Rattlestick Playwrights Theater's 2017-18 Season to Feature Works by Diana Oh, Mushuq Mushtaq Deen and More
By: BWW News Desk Jun. 27, 2017
The season will also include NEW SONGS NOW, an unplugged concert series, presented in association with New Neighborhood and Rosalind Productions, Inc. in July 2017, plus Middle Voice productions of THE PARLOUR by Xavier Galva and THE ENCLAVE by Arthur Laurents.
{my lingerie play} 2017: Installation #9 THE CONCERT AND CALL TO ARMS!!!!!!!!!
Written and Music by Diana Oh
Co-Directed by Stephanie Ryan Johnstone and Diana Oh
Music Directed by Ryan McCurdy
Presented in association with Rosalind Productions, Inc. (Abigail Rose Solomon, Executive Producer)
September 29- October 28, 2017
New York Premiere
Over the course of 4 months, 8 street installations of work connected to {my lingerie play} have taken place in Times Square, Washington, D.C. and New Orleans, which will culminate in Rattlestick's production of {my lingerie play} 2017: Installation #9 THE CONCERT AND CALL TO ARMS!!!!!!!!!. The final {my lingerie play} street installation will take place in Times Square on July 8 at 3pm. These installations have been produced by Michelle Stern and filmed by Jon Burklund, and made possible with support provided by the Venturous Theater Fund of Tides Foundation.
Featured on Upworthy, People.com, the Huffington Post, Marie Claire Netherlands amongst other publications and on stage at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Joe's Pub, Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Lark, and All For One, {my lingerie play} 2017: Installation #9: The Concert and Call to Arms!!!!!!!!! is a play, a protest, a concert, and an installation all at once. Through this entertaining concert/play, Diana and her band explore mainstream culture's relationship to the female and gender-queer body and the deep and complex dynamics that exist regarding sexuality and gender politics. This is a culminating 80 minute genre-bending soulful rock and R&B concert-play and final installation of {my lingerie play} 2017: ten underground performance installations in lingerie staged in an effort to provide a saner, safer, more courageous world for women, trans, queer, and non-binary humans to live in. "It's really, really hard to be this badass. Thankfully, [Diana]'s got it covered."- Eric March, Upworthy
UNTIL THE FLOOD
Written and performed by Dael Orlandersmith
Directed by Neel Keller
January - February 2018
New York Premiere
In January, we will welcome back Rattlestick alumni writer Dael Orlandersmith (Horsedreams, Pulitzer-Prize Finalist Yellowman) with her piece UNTIL THE FLOOD, a one-person show written in response to Michael Brown's death. After interviewing scores of St. Louis residents, Orlandersmith plays the many faces and voices of life in St. Louis without advancing any one viewpoint above others. BroadwayWorld says, "Dael Orlandersmith does an impressive job of inhabiting each of these characters and bringing them to life on the stage. It's a bravura performance, and one that should not be missed."
DRAW THE CIRCLE
Written and performed by Mashuq Mushtaq Deen
Directed by Chay Yew
February 2018
New York Premiere
A hilarious and moving story about the complexities that loved ones experience when someone close to them transitions from one gender to another. Told entirely from the point of view of family and friends, yet performed by Deen himself, DRAW THE CIRCLE compassionately brings to life the often-ignored struggle that a family goes through when their child transitions from one gender to another. Brooklyn's BEAT Festival describes it as an "effortless blend of comedy and intense intimacy."
NEW SONGS NOW
Sunday, July 23 through Thursday, July 27 at 8:30pm
In association with New Neighborhood and Rosalind Productions, Inc.
An unplugged concert series. Two different songwriters share new music in an open-studio environment each night. New Songs Now is a chance to drink beer, eat popcorn, and listen to music and speak with the songwriters afterwards about the work. Songwriters include: Aya Azziz, Heather Christian, Carmel Dean, Ty Defoe and Tidtaya Sinutoke, Greg Felden, Emily Gardner Hall, Matt Gould, Ben Wexler, Jean Rohe, and U.S. Open (Jeff Biehl, Steve Boyer, William Jackson Harper, Alex Mandell, Bobby Moreno, Diana Oh, and Shawn Randall). Lineup subject to change.
