#ik it says pop opera in the title but that's not pop music

[tennesseewilliamshakespeare]

can’t take credit for barenatural but i can’t stop thinking about dean “i don’t act” winchester and castiel “i think we’re the best act this school has ever seen” novak

[somejuansomewhere]

No repeating artists

 1.  your favorite album opener – Cocteau Twins “Sea, Swallow Me” or Grizzly Bear “Little Brother (Choir Version) or Gravy Train “Titties Bounce”

2.  a song starting w/ the same first letter of your first name – St Vincent “Jesus Saves, I Spend”

3.  a song outside of your usual genre – Ronee Blakely “Dues”

4.  a song that reminds you of your favorite season – I don’t have a fav season but this song is good, Donald Glover “Feels like Summer”

5.  a song from a lifelong favorite artist – Beastie Boys “Remote Control”

6.  your current “on repeat” song – Sufjan Stevens “Casimir Pulaski Day” or The Muppets Movie Soundtrack “Man or Muppet”

7.  a song your friend introduced you to that you ended up loving – Ween “Freedom of 76”

8.  a song that speaks the words you couldn’t say – Klaus Johann Grobe “Wir Zwei” (I can’t speak German)

9.  a song that captures your aesthetic (can be ideal!) – Panda Bear “Bros”

10.   a song about the place where you live – Rufus Wainwright “California”

11.   a song from an international artist – Akiko Yano “Ike Yanagida”

12.   a song you can scream all the words to – Neon Blonde “Headlines”

13.   a reboot of a song/songs you already loved (remix, mashup, acoustic, etc.) Remix – Siouxsie and the Banshees “Dazzle (Glamour Mix)” Mashup – David Essex vs Firesuite mashup Acoustic – The Dears “Heartless Romantic acoustic” Cover – Anna Calvi “Jezebel” Spoof - The Boobé Sisters “Ugly Baby”

14.   a song with the name of a place in the title – Yo La Tengo “Let’s Save Tony Orlando’s House”

15.   a song that reminds you of traveling – Weezer “Holiday”

16.   your favorite childhood song – Sir Mix A Lot “Baby Got Back”

17.   a song that reminds you of a good time – Nellie Mckay “Manhattan Avenue”

18.   a song that reminds you of a bad time - Jean-Michel Bernard “Stephanie Blues”

19.   a song from an artist whose old music you enjoy more than their new music – Kate Bush “Don’t Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake”

20.   a song that empowers you - the knife “full of fire”

21.   a song from a local artist – I don’t think there are any

22.   a song you related to in the past and present, but for different reasons – Nico “These Days”

23.   your favorite cheesy pop song – The Goodies “Sophisticated Boom Boom”

24.   a song from a soundtrack (musical, movie, video game, etc.) Musical – Hedwig and the Angry Inch “The Long Grift” Soundtrack – Judy Garland “The Man that Got Away” Score – Bernard Herman “Scene D’Amour” Video game – Mary Elizabeth McGlynn “Letter – From the Lost Days” Tv show – Adventure Time Olivia Olson “Everything Stays” Opera – Tales of Hoffmann “Les oiseaux dans la charmille”

25.   the song currently stuck in your head OR the song you are listening to right now – Deerhoof “Love-Lore 3”

26.   a song that taught you a lesson – Parappa the Rapper “Onion Chop Song”

27.   an instrumental song – Hella “Been a Long Time Cousin”

28.   a song you always skipped, but ended up loving once you listened to it – Animal Collective “#1”

29.   your favorite album closer – off top of my head, Dear and the Headlights “I Know”

30.   your all-time favorite song - this one is always changing so off top of my head Mitski “Geyser” or Dr Dog “Shame Shame” or Jon Brion “Here We Go”

[londontheatre]

l-r Tina Turner and Adrienne Warren

Adrienne Warren is today announced by Tina Turner as the actor who will portray her in the world premiere of the new musical TINA. Directed by Phyllida Lloyd, TINA will open at the Aldwych Theatre in April 2018. Performances will begin on 21 March 2018 with press night on 17 April 2018. Produced by Stage Entertainment, TINA is currently booking to 16 June 2018.

