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Special Thanks

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Meet Our Donors

Tributes

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Our Tributes

Performers

(in alphabetical order)

Juan Arturo

*

McGee & Zeke

Chad Carstarphen

*

Attis & Massud

Akeil Davis

*

BJ, Maroni, & Mohawk

Katie Mack

*

Sorrel & Eve

Christopher Mowod

*

Chad & Tabor

Nowani Rattray

*

Tisah & Kaley

Carol Todd

*

Arlene & Others

Setting

Songs & Scenes

No items found.

*Appearing through an Agreement between this theatre and Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.

Actors’ Equity Association (“Equity”), founded in 1913, is the U.S. labor union that represents more than 51,000 actors and stage managers, Equity fosters the art of live theatre as an essential component of society and advances the careers of its members by negotiating wages, improving working conditions and providing a wide range of benefits, including health and pension plans. Actors’ Equity is a member of the AFL-CIO and is affiliated with FIA, an International organization of performing arts unions. www.actorsequity.org

Production Staff

No items found.

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Board Members

Student Advisory Board

Special Thanks

I’d like to thank my husband, Bob, who throughout this rollicking process, never once flinched.

Lynn Clay Byrne

Cast
Creatives

Meet the Cast

Juan Arturo

*

McGee & Zeke
(
)
Pronouns:

Juan graduated with a BFA from Rutgers University. His theater credits include Billy in The Oregon Trail by Bekah Brunstetter, Rafael Nadal in The Rafa Play by Peter Gil-Sheridan, and Kevin in Support Group for Men by Ellen Fairey. His TV credits include credited appearances on popular shows such as The Good Wife and Blue Bloods. Born in Miami but raised in New York City he is of Cuban and Spanish descent and enjoys reading, writing. He’s so stoked to be back in the theater and cannot wait to share this play with audiences

Chad Carstarphen

*

Attis & Massud
(
)
Pronouns:

John Leguizamo’s  KISS MY AZTEC (Berkeley Rep & La Jolla Playhouse). Other regional and national credits include  Broke-ology (Kitchen Theatre Company) and the 1st Broadway National Tour of  In The Heights. NYC world premieres of  Evensong (Astoria Performing Arts Center) and The Conscientious Objector (the Clurman Theatre at Theatre Row). El Bolero Was My Downfall, The Desire of the Astronaut, The Harlem Hellfighters..., Hey Yo! Yo Soy!, and  Neon Baby  as an ensemble member with Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater. Film/TV credits include  Landing Up, The Pudding Club, and  Dumped. Alumnus of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.

Akeil Davis

*

BJ, Maroni, & Mohawk
(
)
Pronouns:

Akeil Davis is a NY based actor & playwright thrilled to be making his Off-Broadway debut! Past productions include: Emancipation of a Negus {playwright & actor} (Io), Once on this Island (Papa Ge), In the Heights (Sonny) and many more. ”I thank God, my family, teachers and fellow actors for helping me reach this far” (Isaiah 40:31)

Katie Mack

*

Sorrel & Eve
(
)
Pronouns:

Katie 'MACK' has helped develop over 35 new plays/musicals, and is honored to be on the journey with this world premiere. She won a 2021 Webby Award for her narrative podcast "f*cking sober: the first 90 days", and can be found producing Season 2: Shadai, developing new plays with Somehow9AM Productions, training for her first Ironman, or eating peanut butter from the jar. Please visit The Fortune Society and VOCAL NY for resources on how you can assist in the conversation and actions around alternatives to incarceration. Gratitude to Ben, Lynn, Kate, Juliana, Felipe, and of course to this gorgeous cast and production team. Thanks for being here, we missed this. For Eric Anthamatten, who dedicated his life to this type of work. "Sana, sana, colita de rana"

Christopher Mowod

*

Chad & Tabor
(
)
Pronouns:

Hi, I’m Christopher Mowod. I’m an actor and musician making my NY professional theatre debut. And you're also seeing my friend Juan. You’ll see his ferocious talent displayed, and the goodness and kindness you see always kept me excited to spend hours philosophizing about acting, family, this play, theater and life. 

I have a BFA from Juilliard Drama and dedicate this show to Kevin and Mia, I love you. go to bed, you are cats and need all the sleeps.

Nowani Rattray

*

Tisah & Kaley
(
)
Pronouns:

Nowani Rattray is a native New Yorker hailing from Harlem who graduated with a BFA from Syracuse University. Past credits include Autumn's Harvest (Lincoln Center Education), A Midsummer Nights Dream (Smith Street Stage), and The Tragedy of Tupac Amaru Shakur (The Triad Theater). All my thanks and love to my mom.

