Margo Jefferson Moderates TFANA Panel Discussion on Adrienne Kennedy, Today
By: BWW
News Desk Jan. 20, 2018
Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA; Jeffrey Horowitz, Founding Artistic Director) announces a free post-performance discussion moderated by Pulitzer Prize-winning theatre critic and Negroland: A Memoir author Margo Jefferson in connection with TFANA's world premiere production of Adrienne Kennedy's He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box. The talk, which begins at 8.30 PM is open to all and features director Charlotte Braithwaite and playwrights Lydia Diamond and Jackie Sibblies Drury, follows the January 20 performance of Kennedy's first new play in a decade, which begins at 7:30 that evening, at Polonsky Shakespeare Center (262 Ashland Place, Brooklyn, NY 11217). The discussion will also be streamed live on Theatre for a New Audience's Facebook page. He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box runs January 18-February 11. To reserve a seat to this panel, visit www.tfana.org/heartpanel.
Set in Georgia and New York City in 1941, He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box is an interracial love story. The action of Kennedy's new play is driven by parallel monologues from two young people whose relationship is encumbered by their polar, racialized and classed social positions-and insidious family entanglements. Through their accounts, the indignities of Jim Crow, rising Nazism and sexual hypocrisy come together in a collage of unsettling notions and images. Words Jefferson wrote back in 1995 in The New York Times about the nature of the playwright's work feel equally applicable to her latest script: "Adrienne Kennedy's explosive, incantatory plays begin...at the point where the stories a family tells or tries not to tell about itself meet up with the stories a nation tells or tries not to tell about itself."
In her landmark 1960 play Funnyhouse of a Negro, Adrienne Kennedy, now 86, created her own nonlinear form of storytelling to explore race and segregation in America. First produced just before the signing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, that play was the beginning of Kennedy's sustained exploration of mixed identities and fluidity of the mind in conflict with rigid stratifications of society. Kennedy's writing is just as indispensable today as when Funnyhouse made manifest the psyche of a woman caught between polarized identities. If ever there were a time to consider Kennedy's contributions to the discourse about racial conflict and violence in America, it is now.
Each of the panelists who will speak about Kennedy's legacy on January 20 have a unique relationship to her work. Brathwaite directed a production of Kennedy's 1989 play She Talks to Beethoven at Brooklyn's JACK in 2014, for which she turned the piece into a haunting immersive performance installation; Diamond, a playwright and professor known for her adaptation of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and her original plays like Stick Fly and Smart People, has cited Kennedy among one of her favorite playwrights in a number of interviews. Drury's razor-sharp We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915, which Hilton Als noted in The New Yorker for its "big thoughts and bigger imagination,"took a meta-theatrical approach to asking the very question of how to "play politics"-and specifically racial politics-onstage.
TFANA Talks, free post-show conversations with the cast and director, will also take place after Saturday matinee performances of He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box on February 3 (moderated by theatre critic/scholar Alisa Solomon) and February 10 (moderated by theatre critic/scholar Jonathan Kalb).
Theatre for a New Audience's world premiere production of He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box is directed by Evan Yionoulis, who staged the OBIE- and Lucille Lortel Award-winning revival of Kennedy's Ohio State Murders for TFANA in 2007. The creative team features set designer Christopher Barreca, costume designer Montana Levi Blanco, lighting designer Donald Holder, composer and sound designer Justin Ellington, and video designer Austin Switser. Cole Bonenberger is production stage manager, and Shane Schnetzler is assistant stage manager. Juliana Canfield and Tom Pecinka star.
Performance Schedule, Ticketing and Other Information
Performances of He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box will take place January 18-21, 23-27, 30 & 31, and February 1-4 and 6-11 at 7:30pm; January 28 at 7pm; and February 3, 4, 10 and 11 at 2pm. Critics are welcome as of January 27 for an official opening on January 30.
Tickets, $90-100 (with a limited number of premium seats available at $125 each), are available at www.tfana.org, 866.811.4111 and the Polonsky Shakespeare Center box office. New Deal tickets-for those aged 30 and under, and for full-time students of any age-are available for all performances for $20, and can be purchased online, by phone or at the box office, in advance or day-of, with valid ID(s) required at pickup.
Companion Programming
The panel discussion with Margo Jefferson, Charlotte Braithwaite, Lydia Diamond, and Jackie Sibblies Drury will take place following the January 20 performance, which begins at 7:30. TFANA Talks take place following 2pm matinees February 3 (with Alisa Solomon) and February 10 (with Jonathan Kalb).
