Celebrating the Year of the Female Playwright in B-N in 2014

There has been a lot of controversy about the lack of representation for female playwrights on American stages. I don't know if it was on purpose or just a happy accident, but Bloomington-Normal knocked it out of the park when it came to showcasing the work of female playwrights in 2014. From The Diary of Anne Frank back in January to Falling by Deanna Jent, which closed just before Thanksgiving, from stories told in ten minutes to one acts and full-length plays, we had a chance to see -- right here in Bloomington-Normal -- 21 different plays written by women, two plays co-written by women, and three musicals with music, lyrics or books written or co-written by women.

Last spring, Illinois State University gave us Diana Son's Stop Kiss, directed by Leah Cassella for Westhoff Theatre, followed by Exonerated, a "true crime" documentary piece written by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen and directed by Cyndee Brown, and Mrs. Packard, a look at a particularly dark moment in women's history written by Emily Mann and directed by Vanessa Stalling for ISU's Center for the Performing Arts.

This fall, ISU came back with In the Next Room (or the Vibrator Play) by Sarah Ruhl, directed by David Ian Lee for the CPA, with an amazing set design by Jen Kazmierczak; Water by the Spoonful, Quiara Alegria Hudes's 2012 Pulitzer Prize winner, directed by Cassella in Westhoff; and By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, from Lynn Nottage, another Pulitzer winner, directed by Don LaCasse for the CPA.

Over at Heartland, the April play was Iron, by Scottish playwright Rona Munro, a searing look at a daughter trying to reconnect with the mother she can't remember, a mother who is in prison for killing Dad fifteen years ago. Claire BonEnfant, Nancy Halper and Brigitte Viellieu-Davis won slots in Heartland's 10-Minute Play Festival, while Lori Matthews and Pamela Devon Lovell wrote winning one-acts produced as New Plays from the Heartland. And this fall, Heartland staged Julia Cho's The Language Archive, directed by Kathleen Kirk, and Deanna Jent's Falling, directed by Lori Adams, who had also directed the play in its St. Louis premiere and its off-Broadway transfer. Jent's intensely personal play was a shot right to the heart of playgoers.

New Route Theatre continued its mission to showcase underrepresented voices by bringing back The Mountaintop, Katori Hall's play about the last night in the life of Martin Luther King, and then offering Johnna Adams' mother/teacher showdown Gidion's Knot; Full Bloom, a reunion play by Leola Bellamy, Erica Thurman's Flashbacks; and Walking with My Ancestors, a journey into the past told in song, dance and the spoken word, written by ISU professor Ama Oforiwaa Aduonu.

Community Players brought us The Diary of Anne Frank, an adaptation of Anne's own words for the stage originally written by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett and updated by Wendy Kesselman; the musical 9 to 5, with music and lyrics by Dolly Parton and book by Patricia Resnick, and Shrek: The Musical, with music by Jeanine Tesori and lyrics and book by David Lindsay-Abaire.

Illinois Wesleyan University offered 12 Ophelias by Caridad Svich and The Drowsy Chaperone, a delightful 1920s musical spoof with music and lyrics co-written by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison.

The newest theatrical venture in town, the bar plays called Sticky in the Sticks, also featured work by women, in the tradition of Sticky founder Libby Emmons. The Normal version of Sticky gave us pieces by Emmons herself as well as Jeanine Jones in its December show.

All in all, it was a very good year.  More than two dozen different women with very different voices, all represented on stages in our home town.

The work isn't done, of course. It seems unlikely this will happen two years in a row, let alone three or four. But for now, for Bloomington-Normal in 2014, we can congratulate ourselves on quietly, happily getting it done. Here's to moe of the same in 2015!

New Route Climbs Back to Katori Hall's MOUNTAINTOP

New Route Theatre and director Don Shandrow have decided to bring their production of Katori Hall's The Mountaintop back one more time for area audiences.The image you see here is from their previous production in 2013, so pay no attention to those dates! The new dates are January 31, and February 1-9. But the venue is the same -- the McLean County YWCA on Hershey in Bloomington -- and you can still email new.route.theatre@gmail.com or call 309-827-7330 for reservations. Tickets are $10.

