#Susan Yankowitz

[larryland]

Bard College at Simon's Rock Presents Reading of "SEVEN" to Benefit Elizabeth Freeman Center

Bard College at Simon’s Rock Presents Reading of “SEVEN” to Benefit Elizabeth Freeman Center

The Bard College at Simon’s Rock Council for Equity and Inclusion and CeCe Sloan Presents invite you to a reading of SEVEN, A Documentary Play Saturday, August 26 from 7-9:30 pm at The Daniel Arts Center Bard College at Simon’s Rock 84 Alford Road Great Barrington, MA A riveting piece of documentary theatre, SEVEN tells the true stories of seven women who bravely fought for the well-being of…

[littlefoible]

2750 - Susan Yankowitz https://www.instagram.com/p/B6n2RlHHUfc/?igshid=1apiekv66fbig

[briefnytw]

A Look Back: Reimagining the Greeks at NYTW & WP

Our upcoming production of Hurricane Diane reimagines the Greek god Dionysus as a permaculture gardener dripping with butch charm. She returns to the modern world to gather mortal followers and restore the Earth to its natural state...starting with four housewives in a suburban New Jersey cul-de-sac.

But this isn't our first time reimagining a Greek classic! Scroll down and take an inside look into New York Theatre Workshop and WP Theater archives as we celebrate previous reimaginings of the Greeks.

The Brooklyn Trojan Women (1993, WP) By Carole Braverman Directed by Margot Breier Pictured: Adam Barnett & Ariane Brandt Photographer: Martha Holmes

Phaedra in Delirium (1998, WP) By Susan Yankowitz Directed by Alison Summers Pictured: Kathleen Chalfant & Peter Jay Fernandez Photographer: Martha Holmes

Antigone Project (2004, WP) By Tanya Barfield, Karen Hartman, Chiori Miyagawa, Lynn Nottage, & Caridad Svich Directed by Annie Dorsen, Dana I. Harrel, Anne Kauffman, Barbara Rubin, & Liesl Tommy Pictured: Jeanine Serralles & Angel Desai Photographer: T. Charles Erickson

Oedipus at Palm Springs (2005, NYTW) Text by The Five Lesbian Brothers Directed by Leigh Silverman Pictured: Dominique Dibbell, Peg Healey, Maureen Angelos, Babs Davy & Lisa Kron Photographer: Joan Marcus

The Seven (2006, NYTW) Text and Composition by Will Power Directed and Developed by Jo Bonney Choreographed by Bill T. Jones Pictured: Jamyl Dobson, Flaco Navaja, Postell Pringle, Manuel Herrera, Pearl Sun, Shawtane Monroe Bowen & Uzo Aduba Photographer: Carol Rosegg

An Iliad (2012, NYTW) Text by Lisa Peterson and Denis O'Hare Adaptation from Homer's Iliad Translated by Robert Fagles Directed by Lisa Peterson Pictured: Denis O'Hare Photographer: Joan Marcus

The Events (2015, NYTW) Text by David Greig Music by John Browne Directed by Ramin Gray Pictured: Clifford Samuel & Neve McIntosh Photographer: Matthew Murphy

Hadestown (2016, NYTW) By Anaïs Mitchell Developed with and directed by Rachel Chavkin Pictured: Jessie Shelton, Shaina Taub, Lulu Fall, Amber Gray & Patrick Page Photography: Joan Marcus

Galatea or Whatever You Be (2018 Pipeline Festival, WP) By MJ Kaufman Directed by Mo Zhou Produced by Yuvika Tolani Pictured: Futaba Shioda & Bailey Roper Photographer: Joan Marcus

[misscorday]

“By Paula Cizmar, Catherine Filloux, Gail Kriegel, Carol K. Mack, Ruth Margraff, Anna Deavere Smith and Susan Yankowitz. Directed by Judyann Elder. Performed Jan. 17-20, 2017. Photos by Matt Petit. Part theatre, part documentary, "Seven" is an affirmation of the boundless power of hope and determination.” [x]

[newyorktheater]

Below are 20 recently published or forthcoming books about theater, listed under four categories:

Scripts and Play Anthologies;

Biographies and Memoirs

Theater History, Criticism and Reference

Beach Reads (although I personally recommend you read these at home.)

Each title is linked to its page of Amazon where you can learn more, get a sample, and purchase.

Scripts and Play Anthologies

American Utopia The text from David Byrne’s Broadway show accompanied by more than 150 of Maira Kalman‘s colorful paintings.