After the 7:30pm performance on Sunday, January 21, TFANA will host one of its popular Post-Show Parties. Every ticket purchased for that evening includes a drink ticket for use at the party.
Polonsky Shakespeare Center is located at 262 Ashland Place, Brooklyn, NY 11217.
About the Speakers
New York based director Charlotte Brathwaite (Canada/Barbados/UK) is known for her unique approach to staging classical and unconventional texts, dance, visual art, multi-media, site-specific installation, video productions, performance art and music events. Her work has been seen in the Americas, Europe, the Caribbean and Asia and ranges in subject matter from the historical past to the distant future illuminating issues of race, sex, power and the complexities of the human condition.
Named as one of the "up-and-coming women in theatre to watch" by Playbill, Charlotte is recipient of several awards and citations including the Prelude Festival Franky Award, the Princess Grace Award, the Julian Milton Kaufman Prize (Yale), a Rockefeller Residency, and the National Performing Network Creation Fund. She received her MFA at Yale School of Drama and has been a Visiting Professor at Amherst College, a Visiting artist at Williams College and is currently assistant professor of Theater Arts at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Lydia R. Diamond's award-winning Plays include: Smart People, Stick Fly, Voyeurs de Venus, The Bluest Eye, The Gift Horse, Harriet Jacobs, The Inside and Stage Black. Theatres credits include Arena Stage, Cort Theatre (Broadway), Chicago Dramatists, Company One Theatre, Congo Square Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Hartford Stage, Huntington, Jubilee Theatre, Kansas City Repertory Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre, Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, McCarter Theatre, Mo'Olelo Performing Arts Company, MPAACT, The New Vic Theatre, Playmakers Repertory Company, Plowshares Theatre Company, Second Stage Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre and Kenny Leon's True Colors Theatre Company. Commissions include Arena Stage, Steppenwolf Theatre, McCarter Theatre, Huntington Theatre Company, Center Stage Theatre, Victory Gardens Theatre and Roundabout Theatre Company. A recipient of many playwriting awards, Lydia was also an 2005/06 W.E.B. Du Bois Institute non-resident Fellow, a 2007 TCG/NEA Playwright in Residence at Steppenwolf Theatre, an 2006/07 Huntington Playwright Fellow, a 2012 Sundance Institute Playwright Lab Creative Advisor, is a Board Member at Chicago Dramatists and a 2012/13 Radcliffe Institute Fellow. Lydia is a graduate of Northwestern University ('91), has an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from Pine Manor College and was 2013/14 Playwright in Residence at Arena Stage. Lydia is on faculty at University of Illinois Chicago where she teaches playwriting.
Jackie Sibblies Drury is a Brooklyn based playwright. Her plays include We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as South West Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915, Really, and Social Creatures. Sibblies Drury's plays have been presented by New York City Players and Abrons Arts Center, Soho Rep., Victory Gardens, Trinity Rep, Matrix Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, Undermain Theatre, InterAct Theatre, Actors Theater of Louisville, Available Light, Company One and The Bush Theatre in London, among others. Her work has been developed at Sundance, The Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, Manhattan Theatre Club, Ars Nova, A.C.T., The Soho Rep. Writer/Director Lab, New York Theatre Workshop, PRELUDE.11&14, The Civilians, The Bushwick Starr, The LARK, The Magic Theatre, The Bay Area Playwrights Festival and The MacDowell Colony. Sibblies Drury was a dramaturg for Futurity by César Alvarez and The Lisps, Zero Cost House by Pig Iron Theatre Company & Toshiki Okada, and The Garden by Nichole Canuso Dance Company. She received a 2015 Windham-Campbell Literary Prize in Drama, a 2012-2013 Van Lier Fellowship at New Dramatists, and was the inaugural recipient of the 2012-2014 Jerome Fellowship at The LARK. She is a NYTW Usual Suspect and a 2015 United States Artists Gracie Fellow.
Margo Jefferson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, is the author of On Michael Jackson and Negroland: a Memoir. Negroland, won the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography,The International Bridge Prize and The Heartland Prize and was short-listed for the Baillie Gifford Prize. She has been a book, theater and culture critic for The New York Times and Newsweek, and has published in New York Magazine, The Nation, The Washington Post, The Believer, Guernica, Bookforum, O and VOGUE. Her essays have been anthologized in: The Best American Essays, 2015; The Inevitable: Contemporary Writers Confront Death; What My Mother Gave Me; The Best African-American Essays, 2014; The Mrs. Dalloway Reader; Black Cool, The Sammy Davis, Jr. Reader and The Jazz Cadence of American Culture. She has also written and performed a theater piece, Sixty Minutes in Negroland, at The Cherry Lane Theater and The Culture Project. She teaches in the School of the Arts Writing Program at Columbia University.
