Filtering by: Theater
May
16
to Jun 26
Theater

Taming of the Shrew

http://www.shakespearetheatre.org/events/the-taming-of-the-shrew/

“Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth…
But that our soft conditions and our hearts
Should well agree with our external parts?”

Join us for a party like none you’ve seen, heard or tasted. Spilling from the stage into the lobbies and the street, Director Ed Sylvanus Iskandar’s production presents a provocative new approach to The Taming of the Shrew and an utterly unique audience experience. Known for his epic and immersive works, Iskandar uses an all-male cast to examine the fluidity of identity, the authenticity of performance and the economics of love in one of Shakespeare’s most notorious texts.

An emerging artist noted for his innovative interpretation of classic texts, Ed Sylvanus Iskandar joins STC as the first in our path-breaking Clarice Smith Series: New Directors for the Classics. Iskandar creates performances that creatively shift beyond the proscenium, reconnecting audience and artist and returning the theatre to its ancient role as the center of communal life. Audiences not only see the play but are invited to engage in the experience in a more meaningful way. As part of this vision, during the run of Shrew the Sidney Harman Hall will host a local artisan market, a series of workshops led by D.C. artists and performances surrounding the show itself.

Iskandar’s previous projects include the 2014 Drama Desk Award-winner The Mysteries, a collaboration with nearly 50 playwrights that reimagined the stories of The Bible over six hours. The Founding Artistic Director of theatre collective Exit, Pursued by a Bear, Iskandar has also hosted a series of labs and salons in his New York loft, featuring intimate performances and meals cooked by Iskandar himself. Combining theatre with food and community, Exit, Pursued by a Bear has become the talk of the New York theatre scene, utilizing a performance model as old as Homer and as radical as anything on stage today

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Dec
25
10:00 AM10:00
Theater

BBC Wales: Under Milk Wood

(Sound Design & live foley performance.)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04mlkqp

Michael Sheen directs and stars in this special performance of Under Milk Wood for BBC Radio Wales at New York’s 92nd Street Y cultural centre, where Dylan Thomas premiered his ‘play for voices’ in 1953. Christmas Day 15:05 GMT. 

Our broadcast follows BBC Wales' Dylan Thomas season that's run throughout this centenary year. Earlier in 2014, BBC Wales have presented a kaleidoscope of programmes across, radio, television and online, celebrating the poet’s life, work and legacy.

Michael Sheen says: “It's a real honour and an absolute thrill to perform Under Milk Wood in this very special year and on the stage that it first found its voice. 

“This live radio broadcast is an opportunity to celebrate him and his work in both New York - a city that became so important to Dylan - and, at the same time, in Wales, his inspiration and home.” 

In addition to directing, Sheen reads “First Voice”, the play’s narrator, a part Dylan himself read in the 1953 premiere. 

The all-Welsh cast also features actress Kate Burton, whose parents, Sybil Williams and Richard Burton, participated in the first BBC radio recording of Under Milk Wood in 1954 - just two months after Thomas’s tragic death in New York. Burton also starred in the 1972 film adaptation of Under Milk Wood.

“It is very meaningful for me to be participating in this event as my parents were in the original recording,” says Burton. “I am very proud to be Welsh and to carry on the family tradition." 

Radio Wales editor Steve Austins, said: “I'm really excited to be able to bring our listeners the chance to hear Dylan's masterpiece performed live, in the city he loved, on the stage where it was first performed. And it's wonderful that Michael has come on board to direct and perform in this unique event."

It was 92nd Street Y’s Poetry Center that introduced Thomas to an American audience. Former Poetry Center director John Malcolm Brinnin brought Thomas to 92Y for his first US reading in 1950, and the poet made 11 more appearances at 92Y between 1950 and 1953, including four performances of Under Milk Wood. Brinnin also acted as Thomas’s agent in the US, arranging the reading tours that took him to colleges and universities across the country

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Oct
26
3:00 PM15:00
Theater

Under Milk Wood

Foley performance: 92nd St. Y \ BBC Wales

This FREE event will be available for reservations on Sep 9 at noon.

