Latest news with #NewYorkTheatreWorkshop
Vogue
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Vogue
After 'Lights Out,' The Beauty Is On
Backstage at the New York Theatre Workshop's Lights Out: Nat 'King' Cole, the 14-person cast is buzzing. They have just finished a fabulous performance, and now it's time for part two: A celebratory after-party. But their first stop—okay, the first stop is to wipe off all that stage makeup—the next stop is the Valentino Beauty glam room, where full glam moments are happening pre-cast party. 'After these weeks, we have really gelled together as a cast,' Krystal Joy Brown, who took on the legendary roles of Eartha Kitt and Natalie Cole in the show, tells me before she goes in for her glam. 'The message we want to send is, as Eartha says, 'joie de vivre,' like live your life. Be joyous in your pursuit of more, for greater, for speaking your truth, being open, honest, and vulnerable.' It's a message that permeates throughout the powerful show, in fact. Written by Vogue cover star and Academy Award nominee Colman Domingo and Patricia McGregor, Lights Out: Nat 'King' Cole takes a look at the singer on the night of his final television broadcast, and what its cancellation really means. 'This show gives a voice to people and topics that were voiceless back in the 1950s,' Brown says as they are calling her name. It's her turn to step into the spotlight again (this time, a ring light) so she can move on to the party. 'This is a very vulnerable piece. Although we're talking about people who are no longer with us, the message and the plight that they went through is something that we're still going through today.'
Forbes
13-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
The Steinberg Playwright Awards: Celebrating Writers Illuminating The Future Of American Theater
From left: Mfoniso Udofia and Christina Anderson 'What do you do for joy?' Mfoniso Udofia was a student at Wellesley College, firmly convinced she was on the lawyer track, when an insightful dean posed that simple, yet enlightening, question. And Udofia's universe shifted in a colossal way. 'That question changed everything,' says the playwright whose plays like Sojourners, runboyrun, Her Portmanteau and In Old Age have been developed and performed throughout the United States. 'I believe the subtext was: What if the thing that brings you joy could also be your career?' She started singing, then acting, then writing. 'Just saying 'yes' to what felt right,' says Udofia. Although the seed was planted, it still took time to discover she had to be an artist. 'Even after writing my first play, the Grove, I didn't fully claim the title of 'writer,' says Udofia who graduated in 2009, in the midst of the Great Recession, and was terrified of not going to law school nor choosing a 'traditional' career, especially when she had no money nor idea how to make this life work. 'It took years. I was doing the work long before I ever let myself say, I'm a writer. The realization wasn't a lightning bolt—it was a slow burn.' While Udofia's entry into playwriting was 'a slow burn,' her artistry caught fire. A first-generation Nigerian-American storyteller and educator, her plays have been seen at New York Theatre Workshop, American Conservatory Theater, Playwrights Realm, Magic Theater, National Black Theatre, The Huntington, Round House Theatre, Strand Theater, and Boston Court. She has written for the shows 13 Reasons Why, A League of Their Own, Pachinko, Little America and Lessons in Chemistry. She has also developed films for HBO, Legendary, and Amazon. Most recently, Udofia—along with acclaimed playwright Christina Anderson—received the 2024 Steinberg Playwright Award. Presented by the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, each year the 'Mimi' Awards are given to early and mid-career playwrights with compelling voices who display artistic excellence and illuminate American theater. Devoted to nurturing playwrights, the trust has given over $100 million to theater organizations, with a particular focus on new play commissions, development, and production. 'The Steinberg Trust is dedicated to shining a light on distinctive and powerful voices, and to investing in the future of American playwriting,' said Steinberg trustee Carole Krumland who went on to add that Anderson and Udofia are 'two brilliant playwrights whose transcendent and transformative work will continue to inspire and inform the future of this art form.' For Anderson, a prolific playwright whose work has been performed at The Acting Company, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Geva Theatre, Portland Center Stage, Baltimore Center Stage, Kansas City Repertory Theatre and Yale Repertory Theatre, the award has been seismic. 