Rattlestick Playwrights Theater is also announcing their 2017-2018 Middle Voice at Rattlestick Season. Rattlestick's Apprentice Company, comprised of 18-30 year-old theater artists from traditionally diverse and underrepresented communities, is mentored by Lucy Thurber. The mission of Middle Voice is to create theater that embraces risk and encourages ensemble, and to reach different class segments in American society through the company's work.
THE PARLOUR
By Xavier Galva
A workshop production directed by Victor Cervantes Jr.
September 1-10, 2017
After successful readings and workshops at Clubbed Thumb, Walkerspace, and MCC, Middle Voice will produce the workshop production of Xavier Galva's THE PARLOUR. Set in the chaotic world of New York City fine dining, THE PARLOUR illustrates the hierarchy found in an upscale members-only restaurant. THE PARLOUR examines the inequity found in that system and the imbalance entrenched within these people.
THE ENCLAVE
A workshop production directed by Victor Cervantes Jr.
March 2018
The Laurents/Hatcher Foundation has awarded The Arthur Laurents Centennial Grant to Middle Voice at Rattlestick to revive THE ENCLAVE. The play shines a light on a seemingly liberal group of friends who alienates one of their own when he introduces his boyfriend to the group. First produced in 1973, The New York Times described, "Mr. Laurents writes in an attractively hard-edged style, with jokes cracking like ice in extra-dry martinis."
All productions to be performed at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater (224 Waverly Place). Subscriptions for the 2017/18 Rattlestick season are $89 for returning members (must purchase by August 30, 2017) and $99 for new members. Rattlestick memberships include a choice premium seat for Mainstage and Apprentice shows, discounted guest tickets, unlimited ticket exchanges (subject to availability), advance notice and discount offers to readings, special events and more, and COFFEE AND CONVERSATION with Artistic Director, Daniella Topol, in Spring 2018.
Since 1994, RATTLESTICK PLAYWRIGHTS THEATER has created, developed and produced many of the nation's greatest playwrights and their works. Our mission is to provide a positive, nurturing experience for emerging playwrights, to present diverse and challenging plays that otherwise might not be produced, and to foster the future voices of American theater. When we take on a playwright, we guarantee him or her a second production, regardless of the reception of the first. We have produced the first plays and early works of some of today's leading voices, including Annie Baker (The Aliens), Sheila Callaghan (That Pretty, Pretty), Jesse Eisenberg (The Revisionist), Martyna Majok (Ironbound), Adam Rapp (The Hallway Trilogy), Lucy Thurber (The Hilltown Plays), and Craig Wright (The Pavilion). They have also produced works by some of our nation's most important playwrights, including Charles Fuller (One Night...), Craig Lucas (Ode to Joy), Dael Orlandersmith (Horsedreams), and José Rivera (Massacre, Sing to Your Children), whose risky and challenging works other theaters are unwilling to produce. For more info visit www.rattlestick.org.
ROSALIND PRODUCTIONS INC. Headed by Abigail Rose Solomon, Rosalind Productions, Inc. is a prolific producer of new and classic work on and Off-Broadway, as well as nationally. Currently, the company is a co-producer of the new Broadway musical War Paint, starring two- time Tony Award winners Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole, as business legends Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden. Past Broadway shows include If/Then and The Miracle Worker. Off-Broadway, the company produced the New York Premiere of The Last Seder, New York Premiere of A Splintered Soul and John Patrick Shanley's Savage in Limbo. In Los Angeles: Misalliance, Proof, As You Like It and the World Premiere of Stages. The mission of Rosalind Productions, Inc. is to explore stories in which the female characters are as vital, complex and influential as the male characters, with the goal to entertain, empower and enlighten audiences.
