Pioneer Valley Theatre News March 15, 2018

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Pioneer Valley Theatre Newsletter View this email in your browser  March 15 - April 4, 2018 Happy Thursday, theatergoers!  The next issue will include events through April 11. 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 Submit Your Theatre Event THIS WEEK IN THEATRE NEWS: from Howlround A Blueprint for Risk-Taking by Kristin Marting From the article:  What do performing artists need to create their best work, and what can organizations do to support them? At HERE, the twenty-five-year-old multi-disciplinary performing arts organization located in lower Manhattan, New York, which I as Founding Artistic Director co-lead with Executive Director Kim Whitener, we recently completed a three-year pilot project, expanding our existing artist residency program with specific technical, spatial, and staffing resources, in order to explore this question. We are excited to share our discoveries about the impact of these resources on the creative process, to suggest new ways to craft a meaningful artist-led developmental/premiere process, and to reveal the benefits the field might garner from revising standard practices. Have you read an interesting article about theatre recently? Send it to me! pioneervalleytheatre@gmail.com PERFORMANCES Majestic Theater presents Outside Mullingar West Springfield March 15-31 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. For additional information, visit the website.   Frontier Regional High School presents The Wizard of Oz! March 16 & 17 at 7:00 p.m. March 18 at 3:00 p.m. Frontier Regional School Frontier Regional School is proud to announce their second annual musical, The Wizard of Oz. L. Frank Baum's classic tale of a young girl's trip over the rainbow. The story has been an American classic for decades, and now it comes to the Frontier stage. Directed by David Peck, with Music Direction by Max Sherrill and Choreography by Melissa Strelke. Show dates are March 16 and 17 at 7:00 p.m. and March 18 at 3. Tickets are $10 for adults and $7 for students and seniors. A tale for all time and all ages! The Wizard of Oz at Frontier Regional School! Contact info: david.peck@frsu38.org and 413 834-8730 Drama Studio presents Begets: Fall of a High School Ronin March 16 at 7:30 PM March 17 at 4:00 and 7:30 PM March 18 at 3:00 PM Drama Studio, 41 Oakland St Springfield In this action-packed samurai story set inside the halls of an all-American high school, Begets: Fall of a High School Ronin tells the tale of Emi Edwards, a modern day geekgurl who's fighting to overthrow the cruel shoguns of her school. However in her journey to right wrongs, will her own cravings for popularity and power corrupt her quest? Will she able to establish a new world order? Will she win the love of her crush and former BFF Mary? Or will violence simply beget more violence? Tickets: Adults - $20 Students - $10 For tickets call (413) 739-1983 or email More info. Happier Valley Comedy presents Happier FAMILY Comedy Show March 17 at 3:00 PM Happier FAMILY Comedy Show: Monthly family-friendly improv comedy show, best for 5-12 year olds and their adults. Saturday, March 17th at 3-4pm at The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art (125 W Bay Rd., Amherst). Tickets at the door: $10/Adults, $5/Kids, Free/4 yrs and under (Reduced admission for museum members). For more info. 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.   UMass Amherst presents How Did We Get Here?: Using Verbatim Documentary Theatre to Make Sense of Our Contemporary Political Landscape with Joe Salvatore '97G March 20 at 4:30 in the Old Chapel at UMass Amherst  Free Does gender affect how we perceive public and political figures? A UMass Theater alumnus examines the evidence via performance. UMass Theater presents a talk by Joe Salvatore '97G, an artist and educator who's looking at the way gender influences our perceptions when political and cultural figures speak, by having actors of the opposite gender perform their words in the format called "verbatim theater". He's speaking about his experiences on March 20 in the renovated Old Chapel on the UMass campus. The event is free and open to all. In January 2017, playwright and director Joe Salvatore '97G collaborated with economist Maria Guadalupe (INSEAD-France) to create Her Opponent, a re-staging of excerpts of the 2016 U. S. Presidential debates with gender-reversed casting. Following the success of that production and its subsequent Off Broadway run, Salvatore has created NYU-Steinhardt’s Verbatim Performance Lab to continue to produce live and mediated verbatim performances that challenge accepted political, cultural, and social understandings, while embracing the philosophy that social change emerges from dialogue, not monologue. Join Salvatore as he shares his experiences working on Her Opponent and recent Lab projects including The Lauer / Conway Flip and The Moore / Jones Challenge. UMass Amherst Theater presents Infants of the Spring Adapted by Ifa Bayeza from the novel by Wallace Thurman Directed by Ifa Bayeza March 21, 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 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. 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. AUDITIONS & OPPORTUNITIES Pioneer Valley Theatre Companies Is your theatre company missing? Email me! Academy of Music Theatre Arena Civic Theatre Black Cat Theater Chester Theatre Company The Country Players Eggtooth Productions Exit 7 Players Ghost Light Theater Hampshire Shakespeare Company Happier Valley Comedy Ja'Duke Center for the Performing Arts Ko Theater Works/Ko Festival of Performance Majestic Theater New Century Theatre PaintBox Theatre Pauline Productions Real Live Theatre Red Thread Theater Serious Play Theatre Ensemble Silverthorne Theater Smith College Department of Theatre St. Michael's Players TheatreTruck Turbulent Times Theater Westfield Theatre Group Wilbraham United Players Silverthorne Theater Company  Announces  2018 OPEN SEASON AUDITIONS   Open auditions for all three Season Shows below: Friday, March 16     7-9 pm Saturday, March 17   1-4 pm Sunday, March 18     Callbacks    1-4 pm   ·       Auditions at the Hawks & Reed Performing Arts Center, 289 Main Street, Greenfield ·       By appointment only. To schedule an audition slot, please call 413-768-7514, or write to silverthornetheater@gmail.com ·        Auditioners should prepare a one to two minute monologue.  ·       Please bring a current resume and headshot, or send electronically to silverthornetheater@gmail.com when making your appointment ·       Equity & non-Equity; all roles paid.  ·       All types & ethnicities welcome   THE ROAD TO MECCA by Athol Fugard. Director: Rebecca Daniels.  Performance dates: 6/21, 22, 23, 24, 28, 29, 30   Miss Helen: late 60s, widowed, an artist Elsa: 30s, politically engaged schoolteacher. Marius: 60s, Calvinist pastor, good-hearted but deeply conservative.        The Road to Mecca, written by Athol Fugard, is set in 1970s South Africa. It was first staged in the US in 1984 at Yale Rep, had an off-Broadway run in 1988, and saw its Broadway premiere in 2012. Fugard is best know for his overtly political plays, mostly set in his native South Africa in the days of apartheid. While this drama’s focus on the life and work of an artist might seem like a departure for the playwright, in the words of New York theatre critic, Ben Brantley, the play “ throbs with a despairing awareness of the South Africa of the 1970s as a broken and corrupting nation, a spiritual prison for those who inhabit it. Set in the remote village of New Bethesda, in the Karoo desert region, this play considers the nature and possibilities of freedom within such a place.”             Based on a real-life individual, Fugard’s story of Miss Helen, an aging Afrikaner widow who creates unusual sculptures in order to escape the crushing reality of her isolated life and the social expectations that accompany that life, brings together two social and political opposites who each consider themself her friend and take astrong interest in her welfare according to their own conflicting views about artistic creativity and the challenges of aging. Her very conservative minister, Marius, wants to send Helen to an old folks home, where she will be “safe” from both criticism and harm. Her young friend, Elsa, more politically engaged than Marius, wants Helen to have the independence as a woman and an artist that society seems to find so dangerous.    WHITE, BLACK & BLUE World premiere by Steve Henderson & Will Chalmus. Director: Keith Langsdale Performance dates: 7/19, 20, 21, 22, 26, 27, 28   Joe Renshaw - 65-70, white. Academic type. Divorced. Walter Jones - 25-35, black. A teacher and musician. Lou Rankin - 30s, white. A police officer, big, physically formidable   Walter, a black man, breaks into the home of Joe Renshaw, an older white man, late at night. Walter has fled the scene of an altercation with a white off-duty police officer, during which he took the officer’s gun. It is not the way it seems. As Joe and Walter struggle to establish a fragile détente, Officer Lou Rankin finds the house.. A taut life and death stalemate ensues as the three desperate men struggle to stay alive and to protect their families. Issues of race, trust, responsibility and last straws comprise powerful themes in the story.   DELECTABLE DURANG A Collection of Six Unruly Comedies By Christopher Durang.  Director: John Reese Performance dates: 9/27, 28, 29, 30, 10/4, 5, 6   3 F/ 3 M – various            The 2018 season will close with the fall presentation of Delectable Durang, a collection of six hilarious and provocative one-act plays by Christopher Durang. The production, directed by John Reese, will be an ‘homage to the theatre‘. The six plays are The Actor’s Nightmare, Women in a Play Ground, Nina in the Morning, For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls, One Minute Play and Medea. Every theatrical element (costume and set changes, etc.) will be in full view of the audience throughout, as six actors function as a mini-repertory company. Reese is seeking skilled and spirited actors capable of portraying a variety of multi-dimensional characters with serious personal issues who fearlessly leap into Durang’s world of comic mayhem with emotional abandon and a bountiful sense of play. CitySpace Inc. seeks a driven and proactive Capital Campaign Consultant responsible for a fundraising effort to reconstruct and renovate the 2nd floor of the historic Old Town Hall. Renovations will include making the 2nd floor accessible to the public and developing a public gathering and performance space. The Capital Campaign Consultant will be responsible for overseeing all aspects of the CitySpace capital campaign. The consultant will work in partnership with the CitySpace Board of Directors and a Capital Campaign Committee to carry out a fundraising plan targeting individuals, corporations, foundations and government agencies to support this initiative. The Capital Campaign Consultant will coordinate a $2.5 million fundraising effort as part of anticipated $5 million campaign. Details and application here.  Hampshire Shakespeare Company 650 E Pleasant St, Amherst, MA 01002 Hampshire Shakespeare Company is currently seeking a Dramaturg, 2 Stage Managers, and a Technical Director for the 2018 summer season of Othello and Twelfth Night and the Young Company production to follow. Please click here for more information on how to apply! Please send all inquiries to hampshire.shakespeare.company@gmail.com WORKSHOPS & CLASSES Happier Valley Comedy presents "Creating a Crackerjack Team THROUGH LAUGHTER" Information Session March 16 at 3:30 PM Northampton Center for the Arts Downstairs Studio 33 Hawley Street, Northampton Creating a Crackerjack Team THROUGH LAUGHTER, showcases a new professional development workshop that strengthens and deepens your teams communication and collaborative skills using the tools of improv and experiential training. You'll win two prizes  the excitement of participating in a hands-on, fun, and creative learning experience, and the prize at the bottom of a Crackerjacks box! $25 Fee. More information. Submit your workshop or class here! 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