Hooded; Or Being Black For Dummies - Articles Page 2

Peter's Alley is back with the Pulitzer Prize Winning Proof by David Auburn October 8-31, 2021 at Theatre on the Run in Arlington. It's been a long dark two years and what better way to commemorate the rebirth of Live Theater than with this witty and warm classic of contemporary American theater?

A virtual 25th Birthday Celebration, featuring 25 monologues by 25 playwrights including Boni B. Alvarez, Bekah Brunstetter, Jessica Goldberg, Hilly Hicks Jr., David Ives, David Lindsay-Abaire and Sarah Ruhl, performed by actors such as Enrico Colantoni, Marin Hinkle, Brent Jennings, Megan Ketch, Hamish Linklater and James Tupper, will take place on Thursday, July 1.

Creede Repertory Theatre is offering a virtual presentation of Beth Kander's gripping new work, To the Moon. To the Moon lifts up the riveting stories of these survivors, complete with humor, revelation, and tragedy. Because 'statistics are not the most powerful way to change someone's mind. Stories are.'

Chicago director/producer/choreographer Zoe Lesser will direct her own new adaptation of the comedy by W.R. Walkes. In A PAIR OF LUNATICS, which premiered in London in 1898, He and She meet for the first time in an asylum and each mistakes the other for an inmate.  

Casting has been announced for A PAIR OF LUNATICS, the third production of PrideArts' four-show virtual fall season called REIGNITE! Chicago director/producer/choreographer Zoe Lesser will direct her own new adaptation of the comedy by W.R. Walkes.

During this uncertain time for the nation and the arts community, 1st Stage remains committed to creating diverse, modern work by leading playwrights and performers. Despite the prolonged theatre closure necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the company delights in bringing you the same quality of beautiful, emotional, relatable stories that you could have otherwise seen on our stage.

The #OpenYourLobby movement is the latest in the Theater Community's history of protest.

The Washington Stage Guild continues its season of great writers with the Washington premiere of Bloomsday by Steven Dietz. This delicate, time-bending romance is set in James Joyce's Dublin on June 16th, the date on which Joyce's Ulysses is set. Robert returns to that city 35 years after meeting Caithleen on a walking tour of Joyce's Dublin. He and Cait meet again and revisit their youthful relationship, amid the echoes of Joyce's masterwork, and the missed connections of that earlier time in their lives. Helen Hayes Award winning Kasi Campbell will direct. A post-show discussion will follow the Sunday matinee on February 2nd, James Joyce's birthday.

Victory Gardens Theater continues its 45th season with the Co-World Premiere of How to Defend Yourself by Liliana Padilla and directed by Marti Lyons. A Co-World Premiere with Actors Theatre of Louisville, How to Defend Yourself runs January 24 - February 23, 2020, with press performance on Friday, January 31, 2020 at 7:30pm at Victory Gardens Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln Avenue.

Steppenwolf Theatre Company will host two bold visiting companies as part of LookOut, a year-round series that presents the work of artists and companies across genre and form. Steppenwolf's 1700 Theatre will be the home to two productions from impressive Chicago storefront theatres next year: First Floor Theater and Definition Theatre.

Shakespeare Theatre Company has announced the cast of Peter Pan and Wendy (previously announced as Peter Pan), a reimagining of J.M. BARRIE's classic work by 'America's Most-Produced Playwright' (American Theatre) LAUREN GUNDERSON (Ada and the Engine, Silent Sky). This world premiere will be onstage for the holidays at Sidney Harman Hall from December 3, 2019-January 12, 2020.

First Floor Theater presents the Chicago premiere of the award-winning SUGAR IN OUR WOUNDS, part of playwright Donja R. Love's trilogy of black love at pivotal moments in history, helmed by Company Member Mikael Burke, director of last season's acclaimed production of Hooded, or Being Black for Dummies. SUGAR IN OUR WOUNDS will play October 19 – November 23, 2019 at FFT's resident home, The Den Theatre (2B), 1331 N. Milwaukee Ave. in Chicago. Tickets are currently on sale at firstfloortheater.com. The press opening Thursday, October 24 at 7:30 pm.

First Floor Theater launches its eighth season with the Chicago premiere of the award-winning SUGAR IN OUR WOUNDS, part of playwright Donja R. Love's trilogy of black love at pivotal moments in history, helmed by Company Member Mikael Burke, director of last season's acclaimed production of Hooded, or Being Black for Dummies. SUGAR IN OUR WOUNDS will play October 19 a?" November 23, 2019 at FFT's resident home, The Den Theatre (2B), 1331 N. Milwaukee Ave. in Chicago.

First Floor Theater announces casting for its Chicago premiere of the award-winning SUGAR IN OUR WOUNDS, part of playwright Donja R. Love's trilogy of black love at pivotal moments in history, helmed by Company Member Mikael Burke, director of last season's acclaimed production of Hooded, or Being Black for Dummies.

About Face Theatre announces the addition of five new artists to the company's roster of Artistic Associates. Along with Artistic Director Megan Carney, the Artistic Associates represent the company's core artistic community whose creative focus helps shape About Face Theatre's theatrical productions and outreach.

