Theatre for a New Audience to Present Free Post-Show TFANA Talks Discussion

Theatre for a New Audience will present a free post-show TFANA Talks discussion at Polonsky Shakespeare Center following the 2pm performance, Saturday, May 4, with playwrights and adaptors Sophie McIntosh (macbitches) and Joe Calarco (Shakespeare's R&J) moderated by TFANA's resident dramaturg and professor of theatre at Hunter College, CUNY, Jonathan Kalb.

In Shakespeare's Macbeth, Lady Macbeth begins with commanding authority, ruthlessly implementing regicide. But she soon disappears from the story and only re-emerges in the last Act, guilt-ridden, hallucinating, sleep deprived and suicidal.  What happened? Zinnie Harris imagines what might be the gaps in Shakespeare's story, undoing the play as we know it and retelling it with Lady Macbeth at its center. With powerful performances from Nicole Cooper, and her costar Adam Best, Macbeth (an undoing), just received four Drama Desk Nominations.  

Horowitz commented, “It will be wonderful to hear Jo Calarco and Sophie McIntosh, both authors and adaptors, discuss Shakespeare who of course was also an adaptor whose plays incorporated older plays and other sources and Zinnie Harris' Macbeth (an undoing), an adaptation, of course, inspired by Shakespeare's Macbeth.   

In its TFANA Talks series, the organization invites artists, scholars, and commentators to be in dialogue and bring further context to TFANA's productions. Playwright Sophie McIntosh's macbitches, which made its Off-Broadway premiere in 2022, is “a very funny, well-observed and finely acted dramedy” with “a fantastic understanding of tone and genre” (New York Times Critic's Pick review), surrounding a college freshman who has been given the role of Lady Macbeth. Joe Calarco's Shakespeare's R&J is an “electrifying interpretation of the legendary star-crossed lovers” and “nothing short of excellence,” writes BroadwayWorld. “While mainly recited in its original Shakespearean form, Calarco brings a fresh take on the tragedy, through a modern setting and intertwining of a queer narrative.”

The Royal Lyceum's production of Macbeth (an undoing) at TFANA is the first part of The Shakespeare Exchange, a reciprocal transatlantic partnership between Royal Lyceum and Theatre for a New Audience. In January 2025, the Lyceum will present TFANA's production of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice directed by Arin Arbus which premiered at TFANA in 2022. 

Event Details: 

TFANA Talks Series

Who & When:

Saturday, May 4 – After 2pm show

Moderator: Jonathan Kalb, TFANA's resident dramaturg

Guests: Playwrights Sophie McIntosh and Joe Calarco

Where:

Polonsky Shakespeare Center, 262 Ashland Pl, Brooklyn

About the Speakers

Joe Calarco is a multiple award-winning director and playwright whose work has been seen Off Broadway, regionally, and internationally. He is the recipient of the Lucille Lortel Award, four Helen Hayes Awards, and two Barrymore Awards, among others. Twenty-four of his plays have been published and he is the adaptor/director of Shakespeare's R&J, which ran for a year Off-Broadway and earned him a Lucille Lortel Award. Other adaptations include A Midsummer Night's Dream (The Shakespeare Theater Company), which he has reworked for 8 actors as Well Met By Moonlight and will soon be published by TRW, and Antigone Renewed, which had its first workshop at the National Theater in London.

Jonathan Kalb is TFANA's resident dramaturg and professor of theatre at Hunter College, CUNY. The author of five books on theatre, he has worked for more than three decades as a theatre scholar, critic, journalist, and dramaturg. He has twice won the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism and has also won the George Freedley Award for an outstanding theatre book from the Theatre Library Association. He often writes about theatre on his TheaterMatters blog at jonathankalb.com.

Sophie McIntosh (she/her) is a New York–based playwright and theatermaker and the co-founder of Good Apples Collective, a developmental orchard for new theatrical works that she co-leads with her frequent collaborator Nina Goodheart. Recent productions of Sophie's work include the world premieres of macbitches (New York Times Critic's Pick), cityscrape with Good Apples Collective, and Eleven Weeks of Nuclear Summer at Notre Dame University. Sophie's plays have also been developed by Pioneer Theatre Company, the 24 Hour Plays: Nationals, the Bechdel Group, the Unicorn Theatre, LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, and Breaking & Entering Theatre Collective. Her latest work, cunnicularii, will receive its premiere with Good Apples Collective this summer. Sophie is a proud recipient of a BA in drama from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and is currently working toward an MFA in playwriting at Columbia University. www.sophiemcintoshwrites.co

To post a comment, you must register and login.