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June 4 - 24, 2020
BLACK LIVES MATTER. There is so much work to be done in and by this community. This newsletter is committed to listening, learning, and building a better community with you.
There are so many lists of resources going around - what to read, listen to, or watch to further your education. (if you haven't seen any of the resources going around on social media and would like to, let me know!) Here's a list of plays compiled by American Theatre. If you have additional resources to share, or ideas for how I can best use this platform, I am all ears.
The next issue will include events through July 1. 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
I am Wole, I am Heiner
by Sadie Berlin
From the article:
The discovery of the photo was both vivid and vague. It happened years ago as I was scrolling online. The photo is of Heiner Müller, an East-German playwright—the intellectual and spiritual heir of Brechtian thought—pouring whisky for Wole Soyinka, a Yoruba playwright born in Nigeria and the first African to win a Nobel Prize for literature. I don’t know much of the context for it but the photo spoke to me as though this thirty-year-old moment had been staged for my benefit: the “Black” playwright and the German aesthete occupying the same space. This gem encompassed my race, my profession, and my perceptions of the gap between the edgy German artist and the Nigerian Nobel Prize winner.
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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Happier Valley Comedy Live
June 4 at 8:00 PM
Repeats on Friday (6/5) and Saturday (6/6) at the same time.
You're invited to HVC's virtual comedy theater! At each live show, local improv comedians Pam Victor and Scott Braidman check in about their day, and then improvise for you, often joined by special guests in fantastic improv shows designed specifically for an online comedy format. Just like an in-person show, audiences are invited to participate in the fun. Join the chat on the YouTube live-stream to hang out, give suggestions, and be part of the show! HVC continues their commitment to using comedy to bring people together through laughter and community with "Happier Valley Comedy LIVE!" every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 8pm.
This week's improv show line up includes "We Made A Thing" on 6/4, "HVC QVC" on 6/5, and "Sawk's 'n' Sandle's Short Form Improv Comedy" on 6/6!
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Real Live Theatre presents a "Zoom-staged" reading of their beloved original piece The Lion & The Clown: A Rumi Lovesong for Beauty & the Beast. A play filled with magic, beauty, obscenity, grief, and deep abiding love. As audiences said after its premiere in 2014 and again during its tour in 2015: "I really needed that." Come feel the hope with us.
Featuring a reunion of original cast members: Kate Hare, Dan Morbyrne, Mike Pray, Trenda Loftin, Alberto Carlos Peart, Rachel Hall, Toby Vera Bercovici, Lucy Gouvin, and Syl Simmons. Written & directed by Ellen Morbyrne. Original music by Cynthia Zaitz, PhD.
Mature content, not intended for children.
Friday, June 5th, 7pm.
www.RealLiveTheatre.net for all the info.
Email reallivetheatre@gmail.com with any questions.
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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.
June 4 ‘Coriolanus’ by William Shakespeare, starring Tom Hiddleston.
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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
Ten nights in June, ten short plays from Boston-area playwrights. This year, Playwrights' Platform is presenting its annual festival virtually. The festival will also serve as a fundraiser for the Theatre Community Benevolent Fund, which provides support to theatres and theatre artists in need. The festival will present one play each evening at 7:00 pm, followed by a Q&A with the playwright. Festival lineup for week one:
Live from Copley Square
by Johnnie Dun
directed by Katie Suchtya
June 4
This
by Carolyn Palo
directed by Ann Garvin
June 5
Lost Season
by David Beardsley
directed by Shira Gitlin
June 6
Home for the Holidays
by Karla Sorenson
directed by Sally Nutt
June 7
Real Live Theatre presents
The Lion and the Clown
written and directed by Ellen Morbyrne
original music by Cynthia Zaitz, PhD
Friday, June 5
Real Live Theatre presents a live Zoom reading of their beloved original piece, The Lion & The Clown: A Rumi Lovesong for Beauty & the Beast. A play filled with magic, beauty, obscenity, grief, and deep abiding love. Mature content, not intended for children. Stream here.
Arlekin Players Theatre presents
State vs Natasha Banina
by Yaroslava Pulinovich
Sunday June 7
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.
The Quarantine Series presents
A Picture of Two Boys
by Nick Malakhow
Friday June 5 and streaming after
Markey and Pete are unlikely friends, the studious Markey with dreams of college and a life beyond the Southeastern Pennsylvania countryside, and the volatile Pete with drunkenly crafted fantasies about being the next Kurt Cobain. Brought together by shared feelings of alienation in their mostly white and more than vaguely racist little town an hour and a half from Philly, the boys’ relationship fractures when Markey announces to Pete that he’s hoping to graduate early and get out of the styx ASAP. We see these two boys first at that critical juncture, and then almost ten years later after they are reunited in the wake of a startling event that dredges up a connected trauma from their past. Stream here.
Metropolitan Area Planning Council presents
The Medfield Anthology
by Hortense Gerardo
Thursday June 4-5
First created as an immersive walking play through the Medfield State Hospital grounds, the play portrays the Medfield State 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.
Open Theatre Project presents
Community Write: Week 5
Streaming now
Playwright Thom Dunn has chosen "Hearts Taped to Window Panes & Sounds Previously Unnoticed” as the themes for week five. To stream some of the creative writing that this theme inspired, or to watch performances of writing from previous weeks, click here.
Playing on Air presents
Drunk Christmas
by James McLindon
After a teenage runaway and a swerving mom crash into each other on Christmas Eve, the night ahead is anything but silent. An unorthodox holiday parable. 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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In response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, the Playwrights’ Center is taking action to connect people with their communities and create income streams for theater artists who are out of work. We're pleased to announce an entirely new, online Spring 2020 Season.
This spring, Playwrights' Center will feature regular weekly programming of new play readings; seminars, classes, and workshops taught by playwrights; two weekly feature articles written by playwrights; open conversations and panels with playwrights and theater practitioners; Member Open Play events, where writers read each other's plays aloud and respond with constructive feedback; New Plays On Campus sessions for educators and students interested in playwriting; Writing Room Lunch Breaks where playwrights can come together to work; and open office hours with Playwrights’ Center Artistic and Membership staff, giving people a chance to connect, ask questions, and discuss best practices.
The schedule and links to events
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