Innholdsfortegnelse for Fall 2024 i American Theatre

The musical Waitress charmed Broadway audiences in its 2016-21 premiere run. Now regional theatres are dipping their spoons for a taste. The story of Jenna, a young woman stuck in a bad marriage and a deadend job at a small-town diner who finds solace in baking, started as an independent film starring Keri Russell and eventually made its way to the stage with catchy tunes by Grammy winner Sara Bareilles. As the 2024-25 season unfolds, 10 theatres are producing the endearing musical, which comes with the creative challenge and opportunity of depicting more than two dozen prop pies onstage, plus some edible ones. At Nashville Repertory Theatre in Tennessee, where Waitress ran Sept. 13-22, prop designer Marlee Shelton and technical director/scenic designer Gary Hoff have been experimenting with insulation, airdried…

This presidential election year unexpectedly immersed us in coconut tree brat summer (thanks, Kamala), and there’s no telling what comes next. But whither the much-contested Latine vote? Two recent comedies investigate, with performances in hot-topic, hightension states. Neither mentions a specific political party, empowering audiences to look afresh at their own beliefs and at the divides within Latine communities. “Around election time, I’m asked, ‘What about that Cuban vote?’” said Carmen Pelaez, who regularly runs communications for Democratic Party campaigns and whose play The Cuban Vote was commissioned by Miami New Drama’s Michel Hausmann and staged there around the 2022 midterm elections. “Everybody makes all the wrong assumptions about it and accepts that our vote is a monolith when it’s not.” With her play, she said, “I wanted to show…

In November 2022, Lisa Smith was weighing whether to continue stage managing or to scale up her part-time job at a gardening center into a full-time gig. She’d been stage managing in the Twin Cities for 20 years, 15 of those as a member of Actors’ Equity Association (AEA), when the forced break of the pandemic reminded her what a full night’s sleep felt like. When theatres opened again and she returned to stage management, she grew wary of some companies’ plans for reopening and their failure to create contingency plans for any personnel but performers. Understudies are great—but what happens if the stage manager gets Covid and there is no backup? “We literally can’t call in sick,” she said ruefully. “We’ve all done shows puking in the booth.” As…

PRODUCTION HISTORY Salesman 之死 had its world premiere at the Connelly Theater in New York City on October 10, 2023, produced by Yangtze Repertory Theatre (Chongren Fan 范崇人, artistic director; Sally Shen 申羽, executive director; Yining Cao, producing associate) in association with Gung Ho Projects (Michael Leibenluft 李迈, founder/artistic director). It was directed and developed by Michael Leibenluft. The scenic design was by Chika Shimizu, the costume design was by Karen Boyer, the lighting design was by Daisy Long, the sound design was by Kai-Luen Liang and Da Xu, the projection design was by Cinthia Chen, the props were by Jessica M. Smith; the dramaturg was Annie Jin Wang, the associate director was Tianhe Ding, the production stage manager was Kevin Jinghong Zhu, and the assistant stage manager was Cynthia…

ANGIE AHLGREN (SHE/HER) is now a theatre professor at Ohio’s Bowling Green University, but she started out as a stage manager at Minneapolis’s Theater Mu in the late ’90s. Her academic research has since focused on stage management, gender, and invisible labor. Last year she began to interview stage managers across the U.S. about their experiences, and in “How Do You Manage?” (p. 30), Ahlgren distills their words into a bracing portrait of where theatrical stage management has been and where it’s going. As she put it, “The stage managers I spoke to are deeply aware of the hierarchies and power dynamics in their work, and they are, collectively and individually, making big changes in the theatre cultures and communities in which they work.” DAMON KIELY (HE/HIM) is a professor of directing…

In June, five motorcyclists set out from Denver into Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. They followed a slender road into a box canyon up to an elevation of 9,000 feet, where they met with Creede Repertory Theatre interim artistic director Kate Berry. The stop wasn’t merely for pleasure: It was part of a tour of Colorado’s mountain theatres to raise awareness for the Behind the Scenes (BTS) Charity. Founded in 2005, BTS has been providing grants to entertainment technology professionals in need due to illness or injury. The Colorado bikers were drawing on the example of the Long Reach Long Riders, a group of theatre professionals who in 2003 rode their motorcycles from North Carolina to the USITT conference in Long Beach, Calif.—a fun outing which has since grown into an annual…