Carol Todd

*

Arlene & Others
(
)
Pronouns:

Carol recently appeared in the critically-acclaimed virtual streaming production of Jericho for New Normal Rep (NNR), directed by 4-time Academy-Award nominee Marsha Mason and co-starring Golden Globe and Obie-winner Jill Eikenberry. Off-Broadway: Jericho (59E59); Intermission (The Clurman). NYC: To She Who Waits, A Marriage Proposal (ARTC); Ferguson, Making Peter Pope (30th Street Theatre). Selected Regional: Ants, Jericho, Place Setting, Apple, Whores (NJ Rep); The Song of Grendelyn, Whores (Writers Theatre of NJ); Top Girls, The Road to Mecca (Theatre Project); Rain (East Lynne Theatre Co.); The Importance of Being Earnest (Foundation Theatre); Voice of Good Hope (Luna Stage). Film: The Sounding, 20th Century Boys II, Blind Trust, Showers of Happiness. Selected TV: “High Maintenance” (HBO), “Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll” (FX), “One Bad Choice” (MTV), "Un$uited" (Pilot). Carol is currently appearing in NNR’s virtual production of F.I.R.E. streaming through October 20.

Meet the Team

Lynn Clay Byrne

*

Playwright
(
)
Pronouns:

As a kid I read all the time, wrote plays and had all my friends and cousins perform in them. I was always the lead. So I'm back where I started, except now they make you audition for the lead and that doesn't work in my favor. I graduated from LSU in Journalism, married my high school sweetheart, had 7 children, owned a greeting card company for 17 years, wrote a novel, then wrote BETWEEN THE BARS. Behind the scenes feels just fine.

Benjamin Viertel

*

Director
(
)
Pronouns:

Recent: BRIC TV’s Original Series  86’d, Life Boat (Theater 54), The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (New Ohio Theater), Fireface(The Brick), Kragar: An American Monster Musical (West End Theatre), and award-winning webseries Blank My Life. Benjamin has worked with The Orchard Project, BAM, Roundabout Theater, Huntington Theater, The New Group, and The Civilians. Member of Kennedy Center Director’s Lab, MTC’s Directing Fellow, The Civilians’ R&D Group. Artistic Director of Third Space. Education: Carnegie Mellon.

Bryce Cutler

*

Scenic Design
(
)
Pronouns:

Previous designs include Grand Horizons on Broadway, Soft Power at the Public Theater along with Samsung’s virtual reality television series Interpretation of Dreams, Feel The Pride an AI powered audio-visual installation with St. Vincent anda virtual reality arcade for Muse’s 2019 World Tour. Co-founder of Third Space, winner of the 2017 USITT Rising Star Award and a 2019 L.B. Tobin Director-Designer Finalist.  Education: Carnegie Mellon University.

Devario D. Simmons

*

Costume Design
(
)
Pronouns:

Simmons is an American Costume Designer of staged productions. He received his MFA in Costume Design from Virginia Commonwealth University. His design credits include Thoughts of a Colored Man, The Merchant of Venice, In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play, Man of La Mancha, A Streetcar Named Desire and Ensemble. He has also done work on three seasons of AMC’s television show TURN, the 2nd National Touring production of the Broadway hit In the Heights and two seasons of the PBS television series Mercy Street. He is currently the Associate Costume Designer for all productions of Come From Away (designed by Toni-Leslie James) playing in the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre on Broadway, the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto, the Phoenix Theatre in London, the Comedy Theatre in Melbourne, Australia and in various theatres across the US and Canada for the North American Tour.

Mary Ellen Stebbins

*

Lighting Design
(
)
Pronouns:

Recent credits include Shakespeare Theatre Company, Florentine Opera, Working Theater, Northern Stage, Talking Band, Prototype, Harvard University. She is a member of Sightline Arts and the Resident Designer for HOWL ensemble and Third Space. Recognitions include a 2020 Bessie Award nomination, a 2019 Opera America Tobin Finalist, a 2016 Henry Hewes Award nomination, a 2014 Live Design Young Designer to Watch, the 2011 USITT Barbizon Lighting Design Award winner, and a 2009 Hangar Theatre Lab Company Design Fellow. . Member USA 829. MFA, Boston University; AB, Harvard College. Mary Ellen currently teaches lighting design at Carnegie Mellon School of Drama.

Arminda Thomas

*

Dramaturg
(
)
Pronouns:

Arminda Thomas is co-producer and resident dramaturg for CLASSIX. Selected dramaturgy credits include Mirrors (Next Door at New York Theatre Workshop); A Harlem Triptych of Eulalie Spence, Wine in the Wilderness, and Soul Struggle: The Works of Georgia Douglass Johnson (New Perspectives); Black History Museum...According to the United States of America (HERE Arts Center); Jazz (Marin Theatre Company); Zora Neale Hurston (New Federal Theatre); and The First Noel (Classical Theatre of Harlem). She has also served as associate artistic director and resident dramaturg for the Going to the River Festival and Writer’s Unit.