'In these uncertain times, the Steinberg Playwright Award is a life-changing gift of freedom and artistic stillness to create and dream,' said Anderson. In addition to writing plays like the Ripple, the Wave That Carried Me Home, How to Catch Creation, Man in Love, Good Goods, the Ashes Under Gait City, Hollow Roots, Blacktop Sky, and pen/man/ship, Anderson is also a gifted TV writer and screenwriter who produces hip hop instrumentals. And now, more than ever, the 'Mimi' Awards seem particularly vital. Especially when it's harder to be an artist. 'These awards ensure that those who document our humanity—who help us make sense of it, who remind us, and call us to our greater selves—can afford to keep doing so,' says Mfoniso. 'Security and certainty are rarely reliable, but those elements feel especially tenuous now,' shares Anderson. 'This award is a stable force that helps an artist stay the course.' As Mfoniso observes, the world needs storytellers. 'Theater artists hold a mirror to the world, especially in the most topsy-turvy of times. And we are in the midst of some of the strangest—and potentially most dangerous—moments in history,' she says. 'As certain sectors of our community struggle to negotiate what 'the truth' actually is, as cruelty becomes the currency du jour, and as portions of society willfully forget that our humanity is something to be tendered and cultivated—instead of nurturing empathy, a skill and ultimate goal, not a weakness—artists become both the memory and the chroniclers of pathways forward.' Jeryl Brunner: Can you share when you got word that you won the Mimi Steinberg award? Mfoniso Udofia: I was actually out of the country with my partner and some friends when I got the email. It was from Deb [Deborah] Martin, who introduced herself as the Administrative Director of the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Trust, asking if I had five to ten minutes to talk. My stomach dropped—in the best way—because you don't get emails like that unless they're really good. My partner saw my face as we stood in this overseas clothing store, and I just froze. I was cycling through every emotion—excitement, overwhelm, absolute joy—while also trying to steady myself. But I replied immediately because, yes, I had 5–10 minutes. In fact, I had 30. I had an hour. I had the whole that day, Deb and I got on the phone, and she told me the news. After I hung up, I screamed, fully leaning into the moment and letting the feeling take over. Christina Anderson: When I received the call, I thought it was an invitation to be on the selection panel—which I was super excited to say yes to. It never occurred to me that I may have won anything. Deborah was like, 'the panel has already convened, and they've selected you!' I stood in my living room, speechless. Brunner: How will this award help you continue to be an artist? Anderson: It provides the breathing room to explore dream projects. I've already written a play that I don't think I would've written before receiving this award. I've carried the idea for almost ten years. But there's always this quiet pressure to write something marketable and fairly accessible. So, I'd gravitate towards other ideas in that lane. But this most recent play is a true passion project. This award ushers in what I hope to be a new phase in my writing. Udofia: Theater—God bless it—is my heart, but it does not always pay well. I'm currently mounting all nine plays of my Ufot Cycle in the Boston area over the next two years. It's a huge undertaking, and I feel incredibly blessed to have productions happening. But practically speaking? This money will help me sustain. It gives me breathing room to focus on the work. Brunner: What is some of the best writing advice you have received? Anderson: Paula Vogel told me, 'Be your own adjective.' It's maverick speak, and I love it. It's just an awesome piece of advice because there's freedom in it and power and strength. A Christina Anderson play is its own adventure. It's inspired by the things that inspires me. I define what's lifted up. Who's lifted up. My theatrical sensibility is filled with curiosity, poetry, possibility, and I try to instill that vision into each play I write. That sensibility also nourishes me to write the next one, and the next one, and the next. Brunner: Mfoniso, in the New York Times, you said that you are determined to show the nuances of African immigrant experiences—'that the continent isn't tragic, and its people aren't broken.' Can you share