Hall's play imagines Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the last night of his life at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He is visited by a hotel maid who brings coffee and stays for conversation that ranges from the mundane to the spiritual. The Mountaintop has become a spiritual phenomenon for playgoers, too, as they've flocked to see it in London, Broadway and regional productions.

New Route last performed The Mountaintop in February 2013, featuring Gregory D. Hick as Dr. King and Fania Bourn as Camae, the maid who is not necessarily what she appears to be. They will both be back for this 2014 version, and that's Bourn at left in character.

The Mountaintop opens in New Route's YWCA space on January 31, 2014. For more information on this production, you can visit the event's Facebook page here.

THE MOUNTAINTOP Continues This Weekend at New Route Theatre

I apologize for being under the weather and seriously late with info that you must have to celebrate your February properly.

So, apologies to New Route Theatre, which opened its production of Katori Hall's The Mountaintop last week. Hall's play imagines what might have happened in the last night in the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., if he'd had the opportunity to ponder life, cigarettes and his earthly and heavenly missions with a lively debating partner -- the maid who brings his room service -- in his room at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis.

Early reports are that this is a terrific production, starring Gregory D. Hicks as the Reverend King and Fania Bourn as the maid, under the direction of New Route Artistic Director Don Shandrow. Fans have taken to the event's Facebook page to call it "terrific work" and note it was a "powerful presentation and a moving experience."

Performances of The Mountaintop continue Friday, Saturday and Sunday this week and next. Friday and Saturday performances are scheduled for a 7:30 pm curtain, while Sunday matinees will be at 2:30 pm.

You can secure tickets by emailing new.route.theatre@gmail.com or by visiting the New Route Facebook page. Or you can purchase them at the door on the night of performance.

New Route Climbs to THE MOUNTAINTOP

As New Route Theatre gears up for the last production of their 2012-13 season, they are also celebrating their accomplishments from 2012.

It was a very good year for New Route, moving into a new space in the YWCA on Hershey Road in Bloomington, producing shows with longer runs, adding the Word Weavers writing program for seniors and still keeping the One Shot Deal series alive at the Eaton Gallery. That's a lot of production for one small, fairly new company! But, after all, New Route has a mission. What is the mission? To do professional quality theatre using a broad spectrum of artists who represent the community in all of its diversity.

As Artistic Director Don Shandrow notes, "If you look at our 2012-2013 season that reaches its summit with The Mountaintop you will see ten productions, across all of our programs, that reflect the diversity of this community."

He explains: "Of these ten productions, three were compilation scripts. Of the seven remaining scripts, six were by women playwrights. Of those six, one was by a Palestinian-American woman and the remaining three by African-American women.

"As we move forward into 2013 and beyond, it is our intent to build on this foundation as we work toward an even more diverse and inclusive theatre company."

And about that Mountaintop... Katori Hall's play about the last night in the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. premiered in London in 2009 in a much-acclaimed production directed by James Dacre with British actor David Harewood as Dr. King, then hit Broadway in 2011 with Samuel L. Jackson in the lead role. Jackson's costar was Oscar nominee Angela Bassett.

Katori Hall, Samuel L. Jackson, Angela Bassett and Kenny Leon, who directed the Broadway Mountaintop, each did a brief video piece about the play if you'd like to learn more.

Don Shandrow will direct The Mountaintop for New Route, with Gregory D. Hicks as his Dr. King. Hicks has been involved with New Route Theatre with productions like Fabulation, which he directed and acted in last year, and with area theaters like Heartland Theatre Company, where he played young poet Franco Hicks in Superior Donuts last spring. He's also worked with the Black Actors Guild at Illinois State University, directing The Mystical Willie Lynch in February, 2011.

Fania Bourne will star opposite Hicks as Camae, a mysterious maid who brings coffee to King's hotel room on that last day and begins a conversation with him about life, death, what it is to come up short, and what it means to dream big. The name Camae is a nickname for Carrie Mae. Or perhaps "Carry Me."

Bourne has also appeared before with New Route, most recently in Fat Jack's, a One Shot Deal show in 2011.

