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September 24 - October 14, 2020
A few interesting shows coming up - plus a few more opportunities to get involved in a show, a workshop, or a pandemic podcast. Join me and the Smith Theatre Department tonight for a reading of Andrea Hairston's new book! More details and a registration link below.
The next issue will include events through October 21. 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
Year of the Stage Manager
by Amanda Spooner
From the article:
Stage managers typically operate in the shadows, committed first and foremost to what is happening onstage. An occupation people used to fall into, stage managers are now setting their sights on the field as early as grade school. For many of us, we cannot imagine doing anything else. The work is often thrilling. We are the first ones in and the last ones out. The personalities, the wants, the needs, the cues, the pressure, the conflict, the resolution, the spike tape, the half-hour call—if it was not worth it, we would not do it. But the truth is: we can hardly agree on what it is we actually all do.
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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Smith College Department of Theatre presents Master of Poisons reading
Thursday, September 24 at 7:30 PM
The Smith College Department of Theatre and the New Play Reading Series present an evening of readings to celebrate the release of Master of Poisons a new novel by Andrea Hairston, Louise Wolff Kahn Professor of Theatre and Professor of Africana Studies. Joining Andrea in conversation about Master of Poisons, theatre, afro-futurism, and black women writers are award-winning playwrights and authors Pearl Cleage and Sheree R. Thomas who will also read from their own work.
There will be time for questions.
Signed books are available through https://www.broadsidebooks.com/
Register here.
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From the New England New Play Alliance:
Virtual Theatre and Podcasts
The Bechdel Group presents
a reading of
The First Sister Trip
by Shoshannah Boray
September 29
Three sisters are stuck on a long flight with their mother's ashes in an urn. They've been changing alliances, keeping secrets, and trading insults among the three of them for more than 50 years. The First Sister Trip is about the ways we love and understand one another. It asks if it is possible to put aside assumptions and differences to care for one another. Register here.
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.
Joy
by Elle Borders
directed by Melinda Lopez
A couple and their sleeping baby rush to the festivities in Franklin Park on Juneteenth 2025. Streaming now.
The Rainman
by John Oluwole ADEkoje
directed by Rebecca Bradshaw
A former policeman meets a man from his past at a dreamscape 2024 bus stop on Malcolm X Boulevard. Streaming September 23.
The View from MemChurch
by Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro
directed by Caley Chase
Friends reunite in Harvard Yard on Commencement Day, May 25, 2025. Streaming September 30.
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 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 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 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 October 28.
Boston Podcast Players presents
Mox Nox
by Patrick Gabridge
In a slowly drowning world, everyone is searching for higher ground and two sisters are battling to the end, one unable to forget, the other unable to remember. Stream the podcast.
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Creative Women Leading Climate Action Keynote Lecture by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Wednesday, September 30, 6 p.m.
Free. Online. Open to All.
See Keynote Website for Details and Registration
Live and Recorded on Zoom, Facebook, and YouTube. Q/A to follow.
Co-presented by Arts Extension Service, the Creative Women Leading Climate Action Symposium, 2020-2021 History Department Feinberg Series "Planet on a Precipice," and Partners. Spanish interpretation and closed captioning available. Audiorecording on SoundCloud. |
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We are showered every day with the gifts of the Earth and yet we are tied to institutions which relentlessly ask, what more can we take? Drawing upon both scientific and Indigenous knowledges, this talk explores the covenant of reciprocity. How might we use the gifts and the responsibilities of human people in support of mutual thriving in a time of ecological crisis?
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Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, writer and Distinguished Professor at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York and the founding Director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. She is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and a student of the plant nations. Her writings include Gathering Moss which was awarded the John Burroughs Medal for Nature Writing and the bestselling Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. As a writer and a scientist, her interests include not only restoration of ecological communities, but restoration of our relationships to land.
Signed copies of Gathering Moss and Braiding Sweetgrass available at Amherst Books. |
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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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| 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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