Scenic design is not just visual but tactile, and written descriptions are no match for photo or video documentation. Accordingly, books about design sometimes lack the energy that sparks from seeing the art itself. Two new books on designers and production workers come to life not only through photography, but because they put artists and laborers at the forefront of the conversation. The images that accompany the dialogues in Scene Shift: U.S. Set Designers in Conversation (Routledge, 268 pp.) are highquality, printed on glossy pages I feared staining with fingerprints. Though the images are ideal when held in your hands in a hard copy, an e-book version is available (and may be preferable for theatre students hauling many textbooks). As scenic design is best appreciated in the flesh, artists…

Over the summer, Jeremy Tiang spoke with Shayok Misha Chowdhury, whose play Public Obscenities was a multilingual Off-Broadway hit in 2023, about the development of Salesman 之死. MISHA: Can you tell me a bit about how this piece came to be? JEREMY: Michael Liebenluft first approached me; he had a residency at the 14th Street Y and he was bringing together a group of people with the idea of pulling together a piece about Arthur Miller’s 1983 trip to Beijing. Initially it was going to be more of a devised thing, and I was brought on as dramaturg. At the end of the workshop, I said, “Michael, this actually needs to be scripted, and I think I should write it.” He said, “Sure, let’s do that.” Six years later,…

WHAT’S THE ELEVATOR PITCH FOR ‘MRS. LOMAN IS LEAVING’? It’s opening night of Death of a Salesman at the Teacup Theatre in the West Village. Before the curtain goes up, one of the actors suffers a break with reality, hallucinating and talking to a dead relative…and it’s not the guy playing Willy. WHO IS THE PLAY’S IDEAL AUDIENCE? People who love theatre. People who question theatre. WHAT’S THE MOST CHALLENGING ASPECT OF CREATING A BACKSTAGE COMEDY? Making sure that the story stands on its own and can be appreciated, whether or not the audience has recently seen or read Death of a Salesman. WERE THERE ANY PARTICULAR MEMO-RIES OR MOMENTS YOU DREW ON FOR THE PLAY? Many moments: studying Death of a Salesman in school and trying to wrap my…

Every time the disabled dance ensemble Kinetic Light wraps up a production, they leave a wave of change in their wake. That is always their plan. Before the ensemble agrees to perform at a venue, they talk access. The venue must have or establish accessible facilities and practices, venue staff must participate in Kinetic Light’s access training to welcome disabled and neurodivergent patrons, facilities for audiences and artists backstage must be accessible, and a quiet space must be created for neurodivergent guests or anyone who may need a break from sensory stimulation during the performance. The ensemble begins working with a venue at least six months before a performance: educating, discussing accessible seating, sharing accessible marketing and ticketing strategies, strategizing physical access in the building, and more. Closer to performance, they…

(*23 DUE TO TIES) Kate Hamill (18 productions) Rajiv Joseph (18) Jeffrey Hatcher (16) James Ijames (16) Heidi Schreck (16) Eboni Booth (13) Rick Elice (13, 11 co-writes) Lauren Gunderson (13, 4 co-writes) Frederick Knott (13) August Wilson (13, 2 co-writes) Lloyd Suh (12) Marshall Brickman (11) Selina Fillinger (11) Samuel D. Hunter (11) Ken Ludwig (11) Jessie Nelson (11) Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, Henry Shields (9) Thomas Meehan (9) Lynn Nottage (9) Howard Ashman (8) Jocelyn Bioh (8) Patrick Barlow (8) Steven Dietz (8, 2 co-writes) This list was culled from 1,281 productions at 305 TCG member theatres, plus 176 productions at commercial or non-member theatres, excluding plays by Shakespeare (who this season will have a total of 46 productions). To read more about this list and to compare…