Olivia Drake
Randi Alexandra PlakeOn Nov. 2, Milk Like Sugar, a new play by Kirsten Greenidge ’96, premiered at the Mosaic Theater Company in Washington, D.C. Broadway World calls it a “rousing story about young women coming of age in a time when issues of acceptance, mentorship, and materialism challenge the dreams and ambitious of so many teens.” This production is a D.C. premiere, for both the play and for the playwright. Greenidge has had extensive production history around the country, but had yet to premiere a production in D.C. Greenidge, who majored in history at Wesleyan, was inspired to write the play "because…
Actor and director Kaneza Schaal ’06 returned to campus for her New England premiere of GO FORTH (2015), a series of vignettes with projection, sound, and dance inspired by the Egyptian Book of the Dead. The four performances took place over the past weekend to a sold-out audience. At a special lunch surrounded by a group of theater majors, one being GO FORTH ensemble member Cheyanne Williams ’17, Schaal explained how the Book of the Dead inspired her production: “I was drawn to the Book of the Dead after experiencing the loss of my father. I went to Rwanda for…
David LowSix-time Tony Award winner Jeffrey Richards ’69 is co-producing three exciting productions on Broadway this fall season. First up is a new revival of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, which begins previews on Thursday, Sept. 27, 2012 and opens on Saturday, Oct. 13 at the Booth Theatre (222 West 45th Street), exactly 50 years to the day of the play’s original opening. This alternately hilarious and devastating dissection of marriage and grief, directed by Tony Award nominee Pam MacKinnon (Clybourne Park), features Tracy Letts and Amy Morton—the playwright and the star of the Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning…
Cynthia RockwellPerformer, educator, and writer Una Aya Osato ’04, premieres LOL: The End, a three-person production (with her father and sister), at FRIGID NY Theater Festival in February. In her Kickstarter blog, Osato describes the production as “a funny and physical look at natural and human-made disasters through the eyes of three clowns: a place where tragedy meets comedy meets stupid.” The creator of several award winning one-woman shows, JapJAP, Recess, and Keep It Movin’, Osato has performed in theaters, classrooms, community organizations, prisons, and universities. Additionally, she has taught performing arts in elementary, middle, and high schools over the past…
The nationwide tour of the Tony award-winning Broadway musical In the Heights ended its run with a Wesleyan flourish. Andy Peretz ’84, inspired by the Wesleyan on Broadway alumni events, began organizing an event in Miami to celebrate with the local Wesleyan community at the Arsht Center Theater. In The Heights, created and composed by Lin-Manuel Miranda ’02, was directed by Thomas Kail ’99, who agreed to conduct a talk for the alumni at a special reception at the Miami performance on April 2. “What an amazingly articulate guy, so full of life,” says Peretz of Kail, who also directed…
A full-page feature article in the Jan. 22 Los Angeles Times praised designer Cameron Anderson '98 for her work for South Coast Repertory’s new production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Calling the scenic design “striking,” reviewer Charlotte Stoudt also praised Anderson for her use of light. Director Mark Rucker was quoted, also: “‘Usually you get to the forest and that’s it, visually, for a couple of acts. … But Cameron found a way for the forest to continually transform,’” he said. Anderson, who works in both theater and opera set design, explained, ‘”The fairies are constantly stealing things in the…
Bossa Nova, a play by Kirsten Greenidge ’96, recently had its world premiere opening at the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, where it runs through Dec.18. Greenidge’s play centers around Dee Paradis, a young African American woman who struggles to define herself under the watchful eyes of her mother and her jazz-loving white history teacher. The play moves around in time from the early 1980s to Dee’s school days a decade earlier and then back again. In her New York Times review of the play, Anita Gates wrote: “Ms. Greenidge has a lovely way with language and piercing insight…
Frank Wood ’84 is currently starring in the acclaimed off-Broadway revival of Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize- winning play Angels in America, which has been playing to sold-out houses at the Signature Theatre in Manhattan since opening this fall and runs through March 27. Set in New York City during the mid-’80s, this epic work follows the interconnected lives of several people affected by the AIDS crisis, intense spiritual experiences, and the Reagan Administration. Wood plays the demanding role of the closeted gay lawyer, Roy Cohn. Tony Award-winner Wood (more…)
[youtube width="640" height="420"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLu1ukpooyA[/youtube] Wesleyan scored a winning touchdown with a Nov. 16 benefit presentation of the new Broadway play Lombardi before a sell-out crowd of nearly 700 alumni, staff, faculty, students and friends at Manhattan's Circle in the Square Theater. The event, part of the Wesleyan on Broadway series, raised $312,000 for financial aid and athletics. View the entire Lombardi photo album online here. Directed by Thomas Kail '99, Lombardi portrays key moments in the life of legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi. Kail previously directed the Tony Award-winning musical In the Heights, which was created and composed by Wesleyan contemporary Lin-Manuel…
Halley Feiffer ’07 may have her juiciest acting role yet in the new off-Broadway play, Tigers Be Still, which opened this week at the Roundabout Theater Company’s Black Box Theater. The Sam Gold-directed play was written by Kim Rosenstock. Feiffer says, “I play Sherry, a 24-year-old art therapist who is emerging from a six-month-long depression as she embarks on her first job, teaching art to Middle School children and working on the side as an art therapist with a troubled young man. Though my depression has lifted, my life is still in shambles—I live with my sister who is always…
Jeffrey Lane ’76 is the book writer for a new Broadway musical, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, based on the Spanish film of the same name directed by master filmmaker, Pedro Almodovar. The musical deals with love and abandonment in 1980s Madrid and stars Patti LuPone, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Sherie Rene Scott, and Laura Benanti. The show is directed by Bartlett Sher (South Pacific, The Light in the Piazza), and the composer and lyricist is David Yazbek, who previously worked with Lane on the hit Broadway musical, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, also adapted from a film. Lane was…