NYCPlaywrights April 27, 2019

Greetings NYCPlaywrights

    

*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***

Thursday, May 16, 2019 

7:30 pm

Voices of a People’s History of the United States seeks to educate and inspire a new generation working for social justice. This free performance marks the culmination of a year-long project with New York City AP U.S. History students at The Maxine Greene High School for Imaginative Inquiry, cofounded by Lincoln Center Education, inspired by Howard Zinn’s Voices of a People’s History of the United States. After studying the speeches, letters, and songs of the remarkable people who inspired Zinn’s seminal 2004 book, the students will perform their selections along with special guest singer J. Hoard and others to be announced. 

Seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis.

David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center

61 W 62nd St, New York, NY 10023

*** NYCPLAYWRIGHTS PODCAST ***

The latest episode of the NYCPlaywrights Podcast, "ROMANTIC COMEDY" is now online.

Part 1: Thoughts on romantic comedies: "His Girl Friday", "Cheers" and MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

Part 2: STARS by D. J. Sylvis, performed by Bryn Packard and Nilsa Reyna; and an interview with D. J. Sylvis

*** PLAYWRIGHTS OPPORTUNITIES ***

The PEN America Writing for Justice Fellowship aims to harness the power of writers and writing in bearing witness to the societal consequences of mass incarceration by capturing and sharing the stories of incarcerated individuals, their families, communities, and the wider impact of the criminal justice system. Our goal is to ignite a broad, sustained conversation about the dangers of over-incarceration and the imperative to mobilize behind rational and humane policies. As an organization of writers dedicated to promoting free expression and informed discourse, PEN America is honored to have been entrusted by the Art for Justice Fund to engage the literary community in addressing this pressing societal issue.

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American Stage is committed to producing powerful and relevant professional live theatre. Our 21st Century Voices is an initiative dedicated to developing and presenting new works for the stage that speak to a contemporary audience in fresh and compelling ways. 21st Century Voices programming includes an annual staged reading festival, workshopping of new scripts, playwriting residencies and fully produced new plays receiving one of their first three professional productions at American Stage.

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Our goal in building the North Park Vaudeville and Candy Shoppe was to provide a small theater to produce new, untested plays.  In support of this goal we have produced the North Park Playwright Festival each October.  The festival provides a platform for brand new, short (ten minute), plays written by playwrights from around the world.  Over the past twelve years more than 440 new plays have been produced.  We encourage new directors and actors to become involved in theater through the festival as well.  Through the North Park Playwright Festival over ninety playwrights, directors, and actors each year are able to showcase their talents.  We invite interested playwrights to submit work to the festival.  Please follow the guidelines below.

*** For more information about these and other opportunities see the web site at http://www.nycplaywrights.org ***

*** HIGH SCHOOL THEATER *** 

Sigourney Weaver, who plays the iconic role of Ripley in the Alien movie franchise, surprised students at a New Jersey high school on Friday night as they restaged a play based on the sci-fi film, images of which went viral last month.

After students at North Bergen High put on a highly-talked production, Alien the Play, photos of their sets and costumes made from recycled material went viral after getting posted online.

The show’s art director and high school art techer Steven Defendini previously told BuzzFeed News that the cast and crew didn't “have really any budget,” so students were forced to be creative with their resources.

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The most-produced shows (both plays and musicals) remained mostly the same as last year: For full-length plays, Almost, Maine, again, topped the list. That's not a surprise: The collection of two-person scenes by John Cariani has been the most popular production for high schools this decade.

It's appealing to high schools because it's adaptable, says Rebecca Skrypeck, the theater director who oversaw a production of the play at Springfield High School in Springfield, Vt.

While the musicals stayed mostly the same, there were some newcomers to this year's plays list. That includes Radium Girls, which tells the story of the young women who worked in radium-dial factories painting clock faces. One familiar play dropped off this year's top 10 list: You Can't Take It with You, but don't worry, it's still one of the most common high school performances of all time — it's been among the top six every decade since the 40s.

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A high school musical in New York has sparked controversy after dozens of protesters claimed the play was racist against Chinese-Americans.

The play, "Thoroughly Modern Millie," which was performed at two Long Island high schools, featured white students portraying Chinese characters with broken English and exaggerated mannerisms, according to Voices of NY. The musical, set in 1920s New York City and based on a 1967 film, tells the story of a small-town girl from Kansas who moves to New York City — where she discovers a slavery ring that drugs young women and ships them to Hong Kong with the help of two Chinese henchman.

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A high school play with controversial costumes has some parents outraged.

Three students at the ASU Preparatory Academy Phoenix campus dressed in Ku Klux Klan costumes for a school play. Parents say the school never notified them or the rest of the student body that was not in the drama class.