Adrian Bridges

*

Sound Design
(
)
Pronouns:

Adrian Bridges is a sound designer and musician. Recent theater credits include: Battle of Angels (NYC & Provincetown), Guac: My Son, My Hero (National Tour), On The Grounds Of Belonging (Long Wharf Theatre), Refuge (Baruch PAC), Mr. Burns (Muhlenberg College), Artemesia’s Intent (NYC & Regional Tour), This Is Modern Art (NYTW: Next Door), and Intuitive Men (NYC & L.A.). He graduated from NYU with a Bachelor’s and Master’s in jazz guitar and composition. He has forthcoming albums with hip hop collective, Izzy Man & The Plan, and Puerto Rican singer-songwriter Huascar Robles and podcasts with Venus Radio Theater.

Juliana M Crawford

*

Production Stage Manager
(
)
Pronouns:

Juliana graduated from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. Her credits include the national tours of Cirque Dreams, The Big Apple Circus, CATS, The Sound of Music, Beauty and the Beast, Evita, My Fair Lady, and The King and I. Her New York credits include Stage Managing at the Ailey School, SLK Ballet, The Ramaz School and numerous events and award shows, including working as a production assistant on television and films. Her other passion is freelancing as a photographer and pursuing One Million Cards, her lifelong project of creating a million unique greeting cards with her photography. Juliana would like to dedicate this performance to her Dad, Bob Heeter, her biggest fan.

Felipe Cuesta

*

Assistant Stage Manager
(
)
Pronouns:

Felipe Cuesta attended Shenandoah Conservatory where he pursued a BFA degree in Theater Design & Production with an emphasis in Stage Management. Most recently he was the Stage & Production manager at Sonesta Resorts & Casino Royale in the beautiful island of Sint Marteen. Other credits include the national tour of Cirque Dreams Holidaze (Head Carp.) Royal Caribbean Int. (Stage & Prod Manager) Busch Gardens Williamsburg (Show Ops.) He is excited to be able to return to theater with this wonderful company! A big thank you to all of those who have supported me along the way and to all the wonderful people I have met around the world! Adam, thank you for always being there for me you’re the best bro someone could ask for. To Sesh, without you I wouldn’t be where I am today. You are an inspiration. Much Love & always follow your dreams! Mom, I made it!

Sami Pyne

*

Marketing Manager
(
)
Pronouns:

Sami Pyne is a theatremaker based in New York City working most prominently as an independent producer. She is currently the Line Producer for 600 Highwaymen’s A THOUSAND WAYS. Most recent producing credits include Capricorn 29 created by Alex Hare and Julia Izumi at The Tank, Kyk Hoe Skyn die Son created by Keenan Tyler Oliphant at Clubbed Thumb, Columbia SOA International Play Reading Festival curated by David Henry Hwang, and 2020 & 2019’s Prelude Festival at The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Columbia University School of the Arts MFA Theatre Management and Producing class of 2020

JT-PR

*

Public Relations
(
)
Pronouns:

With over 20 years of experience, Joe Trentacosta’s JT Public Relations has created strategic public relations campaigns for the entertainment industry. They have represented clients on Broadway, Off-Broadway, festival productions, developmental industry presentations, films in release, film festivals, numerous non-profit organizations, and special events. Non-profits include the Museum of the Moving Image, National Meningitis Association, Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation, Stuttering Association for the Young. He has consulted with Lincoln Center Theatre, Hamilton the musical (Tony campaign) and also represents National Alliance of Musical Theatre, Rockefeller Productions, Galleria on Third, Lillypops (COO & Director of Marketing and Communications). Joe is also the Executive Producer of Katsura Sunshine’s Rakugo (New World Stages and World Tour).

Holly Garman

*

Publicity
(
)
Pronouns:

Holly has a diverse background in theater, music, non-profit and entertainment events.  Currently working the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, and Off-Broadway’s Working Theater, her recent work includes: The Eliza Project (Graham Windham/Hamilton), Broadway Brews (collaboration w/Hamilton, Waitress & Come From Away casts), Arts in the Armed Forces (w/ founder Adam Driver).  Working with leading press agent Sam Rudy, Holly has worked on multiple productions including Dear Jack, Dear Louise by Ken Ludwig at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C.), Isaac Mizrahi’s I&ME tour; Broadway/Off-Broadway smash Avenue Q and Miracle in Rwanda (Theater Row).

Evan Bernardin Productions

*

General Management
(
)
Pronouns:

Evan Bernardin Productions is a full-service theatrical management company that provides general and production management for productions and immersive experiences. Select credits include: Fairycakes,Seven Deadly Sins, Million Dollar Quartet (Tour), Charlie Brown Christmas (Tour), Afterglow, and We Are The Tigers. Additional collaborative projects have included performances at Lincoln Center, The United Nations, The Harvard Club, The White House, Cornell University, Georgetown's Gaston Hall, The Culture Project, The Ohio Theatre and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Media

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2021 National Touring Cast

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The Perils of Parenting: EUREKA DAY, ANNIE, and RACECAR RACECAR RACECAR — Review
Juan A. Ramirez
December 17, 2024

Three shows dealing with parents – one on, one off-, and one off-off-Broadway – opened this past week. There’s no right way to bring up a child, or way of knowing how it’ll turn out.