Written by Katori Hall with Frank Ketelaar and Kees Prins and directed by Phyllida Lloyd, with choreography by Anthony van Laast, set and costume designs are by Mark Thompson, musical supervision by Nicholas Skilbeck, lighting by Bruno Poet sound by Nevin Steinberg and orchestrations by Ethan Popp. Further casting for TINA will be announced in due course.

Adrienne Warren said: “Growing up watching Tina, I knew how to shake my hips before I could tie my shoes! I am so grateful to our creative team and producers for entrusting me with this responsibility. I say responsibility, because I am a Tina Turner fan first. I am elated, honoured and humbled. Meeting and working with Tina is and will always be one of the great moments of my life. Can’t wait to see you in London!”

Tina Turner said: “It has been my joy to introduce Adrienne today. From the moment I met her at our last workshop I saw her exceptional talent. Playing this role will require immense physical and emotional commitment, and bravery too. We are thrilled to have found Adrienne, and I very much look forward to spending more time together and developing a special friendship I know will grow even stronger as we prepare the production for the Aldwych Theatre. We can’t wait to welcome her to the show.”

From humble beginnings in Nutbush, Tennessee, to her transformation into the global Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Tina Turner didn’t just break the rules, she rewrote them. This new stage musical, presented in association with Tina Turner herself, reveals the untold story of a woman who dared to defy the bounds of her age, gender and race.

Adrienne Warren photo by Ted Ely

Adrienne Warren will make her West End stage debut as Tina. Her most recent theatre credit was in Shuffle Along at the Music Box Theatre on Broadway, for which she received a Tony nomination. Her other US theatre credits include Bring it On the Musical at St. James Theatre, Dreamgirls at the Apollo Theater, which was followed by a National Tour, and The Wiz at Encores City Center. She has toured and recorded with the multi-platinum selling Trans Siberian Orchestra in which she received her first Platinum and Gold records. Her television credits include the Amazon Pilot Point of Honor, Orange is the New Black, Blue Bloods, Royal Pains, People in New Jersey, Irreversible, and Black Box. In March this year, she made her Carnegie Hall debut with the New York Pops.

With a career that has spanned more than half a century, the legendary rock performer Tina Turner is one of the world’s best-selling artists of all time. She first rose to fame in the 1960s partnering with her then-husband Ike Turner, achieving great acclaim for their live performances and catalogue of hits. Later, Turner enjoyed an international solo career with her 1984 album Private Dancer earning her widespread recognition and numerous awards, including three Grammys. She went on to deliver more chart-topping albums and hits, receiving a further eight Grammy Awards and reportedly selling more concert tickets than any other solo performer in history. The revered singer was introduced into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991 and has often been voted as one of the most successful female Rock ‘n’ Roll artists of all time.

Katori Hall is a writer and performer from Memphis, Tennessee. In 2016, her play Children of Killers was performed as part of the National Theatre’s Connections Festival. Her play The Mountaintop, premiering at Theatre503 in 2009, received a transfer to Trafalgar Studios and became the winner of the 2010 Olivier Award for Best New Play, and following the West End run the play opened on Broadway in October 2011 starring Samuel L Jackson and Angela Bassett. Hall’s other writing includes the award-winning Hurt Village currently in development for a feature film, Hoodoo Love, Remembrance, Saturday Night/Sunday Morning, WHADDABLOODCLOT!!!, Our Lady of Kibeho, Pussy Valley and The Blood Quilt. Earlier this month Hall was named Artistic Director of the Hattiloo Theatre in Memphis.

Phyllida Lloyd returns to the West End where she has previously directed the world premiere of MAMMA MIA!, currently still running in London after 18 years. Her production subsequently opened on Broadway and worldwide becoming a global phenomenon before she directed a film version for Universal Pictures. More recently she has directed a Shakespeare Trilogy for the Donmar at King’s Cross – Henry IV, Julius Caesar and The Tempest, all of which were also seen in New York where she has previously directed Taming of the Shrew at the Public Theatre and Josephine and I at Joe’s Pub at The Public, a transfer from The Bush. Previously for the Donmar Warehouse she directed Mary Stuart which transferred to the Apollo Theatre and then Broadway, The Threepenny Opera and Boston Marriage. She directed Six Degrees of Separation, Hysteria and Wild East all for the Royal Court, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner with Fiona Shaw at the Old Vic Tunnels, Brooklyn Academy of Music and Epidaurus, The Way of the World, Pericles, What the Butler Saw, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and The Duchess of Malfi all for the National Theatre, Artists and Admirers and The Virtuoso for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her other film credits include The Iron Lady, starring Meryl Streep in the role of Margaret Thatcher, and Gloriana. Lloyd has directed many productions for the Royal Opera House and English National Opera and as well as winning multiple awards for her work, in 2012 she was awarded a CBE.