The popular play, 'The Foreigner' was performed at an assembly for all high school students. 

"Three students dressed as the KKK walked down the middle of the assembly as part of a play," explained one parent, who wanted to remain anonymous at his daughter's request. "They were in hooded robes."

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A new musical explores life in high school in a way that's eerily familiar. It's called Ranked, and it's set in a dystopian world where your class rank — determined by grades and test scores — governs everything from where you sit to what your future holds.

There's a mean girl, ranked No. 1; a student who refreshingly doesn't care about rank; and a student on the edge who's under immense pressure to improve their standing. Really, all the characters are under immense pressure. It's a major theme throughout. And at the end of Act 1, there's a major plot twist: It turns out, one of the main character's parents is paying to inflate a child's grade — and the student had no idea.

"We're literally watching our story that we wrote play out in the national news," says Kyle Holmes, a theater teacher at Granite Bay High School in Granite Bay, Calif.

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On January 20, 2006, Disney Channel premiered "High School Musical." The movie centered on a jock (played by then-unknown Zac Efron) falling in love with a shy, book-smart girl named Gabriella (portrayed by Vanessa Hudgens) and shaking up the norms after auditioning for the school's musical.

Catchy tracks and perfectly synchronized choreography resulted in the film being viewed by millions of people nationwide, and the soundtrack became the top-selling album of 2006.

It was also recently revealed that a new series called "High School Musical: The Musical," will be available when Disney's streaming service launches in 2019. The 10-episode show will feature a new generation of actors, rather than the familiar faces from the three films.

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While we can agreeably cringe looking back at our high school years, high school theatre programs are what inspired many of performers today to pursue their dreams. I remember staying extra hours at school to rehearse and signing up for theatre technique classes. Most of my high school career was spent rehearsing and training instead of having a huge social life, and I think a lot of us can say the same. High school for many people isn’t the best, but theatre can save that.  

I wish I could look back at my high school theatre program and have fond memories, and reminisce about the first time I was coached in a scene, or sung for my whole school. For a few months after graduating, I could. But as I am currently writing this, I don’t feel fond towards my high school theatre program anymore. I get a feeling of dread when I remember that my theatre teacher was found to be engaging in sexual miscounduct with one of his students.

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12 Things All People In High School Drama Club Know To Be True

Because putting on a musical is a one of a kind experience.

  

High school sucks. Some kids spend their time trying to fit in with the crowd, while some are just trying to make it to graduation. Putting on a musical with your high school drama club, however, was a way for one particular group of students to express their talents and escape into a new universe of theater. During this process, it's inevitable the drama club becomes closer than any high school sports team could understand.

Here's the list of things everyone who was in high school drama club knows to be true:

1. Auditions are more stressful than any academic exam.

You spent hours preparing the right piece to show off your voice part, and that sometimes got in the way of studying

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A New Jersey high school has found itself the unexpected recipient of online acclaim and viral attention for its recent stage production of “Alien,” the 1979 science-fiction thriller.

If you were able to choose the next theatrical production your school would take on, what would you choose? Dream big: It can be a perennial, like “Our Town” or “Annie,” or it could be a movie or book (or TV show, comic book, song or … ) that you’d love to see adapted to the stage.

In “High School ‘Alien’ Production Wins Internet Raves,” Dave Itzkoff writes:

“Alien: The Play,” presented last weekend by the drama club of North Bergen High School, starred a cast of eight students in the film roles originally played by Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt and Ian Holm.

Whereas the movie had a budget in the range of about $10 million, “Alien: The Play” had costumes, props and set designs made mostly from donated and recycled materials.

Both the film and the stage adaptation feature a nightmarish extraterrestrial designed by the artist H.R. Giger — played, in this production, by a high school student.

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For a certain group of musical theater fans, Christmas comes in June.

This Christmas has everything yours does. It has beloved songs. It has lights. It has pageantry. It bestows gifts. It involves pilgrimages across great distances. It is the Jimmy Awards, and it is the most wonderful time of the year.

“What are the Jimmy Awards?” you ask, like an innocent child.

Short answer? They are the high-school Tonys.

Long answer? Founded in 2009, the National High School Musical Theatre Awards spotlight and celebrate the best of the best in high-school musical theater. There are now 40 participating regions across the nation; each of these chapters hosts its own awards ceremony, selecting one actor and one actress to represent the region on the national stage in New York City at the Jimmy Awards. (The Jimmy Awards are so called not because of the ubiquity of Thoroughly Modern Millie in high schools circa 2009, but because of legendary theatre owner-producer James M. Nederlander, a passionate advocate for arts education and funding until his death in 2016). 

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