Eureka Day - Manhattan Theatre Club at the Friedman Theatre

“Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster” is advice playwrights looking to critique Millennial Liberalism would do well to heed, as evidenced by the two beasts to which Jonathan Spector’s 2018 comedy Eureka Day mostly loses in its bright and bubbly Broadway premiere.

The first monster it encounters is thematic. As with last season’s The Thanksgiving Play, which mocked a well-meaning elementary school drama teacher’s attempt to mount an even-handed history of the holiday, there are only so many laughs you can wring out of liberal cluelessness. Here, it’s the board members of a bougie California day school when faced with a mumps outbreak among its students. They’re the sort of people for whom things like “holding space” and “feeling seen” are paralyzing conundrums instead of useful frameworks in the fight for equity. The jokes at their expense start off strong but lose steam quickly, despite strong performances from a cast including Jessica Hecht and Thomas Middleditch.

The second is structural. About halfway through the play, the group hosts a live-streamed town hall to discuss options with the other parents, whose comments appear on a wall behind the cast (projected by David Bengali). The parents’ increasingly unhinged online behavior is wildly funny; Anna D. Shapiro’s staging receiving its biggest and most constant laughs as the audience waited for a new bubble to pop up. But though the onstage dialogue is largely irrelevant – they might as well be saying “rhubarb rhubarb,” I confirmed with the script later – I still felt I was robbed of a live experience. My mind also began to wander: How have parent-teacher relations shifted in the online age? Are parents acting out against educators, the way people might do anonymously on Twitter, and then still leaving their very real children in their care? Will we ever get a grip on our online actions?

It’s not that the play, which is set pre-Covid, fails to address this so much as it cannot bear its weight, and so bringing in that scene feels detrimental to both its experience and its message. I couldn’t bring myself to care much about the onstage antics after this, nor were any laughs fresher or louder. Parents will likely have greater laughs of recognition, but I found myself skimming over other tabs left open in my mind.

Annie - The Theater at Madison Square Garden

Whoopi Goldberg as Miss Hannigan! The beloved musical (book by Thomas Meehan, music and lyrics by Charles Strouse and Martin Charnin) is in fine shape in this touring production currently stationed at the gargantuan theater inside MSG. Though the space means the staging, directed by Jenn Thompson, must sacrifice some intimacy, Wilson Chin’s set and the to-the-rafters performances ensure the material gets its proper dues. (Ken Travis’ sound design, though, at least from where I was seated, amplified the orphans’ chorus to a level of shrillness I cannot recommend to the Uncle Jockos among us.)

Hazel Vogel is an unusually soulfully voiced Annie, who finds a sweet counterpart in Christopher Swan’s Daddy Warbucks and especially Julia Nicole Hunter’s sensational Grace. Savannah Fisher more than earned the applause she received throughout her terrific turn as Star-to-Be.

Despite underselling her own performance while promoting it on The View, Goldberg sang and sold her comic lines with much more gusto than I’d anticipated. She also offers a curious take on Hannigan, adopting a servile tone when speaking to those who held power over her character. It’s a curious (and, for a production otherwise unconcerned with matters of class and race, appropriate) choice that beefs up her involvement from stunt casting to star turn. If that View non-endorsement came from a place of shyness, then her performance here points at a promising future run of delightfully assured featured roles onstage.

Racecar Racecar Racecar – The Hearth at A.R.T./New York Theatres

A casualty of the Connelly Theatre shutting its doors to provocative plays, Kallan Dana’s reversible new play follows a daughter and father (Julia Greer and Bruce McKenzie) on a cross-country road trip from New York City to their native Sacramento. It’s a trip they’d done years before, and the play relishes in the palindromic: the two pass the time listing off examples and noting the things they’d experienced before that might be coming back to haunt them, like their at-times tense relationship to each other, and to alcohol. The reverse bits get increasingly more Lynchian, with backwards-playing music and surreal interactions with a ragged drifter (Ryan King), a pigtailed little girl (Camila Canó-Flaviá), and a Wendy’s employee named Wendy  (Jessica Frey, absolutely scene-stealing).

Brittany Vasta’s set is an enviable conversation pit around which characters walk and, against the upstage wall, cleverly flash lights through paper cutouts with city names (by Normandy Sherwood) to signpost the duo’s location. The road trip reaches an absurdist peak when Dana’s language leans hardest into word association to refract the daughter’s fractured mental state, which slowly reveals a more vulnerable core. The specificity of her trauma becomes a bit too confessionally therapeutic, bordering on therapy art, but Sarah Blush’s direction is brisk without undermining character or intention.

Eureka Day is in performance through January 19, 2025 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on West 47th Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.

Annie is in performance through January 5, 2025 at the Theater at Madison Square Garden at Pennsylvania Plaza in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.

Racecar Racecar Racecar is in performance through December 22, 2024 at A.R.T./New York Theatres on West 53rd Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.

The Perils of Parenting: EUREKA DAY, ANNIE, and RACECAR RACECAR RACECAR — Review
Juan A. Ramirez
December 17, 2024

Three shows dealing with parents – one on, one off-, and one off-off-Broadway – opened this past week. There’s no right way to bring up a child, or way of knowing how it’ll turn out.