more? Udofia: I often teach from Binyavanga Wainaina's How to Write About Africa, a satirical takedown of how the continent is often depicted in literature. The first time I read it, I laughed—and then realized I was bleeding. Because so much of what I had seen followed that same tired script. I'm not afraid to write about pain—several of my plays tackle difficult themes—but I'm also invested in joy. In laughter. In eros, when sparks fly between two people and a whole new world begins. In healing, when trauma doesn't remain the defining factor in a character's life. I'm drawn to the African everyman—the Nigerian immigrant whose struggles, triumphs, and everyday moments are deeply human. The nuances might be different, but the core of the story? It's something we all recognize. Brunner: Christina, can you talk more about the book you are working on that explores playwriting as an accessible artistic life practice? Anderson: Being a Black woman writing the type of plays that I write, it's been a tricky journey navigating people's assumptions and expectations of how my stories should move and breathe on stage. I'm definitely not inventing the wheel, but I am stretching my ideas about how to move a story forward, how to capture and manipulate time on stage, how do we explore an immense history in an intimate theatrical setting. I braid the speculative and evidential into the lives of my characters to hopefully ignite conversation at a molecular level, a nuance level. And I'm also really committed to telling a good story. Can we see ourselves and see the world in these plays, on this stage. My plays, my playwriting practice is my activism that has made me a lifelong scholar. I'm writing a book that will explore this way of writing and, again, hopefully, encourages others to consider writing plays for their communities, their families, their circles, themselves.
Yahoo
24-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Denzel Washington Has ‘Absolutely' Been in Talks for an ‘Othello' Film Adaptation
Denzel Washington may be bringing his version of 'Othello' to the screen. Washington stars alongside Jake Gyllenhaal in the Broadway play, which has been in previews since February 24. 'Othello' opened March 23 and runs through June 8. The play already broke the record for the highest weekly gross ever by earning $2.8 million in its second week. Now, director Kenny Leon is teasing that the historic Shakespeare retelling could lead to a film. More from IndieWire Pixar's Pete Docter Says 'Toy Story' Was an Unexpected Hit: We Were All 'Nerds' Making It in Our 'Garage' Lizzo to Star in Biopic on 'Godmother of Rock & Roll' Sister Rosetta Tharpe Leon told The Hollywood Reporter that there has 'absolutely' been talks with Washington about adapting the play into a feature. Leon previously has collaborated with Washington on two other plays, 'A Raisin in the Sun' and 'Fences,' which Washington then later directed the film version of. When asked if Gyllenhaal would also potentially reprise his role for an 'Othello' film, Leon said, 'I would hope so, absolutely, that's what I would hope would happen.' Leon's 'Othello' is set in 'The Near Future,' with Iago (Gyllenhaal) manipulating the titular Othello (Washington) into thinking that his wife, Desdemona (Molly Osborne), is having an affair. This is the first Broadway production of 'Othello' in more than 40 years, though Daniel Craig and David Oyelowo co-starred in a staging at New York Theatre Workshop off-Broadway between 2016 and 2017. 'It's important for today because, for 100s of years, we're still dealing with ourselves. Humanity is still struggling with itself,' Leon said. 'This play is about pure love but what happens to pure love when there's rumors and lies and jealousy. And all that's timely for every generation.' He added that a play and a film are 'two different art forms' but the story of 'Othello' will have 'the same truth' in either form. 'We're trying to get this up first,' Leon said of the play. The Variety review cited the respective star power of Washington and Gyllenhaal onstage. 'These scenes capitalize on all 70 of Washington's years on this Earth, as he looms over Desdemona and speaks with an authority his misguided beliefs have not earned,' the review reads. 'That Washingtonian authority demonstrates the production's one big idea — to place two big stars at the center of the stage and trust that their talent and charisma will carry the day. And, for the most part, they do; no fan of Washington or of Gyllenhaal will leave disappointed in the actors. Leon lets his two stars cook, but hasn't stocked the production with anything to give what they're doing any flavor.' Washington recently led another Shakespeare film adaptation, Joel Coen's 2021 feature 'The Tragedy of Macbeth.' He will next star in Spike Lee's 'Highest 2 Lowest.' 