TINA is produced by Stage Entertainment, Joop van den Ende and Tali Pelman, in association with Tina Turner.

Adrienne Warren is appearing with the support of UK Equity, incorporating the Variety Artistes’ Federation, pursuant to an exchange program between American Equity and UK Equity.

LISTINGS INFORMATION Aldwych Theatre, Aldwych, London WC2B 4DF Initial booking period 21 March – 16 June 2018 Press Night: 17 April 2018 at 7pm Performances: Monday – Saturday at 7.30pm, Thursdays, and Saturdays at 2.30pm

http://ift.tt/2yRifSk London Theatre 1

[nyfacurrent]

Conversations | Annie-B Parson and “17c”

The three-time NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow discusses her latest production with Big Dance Theater.

The prolific Annie-B Parson (Fellow in Choreography ‘00, 06, ‘13) has choreographed and co-created more than 20 dance/theater works for Big Dance Theater, the award-winning company she co-founded with Paul Lazar in 1991. Outside of Big Dance Theater, she’s choreographed for operas, pop stars, television, movies, theater, ballet, and symphonies and worked with artists including David Byrne, David Bowie, and St. Vincent. Her latest Big Dance project, which she conceived, choreographed, and directs, will premiere next month in New York as part of Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)’s 2017 Next Wave Festival. Titled 17c, the production is century-spanning multidisciplinary conversation between the diaries of famed 17th-century philanderer Samuel Pepys, the radical feminism of 17th-century playwright Margaret Cavendish, and the cult of online annotators at pepysdiary.com. We spoke with Parson in the lead-up to 17c’s premiere.

NYFA: You've mentioned in previous interviews that you typically start Big Dance Theater productions from literature. When did you first encounter the diary of Samuel Pepys? How did you decide to bring in the work of 17th century playwright Margaret Cavendish and the annotators at pepysdiary.com?

Annie-B Parson: I don’t know when I first encountered the diaries of Samuel Pepys, but I have had them by my bed for years and years. I first thought of using them for a piece about four years ago in frustration over the American lack of interest in theater and dance. My experience is that American audiences are a slim, elite portion of the population and that we have no tradition of performance, like the Eastern cultures and European cultures I had encountered as a performer and choreographer on tour. These diaries stem from a culture where theater and dance were prized and studied. 

I was charmed and vindicated by how much Pepys valued learning to dance, going to the theater (he saw it as a vice he couldn’t quite quit), and daily singing and music classes. Audiences in Shakespeares’ time stood in the mud for hours watching plays. In the argument between the past is so different from contemporary life and people never change, it seemed here was a chronicle of a time when art mattered greatly, enough to live for and fight for, very unlike our own. And Pepys was eye-opening in how unusual he was for his time, not because he was a diarist, but because of his compulsive, plain spoken and uncensored writing—it reminded me of a Facebook page! 

Dispensing with the flowery language of the day, he recorded every toothache, desire, aspiration, thrill and frill, as he rode, strode, groped, and danced through his days. And, much like our own constant social media updates, he needed to get everything down on paper or he felt lost; he possessed this same compulsion to assign a real-time meaning to his daily existence. His descriptions of his life are unbound by any moralizing or spiritual component; Pepys “keeps it real” and while he has a contemporary self-awareness, he is also totally emboldened by and oblivious to his power and his privilege over women—wholly a man of his time. This contradiction makes him fascinating to observe, interrogate, and challenge. 

Pepys went to the theater all the time and I wanted to represent this part of life, but didn’t want to use a male voice. Searching for female playwrights was detective work; Margaret Cavendish came from an extensive search for a woman playwright that Pepys might have seen or known. And, I was thrilled to read her radical feminist works and to bring her perspective to the stage. 