Eureka Day - Manhattan Theatre Club at the Friedman Theatre

“Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster” is advice playwrights looking to critique Millennial Liberalism would do well to heed, as evidenced by the two beasts to which Jonathan Spector’s 2018 comedy Eureka Day mostly loses in its bright and bubbly Broadway premiere.

The first monster it encounters is thematic. As with last season’s The Thanksgiving Play, which mocked a well-meaning elementary school drama teacher’s attempt to mount an even-handed history of the holiday, there are only so many laughs you can wring out of liberal cluelessness. Here, it’s the board members of a bougie California day school when faced with a mumps outbreak among its students. They’re the sort of people for whom things like “holding space” and “feeling seen” are paralyzing conundrums instead of useful frameworks in the fight for equity. The jokes at their expense start off strong but lose steam quickly, despite strong performances from a cast including Jessica Hecht and Thomas Middleditch.

The second is structural. About halfway through the play, the group hosts a live-streamed town hall to discuss options with the other parents, whose comments appear on a wall behind the cast (projected by David Bengali). The parents’ increasingly unhinged online behavior is wildly funny; Anna D. Shapiro’s staging receiving its biggest and most constant laughs as the audience waited for a new bubble to pop up. But though the onstage dialogue is largely irrelevant – they might as well be saying “rhubarb rhubarb,” I confirmed with the script later – I still felt I was robbed of a live experience. My mind also began to wander: How have parent-teacher relations shifted in the online age? Are parents acting out against educators, the way people might do anonymously on Twitter, and then still leaving their very real children in their care? Will we ever get a grip on our online actions?

It’s not that the play, which is set pre-Covid, fails to address this so much as it cannot bear its weight, and so bringing in that scene feels detrimental to both its experience and its message. I couldn’t bring myself to care much about the onstage antics after this, nor were any laughs fresher or louder. Parents will likely have greater laughs of recognition, but I found myself skimming over other tabs left open in my mind.

Annie - The Theater at Madison Square Garden

Whoopi Goldberg as Miss Hannigan! The beloved musical (book by Thomas Meehan, music and lyrics by Charles Strouse and Martin Charnin) is in fine shape in this touring production currently stationed at the gargantuan theater inside MSG. Though the space means the staging, directed by Jenn Thompson, must sacrifice some intimacy, Wilson Chin’s set and the to-the-rafters performances ensure the material gets its proper dues. (Ken Travis’ sound design, though, at least from where I was seated, amplified the orphans’ chorus to a level of shrillness I cannot recommend to the Uncle Jockos among us.)

Hazel Vogel is an unusually soulfully voiced Annie, who finds a sweet counterpart in Christopher Swan’s Daddy Warbucks and especially Julia Nicole Hunter’s sensational Grace. Savannah Fisher more than earned the applause she received throughout her terrific turn as Star-to-Be.

Despite underselling her own performance while promoting it on The View, Goldberg sang and sold her comic lines with much more gusto than I’d anticipated. She also offers a curious take on Hannigan, adopting a servile tone when speaking to those who held power over her character. It’s a curious (and, for a production otherwise unconcerned with matters of class and race, appropriate) choice that beefs up her involvement from stunt casting to star turn. If that View non-endorsement came from a place of shyness, then her performance here points at a promising future run of delightfully assured featured roles onstage.

Racecar Racecar Racecar – The Hearth at A.R.T./New York Theatres

A casualty of the Connelly Theatre shutting its doors to provocative plays, Kallan Dana’s reversible new play follows a daughter and father (Julia Greer and Bruce McKenzie) on a cross-country road trip from New York City to their native Sacramento. It’s a trip they’d done years before, and the play relishes in the palindromic: the two pass the time listing off examples and noting the things they’d experienced before that might be coming back to haunt them, like their at-times tense relationship to each other, and to alcohol. The reverse bits get increasingly more Lynchian, with backwards-playing music and surreal interactions with a ragged drifter (Ryan King), a pigtailed little girl (Camila Canó-Flaviá), and a Wendy’s employee named Wendy  (Jessica Frey, absolutely scene-stealing).

Brittany Vasta’s set is an enviable conversation pit around which characters walk and, against the upstage wall, cleverly flash lights through paper cutouts with city names (by Normandy Sherwood) to signpost the duo’s location. The road trip reaches an absurdist peak when Dana’s language leans hardest into word association to refract the daughter’s fractured mental state, which slowly reveals a more vulnerable core. The specificity of her trauma becomes a bit too confessionally therapeutic, bordering on therapy art, but Sarah Blush’s direction is brisk without undermining character or intention.

Eureka Day is in performance through January 19, 2025 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on West 47th Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.

Annie is in performance through January 5, 2025 at the Theater at Madison Square Garden at Pennsylvania Plaza in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.

Racecar Racecar Racecar is in performance through December 22, 2024 at A.R.T./New York Theatres on West 53rd Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.