'Othello' has been brought to the screen before, most (in)famously with the 1965 version which starred Laurence Olivier as the titular character. Olivier received an Oscar nomination for his performance; however, he was in blackface to play Othello. Best of IndieWire Guillermo del Toro's Favorite Movies: 56 Films the Director Wants You to See 'Song of the South': 14 Things to Know About Disney's Most Controversial Movie The 55 Best LGBTQ Movies and TV Shows Streaming on Netflix Right Now
Boston Globe
18-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
A family haunted by history in Udofia's ‘runboyrun'
The actors were ranged horizontally across the stage, facing the audience at the Huntington Theatre, with scripts on music stands in front of them. Director Christopher V. Edwards sat onstage to the left of the actors as, in a measured voice, he narrated the overarching elements of the narrative and recited Udofia's stage directions. The format was distracting at first, but the lack of a full staging ended up mattering less than expected. The cast's all-out performances gave 'runboyrun' a steadily accumulating power, along with Udofia's script. Advertisement What a gifted writer she is, possessed of the ability and discipline to delve into the mysteries of human behavior while mining a vein of lyricism, even poetry. The Ufot Family Cycle is a project of considerable scope: More than 35 arts organizations will be involved in productions of the plays in the next two years. Loretta Greco, who is now artistic director at The Huntington, produced the world premiere of 'runboyrun' in 2016 at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco. Three years later, Greco directed a production of the play at New York Theatre Workshop. The play dramatizes the lasting effects of wartime trauma as it moves back and forth in time between Worcester, Massachusetts, in 2012, and Nigeria in 1968, when it's convulsed by civil war. You couldn't help but think of Ukraine, of Israel, of Gaza, of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, of the immense suffering war has caused in so many times and places, of what one character in 'runboyrun' calls 'the broken pieces of the world.' Advertisement The play begins in 1968 in Nigeria, where a woman identified as Sister (the vibrantly alive and altogether astonishing Abigail C. Onwunali, building further on her remarkable performances in ' The war, which is in its second year when the play takes place, had erupted when the state of Biafra, mainly inhabited by the Igbo people, declared independence from Nigeria. Boy seldom speaks, but Osuala communicates the character's fear and grief by repeatedly tapping her chest – a gesture that just breaks your heart. (Later, we're also introduced to Mother, portrayed by Ngozi Anyanwu, and her first-born son, Benjamin, played by Tosin Morohunfola.) Tosin Morohunfola and Ngozi Anyanwu in "runboyrun." Annielly Camargo Then the action shifts to Worcester in 2012, where the marriage between Abasiama (played by Udofia) and Disciple (Chike Johnson), both Nigerian immigrants, is on the verge of collapse. Abasiama senses that Disciple has told her only a portion of the story of his life, and sees that as undercutting their chance at true intimacy. Unbeknownst to him, Abasiama is applying for a job as a researcher at a university. Disciple, meanwhile, is a welter of insecurities. Even though his contract to teach African history at another college has been renewed, he is humiliated by student complaints about what they claim is his odor. Beyond that, he's in a state of high agitation, fretting about a door that mysteriously opened and a computer that went on the fritz, and also by the sensation that something is on his leg. Abasiama is clearly exhausted by him, but Disciple insists: 'There is an energy. Something lives in here with us. Has been living here.' Advertisement Udofia's presence in the cast was a fascinating aspect of 'runboyrun' on Friday night. How often do you get to see a playwright performing in her own work, interacting with the characters she created and speaking the dialogue she wrote? It turns out that, along with everything else, Udofia is quite a fine actor. And from the way the past flows in and around the present in 'runboyrun,' she clearly understands that remembrance is not optional. It's an obligation. Or, as Disciple puts it: 'I have not forgotten. And even if I try to forget? Even if I try to forget, it is in the blood.' RUNBOYRUN Play by Mfoniso Udofia. Adapted for audio play by Catherine Eaton. Directed by Christopher V. Edwards. Produced as an audio play adaptation by The Huntington and Next Chapter Podcasts in partnership with GBH and Boston Public Library. Review of performance on March 14 at the Huntington Theatre. Don Aucoin can be reached at
