“With this new production in our newly renovated theatre, we honor the icon who was August Wilson.”
It’s fall and theater’s in the air. As well as in our inboxes. Seriously, we opened up our email today to a flurry of announcements.
We look forward to speaking with the creatives behind some of these shows and checking the performances in person, but in the meantime grab your old-school date book and a pen. It’s going to be quite a busy season …
$35 Tickets @ Lyric Stage Company
Use code FAB35 at checkout for Fabulation, their current satirical comedy by two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Lynn Nottage, or code PLAY35 for Break a Leg!, a “1920s whodunit” which “takes on a whole new meaning for a woefully misguided troupe of players at the Cornley University Society’s opening night performance of The Murder at Haversham Manor.”
Reproductive Liberty @ Company One
Company One Theatre announced “Reproductive Liberty and Body Justice for All, the latest in C1’s series of digital events presenting responsively written plays in direct dialogue with our communities.” More from their team: “Prompted by the recent dismantling of the protections laid out in Roe v Wade, four of Company One Theatre’s 2021-2022 Volt Lab playwrights — all playwrights of color, all rising voices of the American theatre — have each chosen one item from the National Network of Abortion Funds’ list of demands as a jumping off point for a short play, and exploration of the actions we can take together for a more just society.”
“We know that the repeal of Roe v. Wade will have repercussions that extend far beyond the status of abortion laws,” C1’s National New Play Network Producer-in-Residence Afrikah Smith said. “Reproductive justice is a broad issue that includes everything from family planning, to trans-inclusive and gender-affirming health care, to reducing maternal mortality, to increasing access for care in systemically under-resourced communities. C1’s Volt Lab writers are interested in how we tell stories and take action in a post-Roe world.”
“For this project, we are looking to the National Network of Abortion Funds’ list of demands as a guidepost, and making sure we’re listening to the grassroots organizations and activists who have been doing this work, and have been ready for this moment,” C1’s Director of New Work Ilana M Brownstein added. “We’re also looking to the work of the documentary filmmakers of Abortion and Women’s Rights 1970, which tells an often-erased story of what it was like to be a person with a uterus trying to manage one’s own reproductive health, right here in Boston, before Roe passed. It’s important to look to that history as we prepare for, and try to understand a post-Roe reality. I’m excited for the ways these four writers in particular — a Boston Public School educator, a mental health artist-activist from Kentucky, a recent graduate of Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, and a community healer/culture worker based in western Massachusetts — are amplifying specific calls to action we can take towards greater justice and liberation.”
companyone.org/reproductive-liberty
Reopening News @ the Huntington
The Huntington announced the casting and creative team for the “highly anticipated revival of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, directed by Lili-Anne Brown. Wilson’s masterpiece serves as the inaugural production of the newly renovated Huntington Theatre and runs from October 14 – November 13, 2022, with digital access to the filmed performance available until November 27, 2022.”
The theater wrote in an announcement: “This major revival of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone is particularly meaningful to The Huntington – not only will it reopen the Huntington Theatre after being closed the past two and a half years for the pandemic and its transformational renovation, but it was the first Wilson play that the Huntington ever produced and the start of a fruitful collaboration that lasted until the playwright’s death in 2005. The Huntington partnered with the Yale Repertory Theatre in 1986 for the pre-Broadway production of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone that featured soon-to-be-stars Angela Bassett and Delroy Lindo, and went on to produce all of Wilson’s major works.”
“August Wilson is undoubtedly one of the giants of the American theatre,” Huntington Managing Director Michael Maso said in a statement. “Few moments in my career have had more meaning than the one where we agreed to produce the original Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. It was 1986, the start of The Huntington’s fifth season and of our 19-year collaboration with August, as we worked closely with him in residence on seven of his iconic plays until his untimely death in 2005. With this new production in our newly renovated theatre, we honor the icon who was August Wilson, but we remember our friend. May his spirit inspire generations of artists and audiences alike.”
Dig Staff means this article was a collaborative effort. Teamwork, as we like to call it.