The 24 Hour Plays Viral Monologues: New Monologues Created During the Coronavirus Pandemic (Audition Speeches) The texts of monologues that have been written, rehearsed and presented on Instagram weekly since the pandemic lockdown began. The short plays included in the anthology are by such writers as David Lindsay-Abaire, Clare Barron, Hansol Jung, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Christoper Oscar Peña, Jesse Eisenberg and Monique Moses. The book is pitched as material for auditions, but it is also likely to offer a glimpse at the way we are living now.

Slave Play Jeremy Harris’s play about three interracial couples engage in sexual/S&M power plays on a Southern plantation as part of Antebellum Sexual Performance Therapy. It’s safe to say this was the most talked-about play of the Broadway season.

The Methuen Drama Anthology of American Women Playwrights: 1970 – 2020 The plays included are: Gun by Susan Yankowitz Spell #7: geechee jibara quik magic trance manual for technologically stressed third world people by Ntozake Shange The Jacksonian by Beth Henley The Baltimore Waltz by Paula Vogel In the Blood by Suzan-Lori Parks Intimate Apparel by Lynn Nottage

Plays Worth Remembering – Volume 1: A Veritable Feast of George Ade’s Greatest Hits

George Ade was famous in his day as a humorist, columnist and playwright, whose plays were produced 21 times between 1901 and 1936. His nickname “Aesop of Indiana,” may help explain why, if you’re not from the Midwest, you might not have heard of him. Volume 1 focuses on George Ade’s full plays. (Volume II includes musicals and Hollywood screen plays.)

Biographies and Memoirs

Lot Six: A Memoir

Playwright David Adjmi (The Marie Antoinette , 3C) tells of his journey from a miserable childhood in Brooklyn as a gay kid in an insular religious community, to a new adult identity pieced together from the pages of fashion magazines, tomes of philosophy, sitcoms and foreign films, and practically everyone he meets

Dancing Man: A Broadway Choreographer’s Journey

An easy read that offers a light, slight overview of the six-decade career of accomplished and well-connected theater artist Bob Avian, who worked with Michael Bennett on landmark shows “Company,” “Follies,” “Dreamgirls” and “A Chorus Line,” and then went on to choreograph “Miss Saigon” and “Sunset Boulevard.”

Eubie Blake

A new biography of one of the key composers of 20th-century American popular song, subtitled “Rags, Rhythm and Race.” Together with Noble Sissle, he ccreated Shuffle Along in 1921, generally recognized as the first commercially successful all-black production on Broadway. (A re-envisioned version of the musical was brought back to Broadway in 2016)

This Is Not My Memoir

In collaboration with Todd London, theater director, actor and writer André Gregory tells his story “from wartime Paris to golden-age Hollywood, from avant-garde theaters to monasteries in India”

Ann Miller: Her Life and Career

Peter Shelly’s biography tells the story of the dancer and actor who began her career as a child child acting and accumulated three Hollywood studio contracts, two retirements for marriage, and appearances in film, stage, variety shows, sitcoms. She made a comeback in the stage musical Sugar Babies, earning a Tony nomination as Best Leading Actress in a Musical.

Theater History, Criticism and Reference

Ever After: Forty Years of Musical Theater and Beyond, 1977–2019 Originally published in 2003 as a comprehensive history of the previous twenty-five years in musical theater, on and off Broadway, this new edition of Ever After extends the narrative, taking readers from 2004 to the present.

Flop Musicals of the Twenty-First Century: How They Happened, When They Happened (And What We’ve Learned)

A sort of sequel to Ken Mandelbaum’s “Not Since Carrie,” but Stephen Purdy, a member of the musical theater faculty at Marymount Manhattan College, explores just ten shows: Spider-man Turn Off the Dark, Lestat, Urban Cowboy, The Pirate Queen, Rocky, King Kong, Escape from Margaritaville, Glory Days, Bullets Over Broadway and Dance of the Vampires.

Macbeth in Harlem: Black Theater in America from the Beginning to Raisin in the Sun

Clifford Mason details how African American performers fought for a century and a half to carve out a space for authentic black voices onstage, at a time when blockbuster plays like Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Octoroon trafficked in cheap stereotype.

Pal Joey: The History of a Heel

A behind-the-scenes look at the genesis, influence and significance of this 1940 Rodgers and Hart show that upended musical comedy convention.

Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future 

A fascinating book by James Shapiro that looks at eight controversial events over two centuries involving Shakespeare, which he calls “defining moments in American history.” Each chapter focuses on a specific year, a specific play by Shakespeare, and specific issues of the day, reflecting long-standing tensions involving race, class, gender, immigration and other fault-lines in American culture.