Yahoo
30-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘During wartime, you also do laundry': a new play brings the experience of war in Gaza to the US
'How far can you run in five minutes?' It's a critical question the actor and writer Khawla Ibraheem asks the audience during her solo show A Knock on the Roof. The play follows Miriam, played by Ibraheem, a young mother training to survive an Israeli bombing in Gaza. 'A quarter of a mile,' someone replies. Miriam meditates for a beat. 'That's really slow, you know,' she says as the audience laughs. A Knock on the Roof is a blunt and poignant work, named after the Israeli military's practice of 'roof knocking', in which residents are notified by a warning bomb that they have just five to 15 minutes to evacuate before a larger missile flattens their homes. The play, which opened Monday at the New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW) as part of the Under the Radar festival, brims with love, wry humor and grief as it follows Miriam's obsessive training to leave her home. In the 85-minute show, Miriam sets a series of five-minute timers and rehearses how she, her son and her elderly mother will flee from their seventh-floor apartment after the 'roof knock': down the stairs, as the elevator will be out of order; past Yasmeen, her know-it-all neighbor on the third floor; over the loose floor tile in the stairwell; and, finally, out the door. Along with the anxiety of the impending roof knock, the solo show includes other details about Miriam's life under Israeli occupation, including how she raises her young son while her husband studies abroad. For instance, she spends long stretches of time waiting for the electricity to be restored, which Miriam comments on as she monologues about the other frustrations of her day. The shelled-out buildings in her neighborhood are rendered via eerie projections, juxtaposed with colorful umbrellas and an expansive beach. These specifics aren't written voyeuristically. They're simply facts of Miriam's life, just like Miriam's expansive facial routine or her nosy mother or her adorable but stubborn six-year-old son. 'We don't get the story of those people that survived this war [and] their experience,' Ibraheem told the Guardian. 'And about the fact that during wartime, you can also do laundry or laugh with your mother and son, or you need to do daily things to survive.' Miriam, a fictional character, is a culmination of Ibraheem's research, dozens of conversations with people from Gaza and others who have experienced war, and dashes of Ibraheem's own life to fill in differences between the two. Miriam 'is a fighter. She's strong. Not only in terms of a war,' said Ibraheem. She is 'basically a single mother raising a child in an impossible place alone, and she's making the best out of it'. Miriam and Ibraheem overlap in significant ways: their proclivity towards sarcasm and their experience with war. 'I come from a place where war has recently become a state of mind,' said Ibraheem, who's Syrian and lives in the Israeli-occupied, annexed Golan Heights. Though she hasn't experienced a 'roof knock', which mainly happens in Gaza, Ibraheem felt compelled to write about the subject, as she empathized with people 'paying the price of a war [they're] not a part of', Ibraheem said, calling Golan Heights' situation a 'soft occupation'. 'I never saw a tank in the state of the Golan Heights. I never needed to run from a soldier,' she said. But, farmers in the Golan Heights struggle with the cost of water and maintaining the land, while Israeli settlers enjoy such privileges for free. Residents of Golan Heights cannot enter Syria due to border restrictions, but they can visit Palestine. 'This is like a historical coincidence that I'm in touch with the Palestinian people,' Ibraheem said. Still, Ibraheem and her community have experienced the violence of war. On 27 July 2023, 12 children were killed by a rocket while playing on a football field in Majdal Shams. 'When a rocket lands, [it] does not know how it's killing and why it's killing,' she said of the tragic event. 