NEWBERRY SYMPOSIUM - OCTOBER 27-28, 2022
I WILL BE A PANEL GUEST FOR THIS EXCITING SYMPOSIUM
R/18: Re-Activating the Repertoire - A Two-Day Symposium for Researchers, Practitioners, and Producers
Newberry Library, Chicago, USA
If you don’t know the Newberry, spend some time on their website! They’re an EXTRAORDINARY resource. The Newberry Library––free and open to the public––fosters a deeper understanding of our world by inspiring research and learning in the humanities and encouraging conversations about ideas that matter to diverse audiences. Our mission is rooted in a growing and accessible collection of rare and historical materials that spans more than six centuries of human experience.
The R/18 Collective is a group of international scholars committed to dramaturgical knowledge in the service of theatre makers and other researchers. We believe the theatrical repertoire from the 1660s to the 1830s provides insights into the deep histories of race, gender, sexuality, ability, nation, and capital that continue to shape anglophone culture and the world.
MAY 6-29, 2022
at Cleveland’s Historic
We are deeply honored to be playing at KARAMU HOUSE in the Fairfax neighborhood on the east side of Cleveland, Ohio, United States, is the oldest African-American theater in the United States opening in 1915. Many of Langston Hughes's plays were developed and premièred at the theater. Learn more about Karamu House HERE, Channel 13 Documentary on Karamu House and this article from ClevelandScene with photos from the 1930s to the 1980s. This short film by Wonderhouse Films is from Karamu’s FREEDOM ON JUNETEETH an original theatrical production and artistic response to the murders of Black Americans.
THE CONVENT OF PLEASURE
A Play by Margaret Cavendish
A LIVESTREAM BROADCAST
MARCH 14, 2022
Presented by Red Bull Theater in collaboration with R/18 Collective
Directed by Kim Weild
Featuring: Heidi Armbruster | Becca Ayers | Talley Gale | Cloteal Horne | Anthony Michael Martinez | Rami Margron | Maria-Christina Oliveras | and Josh Tyson
When Lady Happy and her friends decide to ignore society’s expectations and consciously choose to avoid men and marriage, they seclude themselves inside a free-thinking and joyous community, creating a radical feminist utopia: the Convent of Pleasure. Cavendish’s 17th-century play imagines a space established by and for women to live for pleasure without men. But when a mysterious Princess comes to join the convent, a "princely brave woman truly, of a masculine presence," the paradise of the enclave shakes.
First published in 1668, The Convent of Pleasure was written as a closet drama–a play intended to be read rather than performed. In its 354 year history, there have been very few public presentations and we are delighted to provide this opportunity to hear Cavendish’s play read aloud with the support of R/18 Collective.
Anne Bogart: Towards a Theater 2.0
Jan 19, 2022, 4-5:30 PM (EST)
Anne Bogart in discussion with Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama professor Kim Weild
As we emerge from a long pandemic cesura, we find ourselves in situations that require us to change our postures, our attitudes, and our means and methods. There are highly justified calls for equity, for “decolonizing the rehearsal room,” for dismantling institutional racism, for less hierarchical practices, for kinder work conditions. Many suggest that a return to theater-making and theatergoing requires the creation of a “Theater 2.0”. There is a great deal to unpack and to reconsider. Can we shift focus and rethink the models that we inherited? What are the pressing subjects to address on the stage? Amidst the current cultural and political uncertainty, how can the theater contribute to the ongoing conversation?
Photo by Calista Lyon
Hosted by Carnegie Mellon University’s Center for Arts in Society and The Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry
CONGRATULATIONS TO KELLEY GIROD and TFTT FESTIVAL!
25 Plays from The Fire This Time Festival
A Decade of Recognition, Resistance, Resilience, Rebirth, and Black Theater
On February 10, 2022 New York City's Obie Award-winning The Fire This Time Festival will release an anthology edited by Kelley Girod entitled 25 Plays from The Fire This Time Festival: A Decade of Recognition, Resistance, Resilience, Rebirth and Black Theatre. The book, published by Methuen Drama an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing, contains 25 10-minute plays originally produced by the eponymous festival, which has become the destination for emerging and early career playwrights from the African diaspora.
While the past decade proved to be some of the most tumultuous times in modern US history, the resilience and will of the Black community has continually pushed forward by opening up dialogues and sustaining advocacy. Nowhere has this been more apparent than at the Obie Award-winning The Fire This Time Festival in New York City. From inequality in education and healthcare, skewed and negative images of Black people in mainstream media, racism in policing, widespread gentrification and its effects on multi-generational Black neighborhoods, and the growth of Black love, The Fire This Time Festival was there and has borne witness. This page in their Black history is now documented in the pages of this anthology. Together, these pieces bookend the Black experience in the U.S. from 2009 to the present day: from the hope for further progress and equity under the Obama administration, to the existential threat faced by Black people under the Trump presidency.
Featuring work by Katori Hall, Derek Lee McPhatter, Antoinette Nwandu, Roger Q. Mason, Dominique Morisseau, Francisca Da Silveira, Tracey Conyer Lee, C.A Johnson, William Watkins, Jordan E. Cooper, Natyna Bean, Dennis A. Allen II, Deneen Reynolds-Knott, Bernard Tarver, Cyrus Aaron, Camille Darby, Marcus Gardley, Charly Evon Simpson, Kendra Augustin, Samantha Godfrey, Jonathan Payne, Tyler English-Beckwith, Fredrica Bailey, Angelica Cheri, and Josh Wilder, the short plays reflect an exciting, eclectic mix of 21st Century Theatre and are perfect for study, performance and reflection.