Full cast and production team were announced today for the Equity-affiliated Citadel Theatre Company's production of PETER AND THE STARCATCHER.  The fantasy-comedy by Rick Elice, author of JERSEY BOYS, THE ADDAMS FAMILY and THE CHER SHOW, imagines how Peter Pan might have become lost in Neverland, PETER AND THE STARCATCHER's Broadway production was nominated for nine Tony Awards (including Best Play) and won five.

First Floor Theater announces their eighth season, featuring one world premiere and two Chicago premieres.First Floor Theater announce their eighth season, featuring one world premiere and two Chicago premieres.

Classic Stage Company continues its recently established repertory series which provides a platform, and freedom in the creative process, to today's most exciting emerging theater artists with two new adaptations of canonical gothic horror works based on novels by Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley. CSC has commissioned 2017 Wall Street Journal Playwright of the Year and one of the US' 10 Most Produced Playwrights of the 2018-2019 season, Kate Hamill, to take on Dracula, while Smith Prize for Political Theater and Helen Hayes Award-winning playwright Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm will create a new version of Frankenstein.Popularly known as a pair of macabre fantasies about blood-sucking vampires and man-made monsters, Dracula and Frankenstein illuminate and exorcise some of humanity's most fundamental fears surrounding life, love, and death. The productions will be performed in repertory January-March 2020.

The Jeff Awards announced today via a special video, a total of 132 nominations in 22 categories for the 46th Annual Non-Equity Jeff Awards.

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts hosts more than 120 outstanding theater students from colleges and universities across the nation as part of the 50th annual Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF), which runs April 16-20, 2019 in multiple locations throughout the Center. The Center also announced the national awardees for the KCACTF. Selected awardees and representatives will be brought to Washington, D.C. for an expense-paid trip to participate in the National Festival. These student artists from across the United States have been recognized for their outstanding work from the eight regional festivals that were held January 8 through February 28, 2019.

Right on the heels of the closing of Queen of Basel, a Miami-set rebirth of Strindberg's Miss Julie, Studio Theatre is breathing new life into another classic. Most audiences are familiar with Shaw's Pygmalion - or, more likely, its musical counterpart My Fair Lady - in which a low-born member of society is taught how to fit in with the upper class. In P.Y.G. or The Mis-Edumacation of Dorian Belle, playwright and director Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm brings Shaw's play right to the eye of our cultural hurricane, centering the relationship between race, fame and cultural appropriation. Dorian Belle, a Canadian pop superstar, idolizes hip-hop group Petty Young Goons, and hires them to help 'toughen up' his image - all while being filmed for television, of course. Chisholm and two of his actors, Gary L. Perkins III (as Alexand Da Great, ½ of Petty Young Goons) and Simon Kiser (Dorian Belle), were interviewed separately over e-mail about their experiences during the rehearsal process and to provide their perspectives on what P.Y.G. can offer audiences.

Avant Bard has announced that Khalil Kain has had to withdraw from the cast of TOPDOG/UNDERDOG due to unforeseen personal circumstances. But Avant Bard is happy to announce that Jeremy Keith Hunter has joined the production. Jeremy will play opposite Louis E. Davis in the Pulitzer Prize-winning dark comedy by Suzan-Lori Parks about two African American brothers grappling for destiny. The production runs from March 14 to April 14, 2019, at Gunston Arts Center Theatre Two in Arlington.

Richard Wright's iconic novel, Native Son,  streamlined into a blazing 90 minute adaptation by actor/playwright Nambi E. Kelley, will run in repertory with Les Deux Noirs: Notes on Notes of A Native Son, inspired by James Baldwin's blistening critique of Wright's controversial work. Award-winning director and playwright Psalmayene 24's stages the innovative take on Wright's masterpiece while authoring a modern reimagining of Wright's real-life meeting with Baldwin in 1953 Paris.

As usual, Mixed Blood Theatre is doing something pretty remarkable right now. They're presenting three plays in rep, all written by young black men. Under the umbrella 'Prescient Harbingers' (meaning: 'having or showing knowledge of events before they take place;' 'a person or thing that announces or signals the approach of another'), these three brilliant plays explore what it means to be a black man in America, directly or indirectly (one is even subtitled BEING BLACK FOR DUMMIES), along with commenting on race relations in America and more generally on modern life in America. Young black men are dying at an alarming rate, and these are voices we need to listen to if we ever hope to understand the problem so that we can stop it from happening. If you are a young black man, I can only imagine how validating it must feel to see these voices and these stories on stage. If you're not, I encourage you to go see one, two, or preferably all three of these plays with an open mind and an open heart. Listen, hear, laugh, cry, be disturbed, get angry, join the movement for justice and equality.

The Fonseca Theatre Company announces that the Indiana Premiere of Hooded or Being Black for Dummies will open November 9th at Indy Convergence (2611 W Michigan Street). Our inaugural production continues through December 2, 2018, with Ben Rose as director.