Interesting Othello Comes

New York Shakespeare Exchange is pleased to announce their next production of Shakespeare's OTHELLO, directed by Cristina Lundy. OTHELLO begins performances on Tuesday, October 15 for a limited engagement through Saturday, November 2. Press opening is Saturday, October 19 at 8 PM. Performances are at Hudson Guild Theater (441 West 26th Street, between 9th & 10th Avenues; C to 23rd Street). The performance schedule is Tuesday at 7 PM; Wednesday - Saturday at 8 PM. There is an added performance on Sunday, October 27 at 2 PM. The regular ticket price is $18 ($10 students tickets, with valid student id, at the door, based on availability). For tickets, call Brown Paper Tickets on 1-800-838-3006 or visit www.brownpapertickets.com. For more information, visit www.ShakespeareExchange.org.

Despite barriers of racism, Othello the Moor has risen to the post of commanding officer and serves with profound integrity. But his honor becomes his vulnerability when he’s mercilessly betrayed by his seemingly faithful comrade.  In keeping with their mission of viewing Shakespeare through a contemporary lens, NY Shakespeare Exchange (producers of this year's on-going Sonnet Project) sets this OTHELLO in a municipal police precinct where diverse cultures converge; where societal preoccupation with appearances and a deeply entrenched culture of racial profiling and violence against women victimize the very people charged with upholding the peace. Can a single villainous mind terrorize even the noblest among us?

The cast features Keldrick Crowder (Audelco Award-winner); Anna Van Valin (The Degradation Play with Rising Phoenix Rep); Terence MacSweeny; Carey Van Driest (national tour of Annie); David Price (You Can Never Tell at the Pearl); Josh Jeffers (The Life and Death of King John with NYSX); Anna Paratore (Game Play Festival at the Brick); Anthony Manna (Timon of Athens at the Public Theatre, The Hasty Heart (Keen Company); Katherine Puma (Pudd’nhead Wilson); David Lapkin (Measure for Measure at the Pearl); Danny Rivera (member of The Bats at the Flea Theater); John St. Croix (Much Ado About Nothing in Astoria Park); and Matthew Velez.

The design team includes G. Warren Stiles (set design); Daniel Winters (lighting design); and Orli Nativ (costume design); Cassie Dorland (props design). The composer is Shane Parks. Alicia Rodis is the fight choreographer.

Cristina Lundy (director) has worked as a director and assistant director in San Francisco (Exit Theatre), and in NYC (Studio Tisch, Columbia University, T. Schreiber Studios and 3 Roads Productions).  For NYSX, Cristina has directed staged readings of Romeo & Juliet; Spring’s Awakening; and, many scenes for ShakesBEER, NYC’s Original Shakespearean Pub Crawl. She was assistant director on both The Life and Death of King John and Island.  Graduate of Trinity College.

New York Shakespeare Exchange (NYSX) offers innovative theatrical programming that explores what happens when contemporary culture is infused with Shakespearean poetry and themes in unexpected ways. Providing fresh points of entry to the work so that modern audiences will be exposed to the intrinsic power of Shakespeare, NYSX’s goal is to encourage an enthusiastic appreciation of classical theater and to expand the reach of the art form within new and existing audiences

A Tasty Dish For The Gods

A Dish for The Gods, premiering at the Lion Theater on Theater Row, is the latest piece by veteran playwright Victor L. Cahn.  Gods is presented as a lecture by an accomplished female author and editor, Julia Richards.  In this lecture, Julie’s stock presentation goes awry; blown off course by a catalogue of mistakes that leaves Julia pondering how she has arrived at this place in her professional life.

Julia, played to perfection by Margot White, explains how she went from unfocussed 20-something to a driven female writer and researcher.  A male professor, Greg Davidson (played by Kevin Cristaldi), awoke a passion English Literature - passion being the key component.

 

Kevin Cristaldi and Margot White in A Dish For The Gods (credit - Jon Kandel)

Julia's tale unfolds as a love letter to teaching and then the teacher himself.  Professor Davidson, lecturer in English Literature, challenged the intelligent but unfocussed Julia into returning to college finish her degree.  He awakens such a passion that she completes her BA and then go for a Masters.  All the while, Greg and Julia’s relationship deepens from flirtation into an emotional and sexual relationship.

