News

Signature Theatre Announces Resident Playwrights' Productions for 2020-2021 Season

Source: Broadway.com | Posted: November 18 2020 @ 12:33 pm

Signature Theatre has announced plans for its upcoming 2021-2022 season. Tony nominee Dominique Morisseau's Confederates will make its New York premiere and Anna Deavere Smith will continue her residency with Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, which was originally scheduled to play this past season prior to the Broadway shutdown. The theater will also present three world premieres: Annie Baker's On the Uses of Pain for Life, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' Grass and Samuel D. Hunter's A Case for the Existence of God. Dates will be announced later.

Morisseau (Ain't Too Proud) brings Confederates to the New York stage with Kamilah Forbes directing. Leaping through time in order to trace the identities of two Black American women, this new work follows Sarah, a savvy slave turned Union spy, and Sandra, a brilliant professor in a modern-day private university, and how they're facing similar struggles even though they live over a century apart.

Smith's Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 will be directed by Taibi Magar and follows what happened after the police officers’ acquittal in Rodney King’s police brutality case in 1992. Having interviewed over 350 Los Angelinos, Smith dives deep into the historical moment and its cultural impact.

On the Uses of Pain …

See at Leslie Odom Jr. as Sam Cooke in First One Night in Miami Trailer

Source: Broadway.com | Posted: November 18 2020 @ 12:04 pm

This new trailer is going to have fans twistin' the night away. In a just-released first look, see Tony winner Leslie Odom Jr. as legendary singer Sam Cooke in the upcoming film One Night in Miami. Regina King directs the movie, which is based on the Olivier-nominated play by Kemp Powers, who also wrote the screenplay. One Night In Miami centers on the rise of Cassius Clay (Eli Goree) before he became Muhammed Ali. Set in 1964, the film follows him alongside three of his close friends, including Cooke, Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir) and former professional football player Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge), as they begin to assert themselves in the Civil Rights movement. The film will be arrive in select movie theaters beginning December 25 before being available to stream on Amazon Prime Video on January 15th, 2021. Check out the trailer below!

Michael Riedel’s Broadway History

Source: ArtsJournal.com | Posted: November 18 2020 @ 11:31 am

Reading Michael Riedel has long been mandatory for theater insiders. They may complain about his journalistic practices, his tendency to sensationalize and distort, his refusal to let a fair review of the facts get in the way of a good scoop, his speculative and often erroneous conclusions. But his copy is sinfully entertaining, full of […]

K. Todd Freeman on The Minutes Group Chat & His Important Wine Subscription

Source: Broadway.com | Posted: November 18 2020 @ 10:56 am

Living near the theater district during the Broadway shutdown, photographer and performer Matthew Stocke has been haunted walking past the empty palaces sitting in repose, waiting for the lights and stars to return. In this new Broadway.com photo feature, he reunites members of the theater community with their Broadway home #AwayFromHome.

K. TODD FREEMAN
THE MINUTES

K. Todd Freeman was three weeks into previews of Tracy Letts' political dramedy The Minutes when it was announced that Broadway was shutting down. With a resume spanning three decades, and two Tony nominations to his name, Freeman wasn't sure how to handle the time away from work. Now, with the recent announcement that the play is eyeing a 2022 stage return, Freeman talks about staying connected to his cast.

“I’ve been in Astoria this whole time. Staying in my apartment with my roommate and just trying to take it day by day. At the beginning of all this, I actually felt the safest at the theater. It’s like a family at the Cort, and I could really trust everyone there and knew that everyone was being safe and the area was being kept clean. It was hard to find out that …

Trevor Nunn to Direct 60th Anniversary Production of Samuel Beckett's Happy Days in London

Source: Broadway.com | Posted: November 18 2020 @ 10:43 am

Tony-winning director Trevor Nunn is set to helm Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days  in London. The 60th anniversary production will star Lisa Dwan and begin performances on February 16, 2021 with opening night scheduled for February 18. It will run through March 28 at Riverside Studios.

In Happy Days, Winnie and her husband Willie are stuck in every sense of the word. Endless days and nights pass by while they struggle on, with only each other for company. Happy Days presents a poignant look at human strength and survival amidst the most surreal of circumstances.

Dwan is an award-winning Irish performer, director, writer and scholar. She is best known for her acclaimed one-woman performances of Beckett’s plays, including The Beckett Trilogy & No’s Knifee. She will soon be seen in the new BBC TV series Bloodlands, as well as continuing in her role as Lizzie in the new season of Netflix’s Top Boy. Her other recent theater credits includeThe Lover & The Collection, Studio Creole, American Standard, Pale Sister, Anna Karenina, Margot, Diary of an Unhappy Queen, The Journey Between Us,Illusions and more. Her book A Body of Beckett will …