfeldt
Thursday, October 22 at 7:30 PM
Free, registration required
A live, remote reading of four short-form plays presented in concert. Alfred Hitchcock said, “What is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out?” These four short pieces present moments, choices, and consequences viewed through the lens of navigating relationships.
Register here.
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Join our theater witches
in COVEN-19 |
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Presented Oct. 29 & 31 at 7:30, Oct. 30 at Midnight
Free.
Visit the Fine Arts Center Box Office to register.
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When hard times hit, find your people and build a community to create joyful, resilient, magical art to share with the world.
That's what COVEN-19, Or, Magicks for Unprecedented Times aims to do, and its company of theater witches hopes community members join them in creating warmth and light in dark times. Led by dramaturgy MFA students Maegan Clearwood and Percival Hornak, and undergrad Helen Rahman, an online coven of 13 performers and creators are fusing witchcraft traditions, feminism, and theater into an online, immersive format.
"For me personally, magic is a source of healing and introspection," Clearwood says, and she wants to use it "to be with other like-minded people and figure out how to make the world a better place."
In keeping with that ethos, this will be a devised piece, meaning that rather than working from a script, the company builds the work by exploring questions and themes together. "It's a really nice opportunity just for us to experiment with ways of making theatre that are egalitarian and collaborative," says Hornak.
The finished piece will develop over the course of rehearsals, culminating in an interactive experience for the audience. After gathering to begin the performance, audience members will be led into separate break-out rooms via Zoom, where they'll find company members who will invite the audience to make magick with then, with experiences curated for the specific people present in the room with te performers.
While Clearwood reads tarot and has used her practice to help her puzzle out the answers to knotty problems on theater productions in the past, others in the coven/company are newer to witchcraft and theater and discovering how they interpret that connection. The coven is exploring a variety of types of magick, like sigil drawing, candle magic, kitchen witchcraft, and divination tools like tarot cards or rune stones.
Rahman expects skeptics in the audience, and welcomes people of all different belief systems. One of the things she's hoping to come out of this production is an opportunity to see where different religions and rituals intersect and to find commonality of belief. Developing confidence in one's own intuitions, for example, is an important life skill regardless of belief status, she points out.
COVEN-19 will perform around Samhain — the ancient holiday that predates and in some ways influenced our concept of Halloween — when the veil between our world and the other is at its thinnest. The time is ripe for magick-making: join us!
Presented live online Oct. 29 and 31 at 7:30 pm and Oct. 30 at Midnight.
This event is free. Visit the Fine Arts Center Box Office to claim your spot in the virtual audience now. |
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The Drama Studio
She Kills Monsters: Virtual Realms
10/30 at 7:30 pm, 10/31 @ 7:30pm, 11/1 @6:30pm
She Kills Monsters: Virtual Realms tells the story of Agnes Evans following the death of her teenage sister, Tilly. When Agnes finds Tilly’s Dungeons & Dragons notebook, she stumbles into a virtual journey of discovery and action-packed adventure in the imaginary world that was Tilly’s refuge. In this new adaptation of his critically acclaimed, high-octane dramatic comedy laden with homicidal fairies and nasty ogres, writer Qui Nguyen embraces the idea of digital storytelling to further blur the lines between ghosts and memories, fantasy and reality, and chaos and stability.
Directed by Dan Morbyrne
Designed by Austin Yelinek
More information
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