Classic Stage Company to Present CSC SPRING PLAYREADINGS Beginning This April
Playreadings include The Emporium, an unfinished play by Thornton Wilder; On Strivers Row by Abram Hill and more.
By: Chloe Rabinowitz Mar. 13, 2023
Classic Stage Company will present CSC Spring Playreadings, a public series of readings held in CSC's Lynn F. Angelson Theater. The series is available exclusively to CSC patrons and members with complimentary tickets. To reserve tickets, please visit: www.classicstage.org/playreadings.
This series marks the first programming by new Producing Artistic Director Jill Rafson, offering her artistic take on the modern classic and a taste of what audiences could see at CSC in the future.
"While it would be impossible to encapsulate all of my dreams for CSC in a few plays, I hope this collection of readings will give the audience a taste of what's to come," says Producing Artistic Director Jill Rafson. "On Strivers Row is the kind of play that should be considered a classic, and we get to give it a new chance to be embraced. The Wild Duck combines a canonical Ibsen work with a beautiful new adaptation from one of our great modern playwrights. And The Emporium is an utterly fascinating collaboration between past and present, with the rare opportunity to hear new words from the brilliant Thornton Wilder decades after his passing. They are all so theatrical and so thrilling on their own, and in combination, they are the start of what I'd love to see as a new iteration of the term 'classic.'"
CSC Spring Playreadings will feature the following plays:
The Emporium
An unfinished play by Thornton Wilder
Adapted and completed by Kirk Lynn
Directed by Rob Melrose
Friday April 28 at 7pm
The Emporium, Thornton Wilder's last full-length play, was set to debut on Broadway in 1951, but after several years of toiling over the script, the Pulitzer-winning author (Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth) pronounced it incomplete, banishing the play to the archives. Now, playwright Kirk Lynn (Lipstick Traces) has taken up the exciting charge of finishing Wilder's highly theatrical story, marking this moment as the first time a New York audience will ever encounter his final work for the stage. Funny, moving, and full of surprises, The Emporium will illuminate yet another side of Wilder's endlessly innovative work.
On Strivers Row
By Abram Hill
Directed by Tyler Thomas
Tuesday May 2 at 7pm
In New York's Harlem Renaissance, a few blocks uptown featured stunning homes that showed off the new wealth in the Black community - this was Strivers Row. In Abram Hill's (Walk Hard, Talk Loud) raucous 1940 comedy, the neighborhood comes to exuberant life through the Van Striven family, whose matriarch Dolly wants nothing more than to throw the perfect debutante party for her daughter. But when classism, colorism, gossip, and jealousy come knocking, Dolly's perfect celebration becomes the event of the season for all the wrong reasons.
The Wild Duck
By Henrik Ibsen
Adapted and Directed by David Auburn
Thursday May 4 at 7pm
In this new adaptation, Pulitzer Prize winner David Auburn (Proof; upcoming Summer, 1976) reinvigorates Ibsen's classic play about the price of idealism. One man's certainty that the truth is always better than even the kindest lie will shake the lives of two uncomfortably intertwined families. When long-buried secrets are forced into the light, it's not the idealists but the innocents who face the consequences.
To learn more about joining CSC's patron program, please visit https://www.classicstage.org/patron. Membership for CSC's new 2023-24 season will go on sale March 22, 2023. All new members will have access to the reading series.
ABOUT Classic Stage Company
Classic Stage Company (CSC) challenges the traditional perception of classic work by exploring and reimagining great stories across the world's repertoire that illuminate our common humanity. As a home for the classics, CSC collaborates with artists to produce work that is inclusive, relevant, and accessible. CSC believes that theater can both reflect and improve society by reaching across cultural divides in order to foster shared empathy and understanding.
In 1967, director Christopher Martin founded CSC Repertory in a 100-seat theater at Rutgers Presbyterian Church on West 73rd Street. Following short stints in small spaces, CSC grew to the point where it needed a permanent home. In 1973, the theater moved to its present premises on 13th Street, an intimate space that was formerly an East Village carriage house.
In the 55 years since, CSC has become a leading Off-Broadway theater that is a home for new and established artists, as well as audiences seeking epic stories intimately told. Productions have been cited by all major Off-Broadway theater awards including the Obie, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Drama League, and the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Body of Work.
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