The framing device, and the pivot point for Julia, is the underlying theme of Taming of the Shrew – to wit, true love requires a person to give up part of himself or herself to grow into a fulfilling union.  How much the audience member buys into this theme probably affect how much they can get lost in A Dish for The Gods.

Margot White does a wonderful job as Julia, bringing strength and stillness to a role that could easily turn into melodrama.  Kevin Cristaldi delivers a fine turn as Professor Davidson.  The role requires him to show up and display emotions without fully taking us on the journey – acceptable for the shadow of a man conjured up by memories.

Director Adam Fitzgerald does a nice job moving the action along and working within the confines of the play, without ever making it seem too much of a limitation.  However, A Dish for The Gods ultimately didn’t complete the sale.  After delivering a powerful, strong female character, Julia melts a bit at the end.  She over-dramatically laments her decisions, ones which were made thoughtfully and deliberately. 

There is a fine line separating regret of decisions made versus regretting how you implemented those decisions.   The second shows a maturity and honest remorse without revisiting mistakes.  The first, lamenting decisions at all, displays an inability to grow up and take responsibility for your life.  It is Mr. Cahn’s poor luck that he drew such a complex character early, that Julia's self-pity reads false at the end of the piece.  I have no doubt that some women (and some men) may second-guess themselves to this extent, but Julia would not.

A Dish for The Gods is an strong love letter to complex women, but it deserved a more fitting coda.

A Dish For The Gods
Playwright: Victor L. Cahn

Director: Adam Fitzgerald

Cast: Kevin Cristaldi, Margot White

Website

Upcoming: SARAH FLOOD IN SALEM MASS

In SARAH FLOOD IN SALEM MASS, blood feuds, black magic, and the birth of capitalism merge in this dizzying portrait of a village on the brink. Can the women of Salem alter their destiny?

SARAH FLOOD stars Bradley Anderson (White Hot), Jamie Bock (White Hot), Veracity Butcher (A Letter from Omdurman), Thomas Carman, Yong Hyun Choi, Whitney Conkling (Restoration Comedy), Matthew Cox (Restoration Comedy), Hannah Finn, Glenna Grant (The Electric Lighthouse), Kana Hatakeyama, John Paul Harkins, Jed Krivisky, Christine Lee (a cautionary tail), Hank Lin, Elizabeth May, Jeff Ronan (These Seven Sicknesses), Isabella Sazak, Michelle Silvani (I Hate Mexicans), Elly Smokler, Mariette Strauss, Kate Thulin, and Nate Washburn (These Seven Sicknesses). It features sound by Adriano Shaplin, set by Caitlin Lainoff, lighting by Dante Olivia Smith, and costumes by Nikki Delhomme.

Adriano Shaplin is a playwright, performer, sound designer, and artistic director of the Riot Group, an ensemble he co-founded in 1997. He is the author of 11 plays for the Riot Group including Wreck the Airline Barrier, Pugilist Specialist, Victory at the Dirt Palace, Freedom Club and Sophie Gets the Horns. In 2004 Adriano joined Pig Iron Theater Company to create the Obie Award winning Hell Meets Henry Halfway, an adaptation of Witold Gombrowicz’s The Possessed. In 2006 Adriano became the first International Playwright-in-Residence with the Royal Shakespeare Company and his first play for the RSC, The Tragedy of Thomas Hobbes, opened at Wilton’s Music Hall in London in 2008. Adriano is a four-time recipient of the Scotsman Fringe First, a Sloan Foundation grant recipient, and has been commissioned by Playwrights Horizons, the Royal Shakespeare Company, New Paradise Laboratories, and Interact Theatre Company. His plays have been produced at the Soho Theater and Riverside Studios in London, the Arches in Glasgow, the Magic Theater in San Francisco, the Theater Der Welt Festival in Germany, the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, Princeton University, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the Ice Factory Festival, 59e59 and The Culture Project. His most recent play, Sophie Gets the Horns, debuted at the Incubator Arts Project in May 2012. His plays have been published by Oberon Books and Playscripts Inc.