The Poetry Center celebrates Dylan Thomas’s centenary by turning Kaufmann Concert Hall into a studio for a free reading ofUnder Milk Wood broadcast live on BBC Radio Wales. The Poetry Center presented the premiere of this “play for voices,” with Thomas himself leading the cast, in May 1953.

Michael Sheen, who will direct the reading and lead a cast of all Welsh actors (which includes Kate Burton), has said “it’s a real honor and an absolute thrill to be able to perform Under Milk Wood in this very special year and on the stage that it first found its voice. The live radio broadcast is an opportunity to celebrate him and his work in both New York—a city that became so important to Dylan—and, at the same time, in Wales, his inspiration and home.”

After the reading, patrons will have the opportunity to go next door to 92Y’s Weill Art Gallery and experience Dylan Thomas in America, an exhibition of photos, letters, drawings and manuscripts that chronicles the poet’s legendary trips to the U.S. in the 1950s.

Other DT/100 events occurring in the birthday week—Thomas was born on October 27, 1914—include a reading of Thomas’s verse at Bowery Poetry Club (evening of Oct 26); a screening of the new Dylan Thomas biopic, Set Fire to the Stars (Chelsea Hotel, Oct 27); an evening of classical music inspired by Thomas and Welsh waterways (Salmagundi Club, Oct 28); walking tours of Greenwich Village (Oct 29); and a panel discussion featuring Hannah Ellis, Thomas’s granddaughter, and former U.S. Poet Laureate Philip Levine (92Y, Oct 31).

More info on these citywide programs, which are sponsored by the British Council and the Welsh government, will follow in days to come.

 

Can't make it to the event? Listen to the livestream

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Apr
3
to May 25
Theater

The Mysteries

NEW YORK TIMES Article

The Flea Theater is proud to announce the World Premiere of THE MYSTERIES – a radical retelling of the Bible. Playwrights commissioned by Jim Simpson and Carol Ostrow including Tony Award and Academy Award winners and nomineesDavid Henry Hwang, Craig Lucas, Billy Porter, José Rivera and Jeff Whitty; Flea alumni,Mallery Avidon, Trista Baldwin, Erin Courtney, Yussef El Guindi, Amy Freed, Sean Graney, Nick Jones, Qui Nguyen, and Jenny Schwartz; and a host of notable newcomers...join together to tell the entire History of Man’s Salvation in 50 episodes from The Fall of Lucifer through and including Judgment Day.

THE MYSTERIES is conceived and directed by Ed Sylvanus Iskandar whose previous Drama Desk nominated efforts at The Flea were the socially immersive marathons THESE SEVEN SICKNESSESand RESTORATION COMEDY. “I turned to the neglected canon we now know as ‘mystery plays’ – the literary bridge between the Greeks and Shakespeare – which to my knowledge has never been professionally produced in the U.S. It’s an ideal frame to capture the zeitgeist on Faith in contemporary America through stories that depict the passion, pleasure and pain of the entire human condition: the stuff of the greatest drama. And I look forward to creating a one-of-a-kind theatrical event in full celebration of the spirit of festival and community at The Flea, my creative home of the past three years,” says Iskandar.

Additional collaborators include David Dabbon (Music Direction and Original Music), Chase Brock(Choreography), Michael Wieser (Fight Direction), and Amy Jo Jackson (Voice and Speech Direction).

Designers include Jason Sherwood (Scenic Design), Seth Reiser (Lighting Design), Loren Shaw(Costume Design), Jeremy S. Bloom (Sound Design), and Renny Cullen (Props Design).

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Sep
7
to Sep 29
Theater

The Carcass

by Peretz Hirshbein. Directed by Paul Takacs . 

Peretz Hirshbein's early 20th century play, Carcass, is a singular work that blends a raw, pastoral earthiness with a visceral sensuality. As this story unfolds, we witness the costs of a father's transgressions not only to himself, but to his family.

Tickets: $18. -  Advance tickets may be purchased at www.here.org or by phoning 212-352-3101. Box office opens after 5pm on show days or two hours before any performance

 

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