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June 25 - July 15, 2020
In his StageStruck column this week, Chris Rohmann highlights a couple of the Zoom plays you can watch this week that are listed below. Read more about Lullaby of Zoomland and An Evening with Ruth Draper here. And mark your calendars to watch them both this Friday!
The next issue will include events through July 22. 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
Lifting Up What We're Throwing Down
by Kirsten Greenidge
From the article:
I began my tenure as Mellon Foundation Playwright-in-Residence in 2016 with Boston, Massachusetts’ Company One Theatre (C1)—an organization that had been an artistic home to me long before I was part of the Mellon cohort. In a way, I grew up professionally with Company One, finding my footing as an emerging playwright both locally and nationally as C1 also grew in professionalism and reputation. One of the most fascinating elements of my work on staff here during the residency has been participating in C1’s revision of its mission to more transparently work for social justice and the subsequent programmatic adjustments in support of that mission. I’ve been part of department meetings, staff meetings, company retreats, production meetings, rehearsal processes, and community events where the coalescing questions are always: Are we being honest? Are we dreaming big enough? Is what we’re doing contributing positively to a healthier, more just, and more equitable Boston?
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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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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The LAVA Center to present COVID-19-themed online short play festival
WHAT: “From A Distance: 2020 (corona)vision(s),” an online short play festival
WHEN: Sunday, June 28, 2020, 2 p.m.
WHERE: Facebook live stream
Facebook event
CONTACT: info@localaccess.org or (413) 512-3063
The LAVA Center is proud to present “From A Distance: 2020 (corona)vision(s)”—an online short play festival. The festival will feature 18 short views of COVID-19 by local and regional artists Nina Gross, Karen Miller, Vanessa Query, Marlon Carey and Jan Maher.
The program will be produced by Jan Maher and directed by Jan Maher, Marlon Carey, and Vanessa Query.
The plays will be performed by local and regional performers Kyra Anderson, Jane Barish, Anna Baskowski, Sara Becker, Amanda Bowman, Adelaide Carey, Marlon Carey, Shannon Chabot, Rocco Tyler Desgres, Sarah Gruber, Kate and Ken Hebert, Ann and Ray Horn, Torie Jock, Rick Malone and Kimberly Salditt-Poulin.
The program will be followed by a Q&A with the playwrights and directors.
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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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Double Edge is dreaming and planning 6 FEET APART, ALL TOGETHER, a Summer Spectacle for the time of COVID-19. The spectacle is inspired by and drawing from the rich history and favorite moments of our past performances, as well as looking toward a future including an ode to nature and our living culture. The entire main site of DE’s Farm would allow for limited audiences to spread out on a reflective and invigorating walk through scenes in the air, in the labyrinth, by the stream, in the arbor, and in the garden. Visitors will interact with the land, visual installation, and small scenes from the past, as well as a look toward what we are creating together for the future. 6 FEET APART, ALL TOGETHER will be performed in rounds to allow for less than ten people per group, and will take place at the end of July and a few weeks in August.
Box office opens June 15.
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National Theatre Live YouTube Channel
Streaming will begin at 2 PM EST.
A Midsummer Night's Dream
The Bridge Theatre's immersive production of Shakespeare’s romantic comedy features Gwendoline Christie and Hammed Animashaun.
Streaming from 7pm Thursday 25 June until 2 July.
Les Blancs
Yaël Farber directs the final play by Lorraine Hansberry: a brave, illuminating and powerful work that confronts the hope and tragedy of revolution.
Streaming from 7pm on 2 July, until 7pm on 9 July.
The Deep Blue Sea
Terence Rattigan’s devastating masterpiece contains one of the greatest female roles in contemporary drama, played by Helen McCrory.
Streaming from 7pm on 9 July, until 7pm on 16 July.
Amadeus
Lucian Msamati plays Salieri in Peter Shaffer’s iconic play, directed by Michael Longhurst with live orchestral accompaniment by Southbank Sinfonia.
Streaming from 7pm Thursday 16 July until 23 July.
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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.
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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From the New England New Play Alliance:
Virtual Theatre and Podcasts
Marc Hoffeditz and MJ Halberstadt present
an annotated sing-through of
Grindr (and other concerns), Act 1
libretto by MJ Halberstadt
music by Marc Hoffeditz
directed by Ingrid Island
June 26-27
This annotated sing-through shares unforgettably naughty scenes and arias from this comedic chamber opera’s first act, along with candid and irreverent commentary about the opera’s development and subject matter, including queer identity in opera, open relationships, and hook-up culture. In lieu of charging admission, and in the spirit of Pride Month, we invite and encourage you to join us in supporting the Marsha P. Johnson Institute, which protects and defends the rights of Black transgender people, by making a donation on their website. RSVP here.
An online short play festival featuring 18 short views of COVID-19 by LAVA Center Playwrights Lab members Nina Gross, Karen Miller, Vanessa Query, Marlon Carey, and Jan Maher. Watch performances here.
The Wilbury Theatre Group in Providence presents
Conversations with Heshie
by Lawrence Goodman
June 26 and streaming after.
Parts 1 & 2 streaming now available.
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.
Arlekin Players Theatre presents
State vs Natasha Banina
by Yaroslava Pulinovich
June 28
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.
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