The Mountaintop will begin performances at 7:30 pm on February 8th, continuing with 7:30 shows on the 9th, 15th, 16th, 22nd and 23rd, and 2:30 pm matinees on February 10th, 17th and 24th. New Route's performances of The Mountaintop will take place at the YWCA of McLean County, which is located at 1201 North Hershey Road in Bloomington. Tickets can be reserved by e-mailing new.route.theatre@gmail.com.

For more information about New Route Theatre and their entire schedule, you can visit their Facebook page here.

HOODOO LOVE a Fabulous Debut for Chicago's Collective Theatre

Chicago's Collective Theatre, a new company created by six friends* who attended Thornridge High School in the 90s, has made an amazing debut with a beautifully composed, aggressively staged production of Katori Hall's Hoodoo Love.

It's not easy for a brand-new company to find its footing the first time out, which makes this production, directed by Nelsan Ellis, one of the founders of the Collective Theatre as well as one of the stars of HBO's True Blood, all the more remarkable. The drama, the performances and the production values are right where they should be, indicating that the Collective Theatre knows what it's doing and where it's headed.

Hoodoo Love is playing inside a small performance space at the Atheneum Theatre on Chicago's north side, with a cast of ten and a detailed, atmospheric set that packs a whole lot of punch in such intimate surroundings. Ellis's direction is sure and sharply focused, with vivid stage pictures that showcase just how good his actors are.

Hall's script doesn't take the easy route, either, with poetic, powerful storytelling centered on a desperate young woman living in a shack somewhere around Memphis. Toulou does domestic work washing clothes, but she wants to sing the blues on Beale Street. She also wants to own the heart of a rambling blues man named Ace of Spades who has a girl in every town the train stops. It's her desire to capture his heart and keep it forever that fuels the play's darkest moments, when Toulou turns to the neighbor conjure-woman, Candy Lady, to make her dreams come true.

For one brief moment, it's all right there. And then, just as quickly, things go very wrong.

It's a mesmerizing story, even as you know in your heart this isn't going to end well. And when Hall's plot takes its ugly twists and turns, there's a can't-look-away quality in the fierce performances of Lynn Wactor as Toulou and LaRoyce Hawkins as Ace of Spades, and in the stylings of Opal Demetria Staples, who takes on the role of a stylish blues singer named Lillie Mae whose songs comment on and shade the action. Staples is just plain fabulous. Her presence is one of the changes Ellis made to the Hoodoo tableau, and it couldn't be a better fit.

There is a lot of music here, most of it indicated in Hall's script, but all of it makes this production of Hoodoo Love rise above. Every performer on stage -- Wactor, Hawkins and Staples, along with Tony Lynice Fountain as Candy Lady, Mark Smith as Toulou's evil brother Jib, Greg Williams and Mark J.P. Hood as Lillie Mae's back-ups, and Leon Q. Allen, Giles Corey and Thomas Lowey as a blues trio tucked into the corner -- sells the blues and deepens the drama.

The Collective Theatre's HooDoo Love is an auspicious debut for a company we can only hope to see more of. "Stay with us, we're going somewhere" is the company motto. I'm thinking they're already there.

Performances continue through October 21 at the Atheneum. For details and information, you can visit the Collective Theatre Company Facebook page.

* The Collective Theatre founders are Francois Battiste, Veronda G. Carey, Le'Mil Eiland, Nelsan Ellis, Metra Gilliard and Jasond Jones.

Who's Included in the List of Most-Produced Playwrights?

The online arm of the Theatre Communications Group is giving a sneak peek at the list of America's Most-Produced Playwrights that will appear in the October issues of American Theatre. They note that a) they don't include Shakespeare in the count because he slamdunks everybody else, and b) this is not a complete list compiled from all the plays performed anywhere in the U.S., but instead comes from only those TCG member theatres which self-reported their seasons by press time for the October issue of American Theatre. How that limits the discussion is also interesting as a topic of conversation, but for the moment, let's go with the list they have.

The TCG list includes the following playwrights and the number of productions they have scheduled at TCG member theatres in the 2012-13 season:

David Lindsay-Abaire (19)

Matthew Lopez (15)

David Mamet (15)

Donald Margulies (15)

Bruce Norris (15)

August Wilson (14)

Katori Hall (13)

Brian Yorkey/Tom Kitt (13)

David Ives (11)

John Logan (11)

Ken Ludwig (11)

TCG is commenting on the lack of diversity on the list, which certainly jumps out at you. Eight of the eleven playwrights listed are white males.