CULT OF LOVE: American Dahlhouse — Review
Juan A. Ramirez
December 13, 2024

The template of the family reunion drama springs as eternal as the American myths it continues to address. Joining that lineage at the Broadway level is Leslye Headland’s Cult of Love, first performed in 2018 and now making its New York debut at the Hayes Theatre in a starry, captivating production directed by Trip Cullman. With great wit and gently gestured thematic breadth, it tackles the country’s thrall to its righteous, morally dubious origins through the contentious return of a deeply Christian Connecticut household’s offspring on Christmas Eve.

It opens with most of the Dahl family already assembled on John Lee Beatty’s cozily decorated living room set, snow idyllically dancing outside. The characters are plenty and easily distinguished, though not simplistic. Ginny (Mare Winningham) is the matriarch who downplays her husband Bill’s (David Rasche) deteriorating dementia in favor of the holiday’s nostalgic power. This, despite the fact that three of her four children keep contact to a minimum. There’s Mark (Zachary Quinto), a seminary-taught lawyer who now leads an urbane life with his Jewish-born wife, Rachel (Molly Bernard); Evie (Rebecca Henderson), the second eldest and most fed up, especially with how her conservative parents handle her recent marriage to Pippa (Roberta Colindrez); and Johnny (Christopher Sears), a recovering addict no one’s seen in years who, when he arrives with the last-minute addition of his younger friend, the heathenly Zillennial Loren (Barbie Ferreira), does so with child-like sugar-rush intensity.

Diana (Shailene Woodley), the youngest, married a cloying pastor, James (Christopher Lowell), and has been living with her parents as they prepare for the birth of their second child. With blonde, virginal locks and a faux-humble maternity gown, even Norman Rockwell would find her too much (kudos to Liz Printz’ hair and Sophia Choi’s costume design), and it’s clear she’ll be the one driving the ideological wedge between the family with the fixed smile of a street corner proselytizer. Despite stones being thrown from each house with increasing precision and destruction, Diana’s is the only one the parents seem to protect, much to the others’ chagrin. The performances are all-around sterling, with Ferreira and Woodley the most conspicuous of the debuting Broadway cast, alongside Bernard, Henderson, Lowell, and Sears.

__wf_reserved_inherit
The Company | Photo: Joan Marcus

The Dahls are predisposed to joining together in a number of Christian songs, as they so joyfully once did, and Headland relies a bit too heavily on this idea of the communal power of music to offer temporary reprieves from their arguments. (“Children, Go Where I Send Thee,” with its cumulative structure, seems to go on forever, though Loren hilariously cuts into that scene’s sickly sweetness by offering that many of these Christmas carols are “co-opted spirituals” originally sung by slaves.) But they are nicely sung and arranged and, as it happens, their contributing to the production’s sometimes lumpy pacing joins forces with the reunion’s discomfort to create an appropriately realistic gathering.

Mark is a similarly unsettled beast. For a while, it seems he is the least fleshed out of the characters, decidedly cosmopolitan yet never really taking a stance against his family’s judgments. But he delivers the sharpest, most clear-eyed reads, and is slowly unveiled to be, not poorly sketched, but rather the most conflicted. At the heart of Cult of Love is a bleak acknowledgement of the current existential impasse in the fight for America’s soul. The country loves its roots, however homicidally evangelical, enough to repeatedly reach across a chasm that has grown frustratingly vertical, from aisle to wall. No matter how many times their counterparts show where their values lie, the progressive Dahls continue to hope they will be validated in their efforts to recover the clan’s old glory, even as they appraise it in troubling terms. Mark emerges as the central figure caught in this battle: an American Orpheus, a lapsed Gatsby. Can’t repeat the past? Headland’s play deftly claims we’re doomed if we beat on.

Cult of Love is in performance through February 2, 2025 at the Hayes Theatre on West 44th Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.

Theatrely News
EXCLUSIVE: Watch A Clip From THEATER CAMP Starring Ben Platt, Noah Galvin, and Molly Gordon
Theatrely News
READ: An Excerpt From Sean Hayes Debut YA Novel TIME OUT
Theatrely News
"Reframing the COVID-19 Pandemic Through a Stage Manager’s Eyes"
EXCLUSIVE: Watch A Clip From THEATER CAMP Starring Ben Platt, Noah Galvin, and Molly Gordon
By: Maia Penzer
14 July 2023

Finally, summer has arrived, which can only mean one thing: it's time for camp! Theater Camp, that is. Theatrely has a sneak peak at the new film which hits select theaters today. 

The new original comedy starring Tony Award winner Ben Platt and Molly Gordon we guarantee will have you laughing non-stop. The AdirondACTS, a run-down theater camp in upstate New York, is attended by theater-loving children who must work hard to keep their beloved theater camp afloat after the founder, Joan, falls into a coma. 