Rebecca Wright has directed and dramaturged for PlayPenn, the Lark Play Development Center, and InterAct Theatre Company. She has developed work with Philadelphia-based performers for First Person Arts, The Philadelphia Fringe Festival, Micro-Fest Philadelphia, and SoLow Festival. Recent directing credits include Sophie Gets the Horns with The Riot Group, Merry Wives of Windsor with Shakespeare in Clark Park, 17 Border Crossings with Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental, and Joan of Arc: Voices in the Fire at Columbia University, co-directed with Kristin Linklater. Rebecca is a co-founder of Applied Mechanics, with whom she creates immersive performance pieces, including Philadelphia Fringe Festival hit Overseers, and the 26-person historical fantasia Vainglorious: The Epic Feats of Notable Persons in Europe after the Revolution. She is a recipient of a 2012 Independence Fellowship in the Arts and a graduate of Artists U.

The Bats are the resident acting company members of The Flea Theater. Each year over a thousand actors audition for a place in this unique company. The Bats perform in extended runs of challenging classic and new plays. The Bats have recently appeared in premieres by A.R. Gurney, Will Eno, Adam Rapp, Beau Willimon, Mac Wellman, Elizabeth Swados, Thomas Bradshaw, Itamar Moses, Sheila Callaghan, Julian Sheppard, Ken Urban, Tommy Smith, Jonathan Reynolds, Trista Baldwin, Laurel Haines, Qui Nguyen, Sean Graney, and Amy Freed.

Upcoming: Give The People What They Want

Tony Award Winner Greg Kotis Premieres

GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT
(seven plays for five actors)
October 10 - November 11

Tony Award-winning playwright/lyricist Greg Kotis (Urinetown) returns to the New York stage with the World Premiere of GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT (seven plays for five actors). Written and directed by Kotis, performances begin October 10 at The People’s Improv Theater (aka The PIT).

GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT (seven plays for five actors) is a collection of seven short plays that explore love, sex, truth, sex, money, sex, and justice. In that order.

The production stars Micah Sherman, Dan Hodapp, Keisha Zollar, Chris Roberti, and Julie Sharbutt with sound design by Matthew Callahan and lighting by Michael Montalbano.

Greg Kotis is the author of many plays and musicals including Urinetown (Book/Lyrics, for which he won an Obie Award and two Tony® Awards), All Your Questions Answered, Michael von Siebenburg Melts Through the Floorboards, The Boring-est Poem in the World, Yeast Nation (Book/Lyrics), The Truth About Santa, Pig Farm, Eat the Taste, and Jobey and Katherine.  His work has been produced and developed in theaters across the country and around the world, including Actors Theatre of Louisville, American Conservatory Theater, American Theater Company, the Eugene O’Neill National Theater Conference, Henry Miller’s Theatre (Broadway), Manhattan Theatre Club, New York Stage and Film, Perseverance Theatre, Roundabout Theatre Company, Soho Rep, South Coast Rep, and The Old Globe, among others.  Greg is a member of the Neo-Futurists, the Cardiff Giant Theater Company, ASCAP, the Dramatists Guild, and was a 2010-11 Lark Play Development Center Playwrights Workshop Fellow.  He grew up in Wellfleet, Massachusetts and now lives in Brooklyn with his wife Ayun Halliday, his daughter India, and his son Milo.

GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT (seven plays for five actors) runs Thursday, Oct. 10; Friday, Oct. 18; Friday, Oct. 25; &Friday, Nov. 11. All performances are at 8:00pm. The PIT is located at 123 E. 24th Street (between Park and Lexington Avenues), accessible from the N,R,4&6 trains at 23rd Street. Tickets are $15 at 800-838-3006 or www.thepit-nyc.com.

Disaster - It Better Be Good or the Review Writes Itself...

TOM RIIS FARRELL, MICHELE RAGUSA, SETH RUDETSKY,

JENNIFER SIMARD & MARY TESTA

to Star in

DISASTER!