There has been a long conversation about the paltry number of productions for female playwrights in the U.S. and how that does not reflect either the population in general or the population of playwrights. In the past few years, women like Annie Baker, Yasmina Reza and Sarah Ruhl had broken into the ranks of the most-produced playwrights, but all three have vanished from the list for the coming year. In fact, Katori Hall stands alone as a women on that &%$# list.

Locally, we're seeing plays by Constance Congdon (Tales of the Lost Formicans), Rebecca Gilman (The Glory of Living) and Naomi Iizuka (Anon(ymous)) at Illinois State University, while Barbara Lebow (A Shayna Maidel), Shelagh Stephenson (The Memory of Water), Debbie Horsfield (Red Devils) and Dolly Parton, along with 9 to 5 collaborator Patricia Resnick, will appear on Illinois Wesleyan's schedule. Melanie Marnich (These Shining Lives) is playing right now at Heartland Theatre, and Eve Ensler (The Good Body), Katori Hall (The Mountaintop) and Lynn Nottage (Fabulation) are part of New Route Theatre's season. Community Players has one musical (25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee) with a book written by a female (Rachel Sheinkin) and one straight play (To Kill a Mockingbird) written by a man (Christopher Sergel) but based on a book written by a woman (Harper Lee).

Over in Urbana, U of I will offer a version of Dracula adapted by Liz Lochhead and Nilaja Sun Latrelle Bright's No Child..., while the Station Theatre has Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive and Or by Liz Duffy Adams on its schedule.

That's pretty good, considering what most theatres nationwide are doing, but still... There's room for improvement. There's room to include Julia Cho, Kia Corthron, Lisa Dillman, Lisa Kron, Deborah Zoe Laufer, Suzan-Lori Parks, Tanya Saracho, and dozens more playwrights who are out there writing plays that are valuable because they're so very different from each other.

Speaking of different from each other, what about playwrights of color? Except for August Wilson, who is no longer with us, Katori Hall is all by herself in the landscape of African-American playwrights, and Matthew Lopez is the lone Hispanic name on the list. That seems decidedly odd when you consider that Lynn Nottage and Quiara Alegría Hudes have each won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama (in 2009 for Nottage and this year for Hudes), Rajiv Joseph, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Kristoffer Diaz are recent Pulitzer nominees, and Yussef El-Gundi won the covered Steinberg New Play Award last year.

Where are the productions of their plays?

If you're wondering what the people on the list are all about or why they're there, well, David Lindsay-Abaire wrote Rabbit Hole and Good People, currently playing at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre; Matthew Lopez wrote The Whipping Man, about a Jewish Confederate soldier and his slaves; David Mamet is the idiosyncratic voice behind much-produced plays like Glengarry Glen Ross, November and American Buffalo; Donald Margulies will be banking on Dinner With Friends for years; Bruce Norris wrote Clybourne Park; Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt created the musical Next to Normal; David Ives is responsible for All in the Timing, an incredibly popular program of short plays, plus Venus in Fur and School for Lies, an adaptation of Moliere's Misanthrope; John Logan scored big with Red; and Ken Ludwig is best known for farces like Lend Me a Tenor and his newer Fox on the Fairway.

Of that group, only Hall, Ives, Logan, Lopez and Ludwig have not won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Whether that means the Pulitzer is good for marketability and Hudes's day is coming, or that the Pulitzer committee tends to like the same people that play selection committees do... I don't know.

I keep coming back to something Tanya Saracho said about why she writes what she writes.

"I do what I do because I don't see images of myself onstage. I want to complicate the image of what a Latina woman is without standing on a soapbox. I'm dedicated to telling Her stories -- to letting us look at life through her eyes. Politically and socially we have gone voiceless for so long and that is obviously reflected in the American Theatre. We have so much to say; I'm making it my job to make us listen."

I want to listen, Tanya. Please keep writing.