NYFA: Margaret Cavendish is characterized as a groundbreaking writer who worked in many genres. Are there similarities between you that drew you towards bringing her into the production?

ABP: Margaret Cavendish (aka Mad Madge) was a brilliant hyper-generative woman writer from the mid 17th century. Some consider her the first sci-fi writer; she wrote across many genres. In searching for a female voice amid the forest of male playwrights of that time, I eventually came to her writing. She was probably not produced at all in her time but self published some of her books without her husband’s knowledge. He was both a supporter and a roadblock to her work. In fact, in reading the play A Convent of Pleasure (which should be directed as a film by someone with the visual insight and playfulness of a Paolo Sorrentino) I came upon a footnote that explains that the Margaret Cavendish’s husband rewrote the ending. The play takes a sharp right turn at the end away from the radical feminist plot line and sadly creates a heteronormative finale to preserve the status quo, and silences the woman protagonist. 

Cavendish has been virtually erased by history and is only now, 350 years after her time emerging. For the most part, the stories we know are told by men from a male perspective, and even the greatest women artists are often left off of the “lists.” If there is a connection between me and Madge it would be one I feel I share with many female choreographers who are more important than I am, a sense of erasure, of being left off of lists, not mentioned, not pictured, not featured.

NYFA: Can you walk us through how you begin to choreograph a piece like 17c?

ABP: The material for the choreography, for the most part, comes from outside the material I am exploring textually. For instance, I am not using 17th century dance in the piece. The dance material most often stems from a formal problem and is completely unrelated to the textual material. But strangely and very soon, these disparate materials begin to burrow and nestle without coaxing. It’s perhaps the work of the gods that movement is so flexible and porous. Or maybe this can be explained simply by saying that the body holds multitudes of meaning. Dance clings, winds, and refracts around the contexts it’s placed in. Because movement has properties that have prismatic meaning, properties like proximity and muscularity and scale, these elements can quickly reflect what is around them.

NYFA: You've also mentioned previously that "all artists want to create space for their audience-especially most choreographers." How would you describe the space that you've created for 17c?

ABP: One of my life-long interests is to create a sort of arithmetic for the audience to solve for themselves. I am striving to create the right kind of space that the audience feels inspired to insert themselves into, to walk away with their own piece in a sense. For 17c, the space may include physical and intellectual ideas around how we treat each other, where the female voice lives in history, and the strangeness of the self. In addition, from a formal perspective, the space is about how the primary elements of dance and theater co-exist and how they affect each other. As my work rejects notions of articulated content, I cannot answer the tired question: “What does this piece mean?” This is the work of the audience. But I am hoping the piece resonates in the precious imaginative, kinetic space in our minds and bodies.

NYFA: How might this production vary from the other work you've conceived with Big Dance Theater? Has your approach to your work changed since the company's founding in 1991?

ABP: Over the years I have become frustrated by dance-illiterate audiences feeling alienated by my work, because I believe the mingling of narrative and abstraction can be strenuous. So in this work I have absorbed that space completely by literally answering, in real time, what I assume the audience will be questioning. These explanations become a separate element in the work, one of an ironic authorial voice. This is new for me and it popped up very late in the 17c process, just as I was finishing the piece.

NYFA: You're a three-time NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow. What does NYSCA/NYFA's support mean to you?

ABP: Being a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow is a like a loud-ringing cheer of support in the ring of one of the greatest artist-centric performance cities in the world. Like most awards, the money is an essential component, but equally essential is the embrace coming from such a sophisticated panel in the most competitive throng of applicants.

- Interview conducted by Amy Aronoff, Communications Officer

NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowships are administered with leadership support from New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. The 2018 award cycle is now open, with applications accepted through January 24, 2018. Sign up for NYFA’s bi-weekly newsletter, NYFA News, to receive announcements about future NYFA events and programs.

Images, from top: Annie-B Parson (Fellow in Choreography ’00, ’06, ’13), Photo Credit: Ike Edeani and 17c Production Stills featuring Cynthia Hopkins, Aaron Mattocks and Elizabeth DeMent, and  (clockwise from top L) Paul Lazar, Kourtney Rutherford, Aaron Mattocks, and Cynthia Hopkins, Photos Credit: Johanna Austin