It's 2019!
Yes, Yes, I know it’s been 2019 for over two months now, but it’s my first blog post of 2019 so I have a lot to catch you up on!
Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant at Cleveland Public Theater was a huge success! You may remember that I was working as the Rehearsal Stage Manager on the project while they rehearsed in New York City. I was really lucky to be able to join the team in Cleveland, Ohio through their tech process and opening night. It was great to be back in Ohio and watch the opening night show with Daniel! Tech was a crazy week that had me running around to whole sale food suppliers to pic up spices and gravy for the five course meal that was served during the show, picking actors up from their housing in the huge ram Van that Connie Hall purchased for the production, and I even had to step in for one the nurse ensemble members during our preview performance! It was the first time I’ve been on stage in probably 5 (?) years, and it was a wild ride! Yes, I did spill an entire plate of stuffing on a woman’s jacket but, ya know, other than that I’d say it was pretty successful! I had such a ball with the Conni’s team from start to finish and it was so bittersweet when I had to pack my bags and head back to NYC.
Me and Daniel at "Conni’s Avant Grde Restaurant”
At the end of the show the company invited me on stage! Loved working with Conni’s more than anything!
If you’d like to check out more pictures head over to the “Conni’s” section of my work page!
In early December of 2018 (damn that is so long ago now) I was fortunate enough to step in as the Stage Manager for a reading of Undocumented by Andrea Thome through En Garde Arts. EGA commissioned the piece from Thome back in 2017 and, as of right now they are slated for a full production in New York City in 2020. The piece weaves the stories of Undocumented Immigrants into a Fandango, a community musical celebration with cultural roots in Veracruz. With original music by Sinuhe Padilla and directed by Jose Zayas, Undocumented casts these characters and their stories not as victims of our broken political system, rather they give them space to celebrate their stories, their struggles and their livelihoods. Again, if you’d like to see pictures or read more about the project you can head over to the “Undocumented” section of my work page!
I’ve also had some time to pursue and work on my own creative endeavors! For about a year now I’ve been writing a play called Cluster that examines the community trauma my high school faced after 6 members of our student body fell victim to suicide. I began writing the piece as a way to explore and process the grief I could tangibly feel myself carrying from the experience and, in a way, I never really thought I would even complete the first draft. 59 pages later however, I proved myself wrong. The piece is still in it’s infancy and I’m continuing to edit, adjust and workshop it. I was beyond blessed to have some of my dearest performer friends over to my apartment in December to read through the piece, give me incredible feedback and generally shower me with hugs as I shared this insanely vulnerable piece with them. I’m still looking for lots of feedback and if you’d like to read the first draft head over to the “contact” page and I’ll send it your way :)
As everyone knows, New Dramatists has basically become my second home in the city and I’ve been lucky enough to work with them a lot in the new year. After training the Spring Intern Class I came back to stage manage a reading of the play Seven. Written by seven different female playwrights (four of them being alum of New Dramatists )who interviewed seven different women from across the world working for gender equity in various ways, the piece was performed for a women in business group. The piece was really well received and it was so exciting to hear the stories of some incredible women that I would not have heard otherwise.
I was also able to serve as the Studio Coordinator for this years Composer Librettist Studio at New Dramatists. To say I was excited when they asked me to step into this role would be a gross understatement! Having served as an intern during the studio last year I was already familiar with the administrative duties of the Coordinator and it was, without a doubt, my favorite project I had worked on while at New Dramatists. For those unfamiliar with the studio it’s a two and a half week intensive program where 5 playwrights, 5 composers and 5 performers collaborate to create 15 new music theater pieces. Led by Ben Krywosz of Nautilus Music Theater the writers generally have 24 hours in which to write a piece and I was absolutely beside myself listening to the beautiful pieces of music they were able to create in that amount of time. The project also gave me the opportunity to work with one of my all time favorite collaborators/people/playwrights, the one and only Chloe Hayat who served as the Studio Coordinator and made the entire process that much more fun and exciting.
Chloé and me kicking ass at the Composer Librettist Studio!
Some of the 2019 Composer Librettist Studio Participants!
Since the new year began I’ve also been able to help En Garde Arts with their new developmental series “Uncommon Voices at the Commons Cafe.” Located at (where else?) The Commons Cafe in Brooklyn En Garde Arts is partnering with local radio station WBAI to present pieces in progress on the first Monday of every month. So far this year we’ve presented a piece by Liza Jessie Peterson and a piece curated by Tonya Pinkins. Yesterday we shared LubDub Theater Co’s new piece on our current climate crisis and it was absolutely spectacular. We had a sold out house and the piece was both fascinating and absolutely heart wrenching. The last 15 minutes I was a literal puddle of tears. I can’t wait to see how LubDub continues to develop the piece!
Annie Hamburger leading the talkback last night at En Garde Art’s Uncommon Voices event
I’m currently Stage Managing Kelly [1955], a thriller by Blake Allen which is being directed by his husband, the incredible drag queen Marti Gould Cummings. The show is going up with New York Winterfest this week and I couldn’t be more excited to share this piece with the world! It follows the true story of a family in rural Kentucky who’s farm was visited by an unwelcome stranger in the summer of 1955. The cast and creative team have been such a joy to work with and I’ve cherished the opportunity to explore this complex and thrillinng narrative with them over the past two weeks! I hope you can join us for the show, opening night is TONIGHT and you can purchase tickets here.
I’ve also been able to see some totally bad ass pieces of theater since the last time I blogged! Noura at Playwrights Horizons by the incredible Heather Raffo re-imagined Ibsen’s A Dolls House into a 2018 setting involving a middle eastern family that just gained their citizenship. Exploring the concepts of community, family and womanhood in the 21st century the piece was truly fascinating and I left with more questions than I did answers.
This past week I’ve had the utter joy of finding free tickets to not one, but TWO performances: By The Way, Meet Vera Stark by Lynn Nottage at Signature and If Pretty Hurts Ugly must be a MuhFuckah at Playwrights Horizons.
Vera Stark was an incredibly nuanced look at the life of fictional character Vera Stark who gained fame playing a slave girl in an epic Civil War film during the early 1930’s. The play spanned generations by setting itself in 1933, 1973 and 2003. The first act gave us a look into Vera’s life before she reached stardom and the second act gave us the opportunity to reflect on her fictional body of work as a group of scholars in 2003 analyzed “video footage” (that was acted for us rather than recorded) of her appearing on a late night talk show. The piece easily could have gotten preachy and, while I thought it was headed in one direction nearly the entire time, Lynn Nottage impressed (as per usual) by turning a generally accepted narrative on it’s head in the final moments of the play. In a word, it was brilliant. And the set design? FLAWLESS. Truly breathtaking. A million thanks to Chloe Hayat for asking me to come along with her!
If Pretty Hurts by Tori Sampson was an equally astonishing piece of theater. The combination of African myth, contemporary setting and the quasi-immersive structure of the piece all contributed to the intense emotional outpouring that every person in that audience witnessed. If you’re able to see this show, you absolutely must. It distorted my concept of what is possible in a large off-broadway theater like Playwrights Horizons and left me feeling whole, exhilarated and thirsting for more. It’s such a joy to see plays that allow African American women to embody the complexities, nuances and challenging narratives that they are full of in real life: especially when the pieces come from such talented, young, black female playwrights. I wish I could see content like this all year long and not just during Black History month, but you know, I’ll take what I can get for now.
I think that about sums up everything I’ve been up to the past few months! I’m excited to keep discovering, learning and growing this year and I’m so lucky to have people like you supporting me, giving me love and reading this silly blog. Here’s to hoping it doesn’t take me another 4 months to post again!