The film stars Ben Platt and Molly Gordon as Amos Klobuchar and Rebecca-Diane, respectively, as well as Noah Galvin as Glenn Wintrop, Jimmy Tatro as Troy Rubinsky, Patti Harrison as Caroline Krauss, Nathan Lee Graham as Clive DeWitt, Ayo Edebiri as Janet Walch, Owen Thiele as Gigi Charbonier, Caroline Aaron as Rita Cohen, Amy Sedaris as Joan Rubinsky, and Alan Kim as Alan Park. 

Theater Camp was directed by Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman and written by Noah Galvin, Molly Gordon, Nick Lieberman & Ben Platt. Music is by James McAlister and Mark Sonnenblick. On January 21, 2023, Theater Camp had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.

You can purchase tickets to the new film from our friends at Hollywood.com here.

READ: An Excerpt From Sean Hayes Debut YA Novel TIME OUT
By: Kobi Kassal
29 May 2023

Actor Sean Hayes is what we in the biz call booked and blessed. On top of his Tony-nominated performance as Oscar Levant in Good Night, Oscar, Hayes has partnered with Todd Milliner and Carlyn Greenwald for the release of their new YA novel Time Out

Heralded by many as Heartstopper meets Friday Night Lights, Time Out follows hometown basketball hero Barclay Elliot who decides to use a pep rally to come out to his school. When the response is not what he had hoped and the hostility continually growing, he turns to his best friend Amy who brings him to her voting rights group at school. There he finds Christopher and… you will just have to grab a copy and find out what happens next. Luckily for you, Time Out hits shelves on May 30 and to hold you over until then we have a special except from the book just for Theatrely:

The good thing about not being on the team the past two weeks has been that I’ve had time to start picking up shifts again at Beau’s diner and save up a little for college now that my scholarship dreams are over.

     The bad part is it’s the perfect place to see how my actions at the pep rally have rotted the townspeople’s brains too.

     During Amy’s very intense musical theater phase in middle school, her parents took her to New York City. And of course she came back home buzzing about Broadway and how beautiful the piss smell was and everything artsy people say about New York. But she also vividly described some diner she waited three hours to get into where the waitstaff would all perform songs for the customers as a way to practice for auditions. The regulars would have favorite staff members and stan them the way Amy stans all her emo musicians.

     Working at Beau’s used to feel kind of like that, like I was part of a performance team I didn’t know I signed up for. The job started off pretty basic over the summer—I wanted to save up for basketball supplies, and Amy worked there and said it was boring ever since her e-girl coworker friend graduated. But I couldn’t get through a single lunch rush table without someone calling me over and wanting the inside scoop on the Wildcats and how we were preparing for the home opener, wanting me to sign an article in the paper or take a photo. Every friendly face just made the resolve grow inside me. People love and support the Wildcats; they would do the same for me.

     Yeah, right.

     Now just like school, customers have been glaring at me, making comments about letting everyone down, about being selfish, about my actions being “unfortunate,” and the tips have been essentially nonexistent. The Wildcats have been obliterated in half their games since I quit, carrying a 2–3 record when last year we were 5–0, and the comments make my feet feel like lead weights I have to drag through every shift.

     Today is no different. It’s Thursday, the usual dinner rush at Beau’s, and I try to stay focused on the stress of balancing seven milkshakes on one platter. A group of regulars, some construction workers, keep loudly wondering why I won’t come back to the team while I refuse proper eye contact.

     One of the guys looks up at me as I drop the bill off. “So, what’s the deal? Does being queer keep ya from physically being able to play?”

     They all snicker as they pull out crumpled bills. I stuff my hands into my pockets, holding my tongue.

     When they leave, I hold my breath as I take their bill.

     Sure enough, no tip.

     “What the fuck?” I mutter under my breath.

     “Language,” Amy says as she glides past me, imitating the way Richard says it to her every shift, and adds, “even though they are dicks.” At least Amy’s been ranting about it every free chance she gets. It was one thing when the student body was being shitty about me leaving the team, but the town being like this is even more infuriating. She doesn’t understand how these fully grown adults can really care that much about high school basketball and thinks they need a new fucking hobby. I finally agree with her.

     [She’s wearing red lipstick to go with her raccoon-adjacent eyeliner as she rushes off to prepare milkshakes for a pack of middle schoolers. I catch her mid–death glare as all three of the kids rotate in their chairs, making the old things squeal. My anger fades a bit as I can’t help but chuckle; Amy’s pissed-off reaction to Richard telling her to smile more was said raccoon makeup, and her tolerance for buffoonery has been at a negative five to start and declining fast.

     I rest my arms on the counter and try not to look as exhausted as I feel.

     “Excuse me!” an old lady screeches, making me jump.

     Amy covers up a laugh as I head to the old lady and her husband’s table. They’ve got finished plates, full waters. Not sure what the problem is. Or I do, which is worse.

     “Yes?” I say trying to suppress my annoyance.

     “Could you be bothered to serve us?”

     Only five more hours on shift. I have a break in three minutes. I’ll be with Devin at Georgia Tech tomorrow. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” I say, so careful to keep my words even, but I can feel my hands balling into fists. “What would you—?”