Tarell Alvin McCraney: Theater, Performance, and Collaboration

A collection of scholarly essays  that consider McCraney’s innovations as a playwright, adapter, director, performer, teacher, and collaborator, who is the author of Choir Boy, Head of Passes, the  trilogy The Brother/Sister Plays, as well as the play that inspired the Oscar Award–winning film Moonlight

Understanding Tracy Letts (Understanding Contemporary American Literature)

Thomas Fahy views the playwright of August: Osage County, Bug and Superior Donuts, etc. through the lens of disability studies, the conspiracy genre, food studies, the feminist politics of quilting, and masculinity studies.

Beach Reads

Deadly Drama (A Britton Bay Mystery Book 4)

In the latest in a series of mystery novels by Jody Holford, newspaper editor and amateur sleuth Molly Owens takes center stage when it’s curtains for a theater director

Shakespeare for Squirrels: A Novel

In this novel, Christopher Moore turns A Midsummer Night’s Dream into a murder mystery

The Summer Set: A Novel

In this slick new romantic novel by Aimee Agresti, Charlie Savoy was once Hollywood’s hottest A-lister. Now, ten years later, her film career long kaput, Charlie’s latest hijinx gets her sentenced by a judge to community service at the summer Shakespeare theater in the Berkshires that launched her career—and where her old flame, Nick, is the artistic director, and where the ambitious young apprentices also have a summer full of sexual tension.

20 New Theater Books for Summer Reading 2020 Below are 20 recently published or forthcoming books about theater, listed under four categories: Scripts and Play Anthologies…

[wionews]

Pakistani woman, gang-raped in 2002, attends US opera based on her life

Mukhtar Mai, who was raped by a group of men fifteen years back in her village in Pakistan, watched her ordeal being played out in an opera in the United States.

"I was very emotional when I first started watching it and began reliving the incident in my mind," Mai, 37, told AFP on Friday, after attending the Los Angeles premiere of "Thumbprint."

"But then as the opera progressed, it became easier to watch and I felt more courage," she said in Urdu, speaking through a translator.

"Thumbprint" made its debut in New York in 2014 but Mai was watching the opera inspired from her life for the first time.

The opera is about how Mai took his rapists to court, a highly unusual move by a woman in a male-dominated society.

But while the opera ends with her attackers sentenced to death, in real life, the rapists were acquitted by a Pakistani court. 

"My rapists live across from my house and I try not to cross paths with them," said Mai, who used compensation money from her case to start several schools and a women's shelter in her village. "When I walk past, they taunt me and make catcalls."

The village council was in cahoots with the rapists. It had allowed the men to rape Mai because her 12-year-old brother was falsely accused of having an illicit affair with a woman from the dominant clan in the village.

The opera has been composed by Kamala Sankaram and librettist Susan Yankowitz.

  ]]>

[misscorday]

Seven begins performances tonight at LA Theatre Works.

Seven is a collection of works from female playwrights focusing on the inspiring true stories of female activists from around the globe working to change the lives of women. Contributing playwrights Paula Cizmar, Catherine Filloux, Gail Kriegel, Carol Mack, Ruth Margraff, Anna Deavere Smith and Susan Yankowitz. A wide range of stories are presented including those of Mukhtar Mai, a rape survivor who became the first Pakistani woman to bring her attackers to justice in Pakistan's courts, Farida Azizi and her defiance of the Taliban to fight for women's rights in Afghanistan, and more. Judyann Elder directs.

Cast members include Sarah Shahi (Person of Interest), Annet Mahendru (The Americans), Emily Kuroda (Gilmore Girls), Alex Kingston (ER), Sameerah-Luqmaan-Harris (Father Comes Home From the Wars), Jossara Jinaro (East Los High), and Shannon Holt (Love Liza).

Seven was commissioned by Vital Voices Global Partnership, an outgrowth of Vital Voices Initiative, the preeminent nongovernmental organization that identifies, trains, and empowers emerging women leaders and social entrepreneurs around the globe.

Performances continue through January 29.

[misscorday]

“7 women give voice to the voiceless. A collaboration between 7 playwrights and 7 female activists from around the globe tells the inspiring stories of overcoming adversity to effect real change and improve the lives of women. Part theatre, part documentary, SEVEN is an affirmation of the boundless power of hope and determination.” 

Written by Paula Cizmar, Catherine Filloux, Gail Kriegel, Carol K. Mack, Ruth Margraff, Anna Deavere Smith and Susan Yankowitz

Directed by Judyann Elder, starring Alex Kingston, Emily Kuroda and Annet Mahendru 

[x]

**it actually runs January 26 -- 29th