'We experienced the loss of the war between Israel and Hezbollah, although we are not part of [that] war.' Ibraheem first conceived of A Knock on the Roof in 2014 after reading an article about people in Gaza packing preparation bags in case of missile strikes. Inspired, she wrote a 10-minute monologue, called 'what does it do to you when you know that in five to 15 minutes your house will be gone', Ibraheem said. In 2021, Ibraheem and the director Oliver Butler further developed the excerpt into a full-length play, using Miriam's evacuation drills as the through-line. 'What I saw was just a really clear engine for a story and the beginnings of a character who might become consumed with preparation,' said Butler of Ibraheem's early idea. The fact that the play remains relevant more than 10 years later is 'terrifying', said Ibraheem. Ibraheem and Butler, who called Ibraheem a 'theater soulmate', have remained in close collaboration after first meeting in 2019 at the now defunct Sundance Theatre Lab in Park City, Utah. Ibraheem was developing a comedy called London Jenin in collaboration with the Freedom Theatre, a Palestinian community theater in the Jenin refugee camp. The play focuses on two Palestinians in a UK immigration office practicing their entrance interviews while debating on relocating to London versus remaining in their homeland. Ibraheem's work, Butler said, often includes themes of 'trappedness, freedom and rehearsal'. Related: If you want to know how free a society is, look at what's happening in its theatres | Arifa Akbar In May 2023, Butler, who is from Connecticut and lives in New York, visited Ibraheem in Golan Heights to continue working on A Knock on the Roof. The trip proved a 'creative dream' but a 'massive education', Butler said. When he first arrived, seven people in Gaza were killed by an Israeli rocket, putting the entire region 'on the verge of war'. Performing a reading of A Knock on the Roof in Ramallah, located in the West Bank, exposed Butler firsthand to checkpoints. An avid hiker, he was walking up a mountain when he came across a menacing sign, which read: 'Go no further. Landmines [ahead].' 'What feels like such a safe, beautiful place full of family and art also has minefields all around,' he said. The play almost didn't happen several times due to safety concerns in the region, said Ibraheem. 'Flights are canceled and war is happening,' she said. 'Suddenly, the safety of being in a theater stopped being so taken for granted.' With the show now making its US premiere at NYTW, Ibraheem and Butler say that audiences have generally received the show positively. But some people have complained, claiming that the show is antisemitic because it features a Palestinian protagonist. 'Are we saying that the existence of a character who's Palestinian is dangerous or offensive?' said Butler. 'If a character can't exist on stage like this, then you're saying that that person should not be allowed to exist.' Patricia McGregor, the NYTW artistic director, said the theater had caught flak for debuting A Knock on the Roof. 'I remember seeing somebody [online] saying: 'Oh, you're doing this antisemitic play,'' McGregor said. 'And I think that assumption [comes from] doing a play that centers a mother in Gaza, living her life and trying to make sure her child survives, an assumption which is just not true.' NYTW has a longstanding, although imperfect, relationship with Palestinian artwork and artists. Noor Theatre, which supports Middle Eastern artists, is an NYTW company-in-residence, and in 2012, NYTW put on the group's Food and Fadwa, a dramedy about a Palestinian family living near Bethlehem. In December 2024, the playwright Victor I Cazares, a former NYTW artist-in-residence, launched an HIV-medicine strike after the theater did not call for a ceasefire; the protest caused a storm of controversy, with criticism lodged both at NYTW and Cazares. 'I think there was an unfortunate avalanche of feelings and assumptions about what political alignment was happening,' said McGregor. 'There were differing opinions about what strategies we use to try to get people to pay attention and to change hearts and minds.' Programming artwork like Ibraheem's, McGregor said, is among the most effective things a theater can do to spark conversations and reach across divides. For Ibraheem, A Knock on the Roof provides a rare opportunity to capture the intimacy of wartime alongside the everyday emotions: fear, irritation, joy. One of the most magical moments, she said, is when audiences laugh with Miriam and her attempts to juggle it all. 'I don't want people to sit in on the play and be in solidarity with me,' she said. 'I want them to sit there and to be with me, and once they laugh, I feel that they are with me.'