NEW NEIGHBORHOOD is a theater/TV/music company whose sincerity and authenticity are so combustible they cannot be housed under one roof for too long without doing severe structural damage. With new work, bruised work, all-singing, all-dancing, foul-mouthed musical work, New Neighborhood finds a show, produces the shit outta it, and disappears into a cloud of train smoke. Recent projects include the world premiere of Suzanne Heathcote's I Saw My Neighbor on the Train and I Didn't Even Smile (co-produced with Berkshire Theatre Group), the west coast and New York premieres of Rolin Jones's These Paper Bullets! (produced in association with Geffen Playhouse and Atlantic Theater Company), and simultaneous productions of Chekhov's Three Sisters and the world premiere of Aaron Posner's No Sisters (co-produced with Studio Theatre); Season One of Fox Television's "The Exorcist" (produced in association with Morgan Creek Productions and 20th Century Fox Television); and the debut album of Honus Honus, Use Your Delusion. Upcoming: One Night Only (running as long as we can), Fall 2017 (co-produced by WP Theater and Monica Bill Barnes & Company). newneighborhood.net
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHTS:
Diana Oh is an actor/singer-songwriter/theatremaker/performer working to queer the world. She is one of Refinery 29's Top 14 LGBTQ Influencers, the First Queer Korean American interviewed on Korean Broadcast Radio, Creator of #AsianPeopleareNotMagicians on Mic.com, the inaugural Van Lier Fellow in Acting with the Asian American Arts Alliance, Creator of {my lingerie play}: a concert & installation series in her lingerie staged in an effort to provide a saner, safer, more courageous world for women, trans, queer, and non-binary humans to live in featured in People, on stage at EST, The Lark, Joe's Pub, and All For One. It is the recipient of a Venturous Capital Grant and finalist for the Radical Diva Award. She has performed her music at The Public, The Center, The Blue Note, amongst other venues. Since 2014, she has staged {my lingerie play} street installations in Times Square, New Orleans, in front of The White House in Washington D.C., Virginia, Brooklyn Museum, and Union Square which you can watch on www.mylingerieplay.com. The Wall Street Journal & Upworthy call her "badass." Member of Baby No More Times (a feminist pop group), The U.S. Open (a rock band) and Ma-Yi Writers Lab. She has shared the stage, screen, and collaborated with some of her favorite artists like her immigrant mother, Toshi Reagon, and Gloria Steinem. Proud alum of Smith College, National Theatre Institute at The Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center. MFA, NYU Tisch Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program as an Elphaba Thropp Fellow.
Dael Orlandersmith's plays include Stoop Stories, Black n' Blue Boys/Broken Men, Horsedreams, Bones, The Blue Album, Yellowman, The Gimmick, Monster, and Forever. Ms. Orlandersmith was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and Drama Desk Award nominee for Yellowman and the winner of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for The Gimmick. Dael is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts grant, The Helen Merrill Award for Emerging Playwrights, a Guggenheim, along with several other awards and honors. Her play, Forever, was commissioned and performed at the Mark Taper Forum/Kirk Douglas Theatre Fall of 2014, followed by performances at the Long Wharf Theatre Winter 2014/15, New York Theatre Workshop Spring 2015, and will run at Portland Center Stage Winter 2016. Her play Until the Flood was done at St Louis Repertory Fall of 2016. She is currently working on two commissions for Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland and Milwaukee Repertory Theatre.
Mashuq Mushtaq Deen is an award-winning, queer theater artist and a resident playwright at New Dramatists (class of 2022). Full-length plays: The Shaking Earth, Draw the Circle, Tank & Horse, and Shut Up! Deen's plays have been produced and/or developed by New Dramatists, The Public Theater, NYTW, InterAct Theatre, Page73, Ma-Yi, Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, Georgetown University, BEAT Festival, PACE University, Hampshire College, Averett University, Dixon Place, Passage Theatre, Queens Theatre in the Park, Tofte Lake Center, Berkshire Fringe. Awards and Grants: Helene Wurlitzer's Chesley/Bumbalo Foundation Award, MacDowell Colony's Arch and Bruce Brown Fellow (2015-16), New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow; Fellowships: MacDowell Colony Fellow (2015), Bogliasco Foundation Fellow (2016), Helene Wurlitzer Foundation Fellow (2016), New York Theatre Workshop 2050 Fellow. Member: NYTW Usual Suspect, Ma-Yi Writers Lab, Public Theater Alumni Writers Group, Dramatists Guild. He earned his MFA from The Actors Studio Drama School/New School for Drama. He is represented by the Gurman Agency LLC.
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