A 1970’s Disaster Movie…Musical

Written by Seth Rudetsky and Jack Plotnick

Directed by Jack Plotnick

Choreographed by Denis Jones; Music Direction by Larry Pressgrove

Begins performances on October 14; Opening Monday, November 4, 2013

At St. Luke’s Theatre

New York: Mary J. Davis will present DISASTER! written by Seth Rudetsky and Jack Plotnick, at St. Luke’s Theatre starting on October 14, opening Monday, November 4.  DISASTER! is a musical based on 1970’s disaster movies with a score consisting  of 1970’s pop, rock and disco hit songs. Directed by Jack Plotnick, choreographed by Denis Jones and music direction by Larry Pressgrove. Disaster! previously ran in 2012 and received rave reviews. The New York Times called it a “triumph” and “irresistible” and advised “You’ll be tickled and, despite your best judgment, probably singing along”.  For more information please visit www.disastermusical.com.

Upcoming: For The Sins I Remembrer

Maimie Pinzer and friend

FOR THE SINS I CAN REMEMBER, inspired by the celebrated letters of prostitute Maimie Pinzer, receives NYC premiere

New York, New York September 5, 2013— Vagabond Inventions returns with the New York premiere of FOR THE SINS I CAN REMEMBER, devised and co-written by
Donna Costello, Cynthia Polutanovich, and Jennifer Sargent and directed by Jennifer Sargent. FOR THE SINS I CAN REMEMBER begins performances on Friday, October 4 for a limited engagement through Sunday, October 20. Opening Night is Sunday, October 6 at 7 PM. Performances are at The IRT Theater (154 Christopher St, 3rd Floor, between Washington and West Streets). The performance schedule is Thursday – Saturday at 8 PM; Sunday at 7 PM. The regular ticket price is $18 ($15 for students). For tickets, call Brown Paper Tickets on 1-800-838-3006 or visit www.irttheater.org. For more information, visit www.vagabondinventions.com.

Inspired by Maimie Pinzer and her collection of letters, The Maimie Papers, mixed with stories from other prostitutes in the red light districts around the US, FOR THE SINS I CAN REMEMBER is an absurdist portrait of women from the late 19th and early 20th centuries who chose to work as "soiled doves." This tragi-comic Brechtian farce explores questions of morality, love, and femininity inside a storm of clownish Death Angels, Victorian etiquette lessons, and a looming Judgment Day. From fragments of history’s underside to a deconstructed present, FOR THE SINS I CAN REMEMBER captures our anti-heroine’s obstinate effort to survive her life—and death—with her personhood intact.

The cast features Donna Costello, Denni Dennis, Emily James, and Elisa Matula. The music director and pianist is Tony Melone.

Jennifer Sargent (Director, Co-Writer/ Creator) is a physical actor, creator of devised work, and the Artistic Director of Vagabond Inventions since 2007. Ms. Sargent’s seven original productions have performed across the US and in seven different countries. In NYC, she has performed work at The Chocolate Factory, HERE, Abrons Arts Center, The Brick Theater, and The Bushwick Starr. She completed the post-graduate training program at École Jacques Lecoq in Paris.

Donna Costello (Co-Writer/ Creator) is a dance artist immersed in process-rich work that blurs the lines of dance, theater, and performance. Ms. Costello has built rich relationships dancing for Shannon Hummel/ Cora Dance (founding member) jill sigman / thinkdance, Mollie O’Brien and Jimena Paz. Her own work has been presented by Movement Research at Judson Church, The flea theater, Green Space, Wow Café, Dixon Place, DanceNow/NYC, and Brooklyn Arts Exchange.

Hertog Fellow Cynthia Polutanovich (Co-Writer/ Creator) earned an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Hunter College and holds an award from the Academy of American Poets. Her work has appeared in "Half Drunk Muse," "The Bloomsbury Review," and, "Killing the Buddha." She has written commissioned poems for Dusan Tynek Dance Theatre’s “Base Pairs,” performing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music this fall, and for the company’s upcoming work. She recently published her first book.

Broadway Flea Market September 22nd

If you haven't been, you should go.  It's a great time.  LINK