     And suddenly Amy swoops in, dropping two mugs of coffee down. “Sorry about that, you two,” she says, her voice extra high. “The machine was conking out on us, but it’s fine now.”

     Once the coffee is down, she hooks onto a chunk of my shirt, steering us back to the bar.

     “Thanks,” I mutter, embarrassed to have forgotten something so basic. Again.

     “Just keep it together, man,” she says. “Maybe you’d be better off with that creepy night shift where all the truckers and serial killers come in.”

     Honestly, at least the serial killers wouldn’t care about my jump shot.

     It’s a few minutes before my break, but clearly I need it. “I’ll be in the back room.”

     Right before I can head that way though, someone straight-up bursts into the diner and rushes over to me at the bar. It’s a middle-aged dad type, sunburned skin, beer belly, and stained T-shirt.

     “Pickup order?” I ask.

     “You should be ashamed,” he sneers at me. He has a really strong Southern accent, but it’s not Georgian. “Think you’re so high and mighty, that nothing’ll ever affect you? My kid’ll never go to college because of you and your lifestyle. Fuck you, Barclay Ell—”

     And before this man can finish cursing my name, Pat of all people runs in, wide-eyed in humiliation. “Jesus, Dad, please don’t—”

      I pin my gaze on him, remembering how he cowered on the bench as Ostrowski went off, how he didn’t even try to approach me. “Don’t even bother,” I snap.

     I shove a to-go bag into his dad’s arms, relieved it’s prepaid, and storm off to the break room.]

     Amy finds me head in my arms a minute or two later. I look up, rubbing my eyes. “Please spare me the pity.”

     She snorts and hands me a milkshake. Mint chocolate chip. “Wouldn’t dare.” She takes a seat and rolls her shoulders and neck, cracks sounding through the tiny room. “Do you want a distraction or a shoulder to cry on?”

For more information, and to purchase your copy of Time Out, click here.

Reframing the COVID-19 Pandemic Through a Stage Manager’s Eyes
By: Kaitlyn Riggio
5 July 2022

When the COVID-19 pandemic was declared a national emergency in the United States in March 2020, Broadway veteran stage manager Richard Hester watched the nation’s anxiety unfold on social media.

“No one knew what the virus was going to do,” Hester said. Some people were “losing their minds in abject terror, and then there were some people who were completely denying the whole thing.”

For Hester, the reaction at times felt like something out of a movie. “It was like the Black Plague,” he said. “Some people thought it was going to be like that Monty Python sketch: ‘bring out your dead, bring out your dead.’”

While Hester was also unsure about how the virus would unfold, he felt that his “job as a stage manager is to naturally defuse drama.” Hester brought this approach off the stage and onto social media in the wake of the pandemic.

“I just sort of synthesized everything that was happening into what I thought was a manageable bite, so people could get it,” Hester said. This became a daily exercise for a year. Over two years after the beginning of the pandemic, Hester’s accounts are compiled in the book, Hold Please: Stage Managing A Pandemic. Released earlier this year, the book documents the events of the past two years, filtering national events and day-to-day occurrences through a stage manager’s eyes and storytelling.

When Hester started this project, he had no intention of writing a book. He was originally writing every day because there was nothing else to do. “I am somebody who needs a job or needs a structure,” Hester said.

Surprised to find that people began expecting his daily posts, he began publishing his daily writing to his followers through a Substack newsletter. As his following grew, Hester had to get used to writing for an audience. “I started second guessing myself a lot of the time,” Hester said. “It just sort of put a weird pressure on it.”

Hester said he got especially nervous before publishing posts in which he wrote about more personal topics. For example, some of his posts focused on his experiences growing up in South Africa while others centered on potentially divisive topics, such as the 2020 election and the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Despite some of this discomfort, Hester’s more personal posts were often the ones that got the most response. The experience offered him a writing lesson. “I stopped worrying about the audience and just wrote what I wanted to write about,” Hester said. “All of that pressure that I think as artists we put on ourselves, I got used to it.”

One of Hester’s favorite anecdotes featured in the book centers on a woman who dances in Washington Square Park on a canvas, rain or shine. He said he was “mesmerized by her,” which inspired him to write about her. “It was literally snowing and she was barefoot on her canvas dancing, and that seems to me just a spectacularly beautiful metaphor for everything that we all try and do, and she was living that to the fullest.”

During the creation of Hold Please, Hester got the unique opportunity to reflect in-depth on the first year of the pandemic by looking back at his accounts. He realized that post people would not remember the details of the lockdown; people would “remember it as a gap in their lives, but they weren’t going to remember it beat by beat.”

“Reliving each of those moments made me realize just how full a year it was, even though none of us were doing anything outside,” he adds. “We were all on our couches.” Readers will use the book as a way to relive moments of the pandemic’s first year “without having to wallow in the misery of it,” he hopes.

“I talk about the misery of it, but that’s not the focus of what I wrote... it was about hope and moving forward,” Hester said. “In these times when everything is so difficult, we will figure out a way to get through and we will move forward.”

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