AMERICAN MOOR
Pittsburgh Playhouse February 17-20, 2022.
ASL Interpreted Performances February 19th & 20th
Post Show Discussions February 19th & 20th
©Kim Weild
UPDATE:
OUR VOICES will be in residency May-June 2022, at IRT Theater, developing a new multi-media piece in collaboration with playwright Charles Mee and performer John McGinty.
University of Chicago students, faculty, and staff, as well as anyone who wishes to join the conversation regardless of affiliation, are invited to the Black Baroque visiting artist lecture series, which will spotlight Black theatre-makers who work with, against, and through Baroque culture in the contemporary historical moment. Featured speakers in Black Baroque include Bintou Dembélé, Keith Hamilton Cobb, and Debra Ann Byrd, who will converse with UChicago Assistant Professor of English Noémie Ndiaye about Blackness politically, historically, performatively, and transnationally.
The co-curricular series was designed by Noémie Ndiaye and visiting professor Gabrielle Randle-Bent and is co-sponsored by Court Theatre, the Committee on Theatre and Performance Studies, the Department of English, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, and the Center for Study of Race, Politics, and Culture.
BULL SESSION
AMERICAN MOOR
Thursday, October 15, 2020 | 7:30 PM EDT | FREE!
LIVESTREAM
An interactive discussion of American Moor and its themes with playwright/performer Keith Hamilton Cobb, director Kim Weild, and scholar Erika Lin. REGISTER NOW This is a free event, but advance reservations are recommended. More information about the panelists.
AMERICAN MOOR
An Informal Benefit Reading
THIS Monday, October 12, 2020
7:30 PM EDT | LIVESTREAM
Keith Hamilton Cobb’s AMERICAN MOOR is the award-winning, tour-de-force new play that takes audiences behind-the-scenes and into the audition room as an African-American actor responds to the demands of a white director presuming to better understand Shakespeare’s iconic black character, Othello.
A passionate and poetic exploration, AMERICAN MOOR is an essential look at the experience and perspective of black men in America while challenging the capacity of the American theatre to make all people fully visible and embraced. We were thrilled to bring a full-production of Cobb’s play to Off-Broadway audiences in the Fall of 2019 at the Cherry Lane Theater.
For this special benefit occasion, the original Off-Broadway cast, Keith Hamilton Cobb and Josh Tyson, will offer an informal reading of his play from their homes. Ayana Workman will read stage directions. They will bring Cobb's text to life for a whole new audience, simply and without ornamentation.
This program is part of OTHELLO 2020, a multi-part online initiative to provide an engaging and educational experience for all who are interested in Shakespeare’s Othello and its relationship to the world in which we live today. The benefit series continues through October 28.
Come join us for Pittsburgh Public Theater’s PlayTime series! I’ll be directing Ibsen’s A DOLL’S HOUSE
APRIL 16th & 17th 2020 at 7pm
PlayTime is a new weekly online reading series and featuring some of Pittsburgh’s favorite actors as we come together remotely to read great classic plays and extraordinary Pittsburgh writers out loud with a live online audience.
This series is free of charge, though donations of course will be gladly accepted to support the artists and costs of the program. Visit ppt.org/donate to support us.
THE METHUEN EDITION OF AMERICAN MOOR
IS NOW AVAILABLE!
We’re very excited to finally have the work in print and accessible, and we look forward to all of the discussions it generates.
You can purchase it via Amazon.com in both paperback and a kindle version
AMERICAN MOOR TO OPEN OFF-BROADWAY
CHERRY LANE THEATRE, NYC
A STRICTLY LIMITED ENGAGEMENT
Presented by RED BULL THEATER
Produced in collaboration with
EVANGELINE MORPHOS, ELIZABETH I. MCCANN, FRED ZOLLO and TOM SHEA
PREVIEWS BEGIN TUESDAY AUGUST 27, 2019
OPENING NIGHT SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 8, 2019
CLOSING NIGHT PERFORMANCE OCTOBER 5, 2019
An indomitable African-American actor auditioning for the role of Othello must respond to the dictates of a younger, white director who presumes to better understand Shakespeare’s iconic black character.
What could possibly go wrong?
In this 90-minute, multi-award winning play, this fraught audition turns into an exploration of Shakespeare, race, and America (not necessarily in that order). Fueled by humor and passion, American Moor paints an essential portrait of an American theater unaware of its failures, and of the culture that supports it.
I’m thrilled to announce that I will be directing
CRY IT OUT
by Molly Smith Metzler
February 29 – March 22, 2020
City Theatre Company, Pittsburgh
Marc Masterson: Artistic Director | James McNeel: Managing Director
1300 Bingham Street | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15203 | 412 431 CITY
When it comes to being a new parent, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Brilliantly funny and painfully true, Cry It Out confronts the pressure to have it all when having it all is a giant lie.
Photo by Nina Wurtzel
MAY 29- JUNE 2, 2019
STEPCHILD*
work-in-progress
presented by IRT Theater, NYC**
Kori Rushton: Artistic Director
*STEPCHILD, a new musical and recipient of DCA's inaugural CreateNYC Disability Forward Fund grant.
**IRT Theater is a grassroots laboratory for independent theater and performance in New York City, providing space and support to a new generation of artists. Tucked away in the old Archive Building in Greenwich Village, IRT’s mission is to build a community of emerging and established artists by creating a home for the development and presentation of new work. Some of the artists they have supported include Young Jean Lee, Reggie Watts and Mike Daisey.