About Adrienne Kennedy (Playwright)
Adrienne Kennedy (Playwright) has been a force in American theatre since the early 1960s. She is a three-time Obie award winner, including for Funnyhouse of a Negro in 1964, June and Jean in Concert in 1996 and Sleep Deprivation Chamber which she co-authored with her son Adam Kennedy. Among her honors are the American Academy of Arts and Letters award, a Guggenheim fellowship, an Anisfield-Wolf Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003 and a Modern Language Association Honorary Fellow in 2005. She has been a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard University, among others and has been commissioned by The Public, the Royal Court, Juilliard and by Jerome Robbins. Signature Theatre devoted its entire 1995-96 Season to her work. Her memoir People Who Led To My Plays was recently reissued by Theatre Communications Group. On this occasion, she would like to remember Jim Houghton's kindness and thoughtfulness; his interest in her work changed her life.
About Evan Yionoulis (Director)
Evan Yionoulis (Director) has directed new plays and classics in New York, across the country, and internationally, including Richard Greenberg's The Violet Hour (Broadway), Three Days of Rain (OBIE Award for direction, Manhattan Theatre Club), and Everett Beekin (Lincoln Center Theater), as well as Adrienne Kennedy's Ohio State Murders (Lortel Award for Best Revival, Theatre for a New Audience). Regionally: South Coast Repertory, Mark Taper Forum, Dallas Theater Center, the Huntington, Williamstown, and many others. She is a resident director at Yale Repertory Theatre where credits include Cymbeline, Richard II, The Master Builder, Galileo, Caryl Churchill's Owners and The King Stag. Princess Grace Foundation Awards recipient.
About Theatre for a New Audience
Founded in 1979 by Jeffrey Horowitz, Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA) is a modern classic theatre. It produces Shakespeare alongside other major authors from the world repertoire, such as Harley Granville Barker, Edward Bond, Adrienne Kennedy, Richard Nelson, Wallace Shawn and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. TFANA has played Off- and on Broadway and toured nationally and internationally.
In 2001, Theatre for a New Audience became the first American theatre invited to bring a production of Shakespeare to the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), Stratford-upon-Avon. Cymbeline, directed by Bartlett Sher, premiered at the RSC; in 2007, TFANA was invited to return to the RSC with The Merchant of Venice, directed by Darko Tresnjak and starring F. Murray Abraham. In 2011, Mr. Abraham reprised his role as Shylock for a national tour.
After 34 years of being itinerant and playing mostly in Manhattan, Theatre for a New Audience moved to Brooklyn and opened its first permanent home, Polonsky Shakespeare Center, in October 2013. Built by The City of New York in partnership with Theatre for a New Audience, and located in the Brooklyn Cultural District, Polonsky Shakespeare Center was designed by Hugh Hardy and H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture with theatre consultants Akustiks, Milton Glaser, Jean-Guy Lecat, and Theatre Projects. Housed inside the building are the Samuel H. Scripps Mainstage (299 seats)-the first stage built for Shakespeare and classical drama in New York City since Lincoln Center's 1965 Vivian Beaumont-and the Theodore C. Rogers Studio (50 seats).
TFANA's productions have been honored with Tony, Obie, Drama Desk, Drama League, Callaway, Lortel and Audelco awards and nominations and reach an audience diverse in age, economics and cultural background.
Theatre for a New Audience created and runs the largest in-depth program in the New York City Public Schools to introduce students to Shakespeare, and has served over 130,000 students since the program began in 1984. TFANA's New Deal ticket program is one of the lowest reserved ticket prices for youth in the city: $20 for any show, any time for those 30 years old and under or for full-time students of any age.
Funding Credits
Principal support for Theatre for a New Audience's season and programs is provided by Booth Ferris Foundation, The Hearst Foundations, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The SHS Foundation and The Winston Foundation. Additional support provided by The Shubert Foundation, Inc., and The Thompson Family Foundation, Inc.
Theatre for a New Audience's season and programs are also made possible, in part, with public funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities; Shakespeare in American Communities: a national program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
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