New Route Broadens Its Horizons

New Route Theatre and Artistic Director Don Shandrow have created a niche for themselves in local theatrical pursuits as "a multi-racial and multi-cultural theater company that produces new as well as established works that explore the nature of the human spirit in the context of ethical, political, and social choices." The multi-racial and multi-cultural aspect has allowed them to use performers we might not otherwise see on area stages, and to produce works, like Lynn Nottage's "Fabulation; or the Re-Education of Undine," which New Route took on last year, that might get overlooked when local theater companies choose their seasons.

As New Route has so far pursued their goals, they've performed "One Shot Deal" performances -- one night only, in other words -- at the Eaton Gallery in downtown Bloomington. That has meant a very intimate space and limited resources in terms of sets and scenery, as well as where and how the audience fits into the picture.

But this year, New Route has expanded its horizons, moving into a new performance space at the Bloomington YWCA on Hershey Road. The first show in the new space began last week, and continues tonight through Sunday. That first production is Irene Taylor's "Suppos'd to," a one-woman show Taylor wrote to reflect on "the emotional toll of caring and care-giving."

Taylor performed the show as a "One Shot Deal" with New Route last year, and that workshopping aspect (going from the gallery to the "main stage," from one performance to six, spread out over two weeks) is part of the growth arc Shandrow is pursuing with his company.

To get a better idea of how this all came about, I posed a few questions to Don Shandrow.

 Hi, Don! Tell me about the space you're using at the YWCA. Have they done theater or performances there before?

The space at the YWCA is an approximately 1100 square foot room, with orange walls and hardwood floor, that was used as a fitness room. This is the first time that it will be used as a theater or performance space. Because it’s an open space with a ceiling grid, it will allow us to use the theater in different configurations. Eventually we'll paint the room and it will become a more neutral space.

The question you might be asking here is “why a partnership with the YWCA?” The answer to that question has to do with the mission statements and purposes of each organization. We mesh perfectly. I initially approached Jane Chamberlain, the CEO of the YWCA, about the possibility of some kind of joint project about a year ago and it was this summer that I presented her with a season for 2012-2013. We appreciate the encouragement we’ve received from Jane and the assistance from the staff. They’ve made us feel like part of the YWCA family.

New Route Theatre all comes down to our mission statement. I present the mission statement before each show, I remind the NRT Artistic Advisory Board (affectionately called the New Routers) at every meeting, and share the mission statement with anyone who’s interested. The mission statement is what makes us unique and compels us to present material by predominately minority and women playwrights.

My concern is to build an audience that reflects the diversity of this community. I’m attempting to do that by; first, bringing together an advisory board for NRT that reflects the community. Second, by bringing together a company of performers that believe in what we want to accomplish. Third, by presenting material that expresses, with a unique voice, the universal human condition and that we are all one.

We have an ambitious season this year and a committed core of people who share the vision of creating Central Illinois' only multi-racial and multi-cultural theater company. We are planning even more surprises for our 2013-2014 season.

Had you been looking for a more permanent space where you could do more than one night? And were you thinking when you did the One Shot Deals that they would function as sort of workshops for more fully staged performances? 

Our goal, from the first meeting I had with the advisory board, was to find a permanent space for multiple performances. I’m convinced that the timing of everything we are doing is right and everything seems to be falling into place.

The “One Shot Deal Series,” in 2011, served a slightly different purpose than it does now. When I met with Herb Eaton and we decided on the one show per month for 12 months…it was to serve four purposes. 1. To introduce people to NRT on a donation only basis. 2. To create talk in the community about the theater company that was doing a show a month (even if was just for them to say that we were crazy). 3. To create a body of work that people could look at and know that we were serious about meeting our mission statement. 4. To bring together a group of people, audience and theater artists, who felt a sense of ownership in NRT. The first year was to launch the company.

An unintended consequence that I saw early on was that it was also a workshop for trying out material, directors and actors. The “One Shot Deal Series” is a place where we could try out material to fully stage and it continues to serve that purpose. The “One Shot Deal Series” will continue to be held at the Eaton Gallery but will be limited to four productions a year.

The YWCA is now our home and the location of our Main Stage full run season. You have the 2012-2013 Season…it’s a set season and all of the rights have been secured.

Purely as an audience member, I'm hoping you'll do Lynn Nottage's "Ruined" or "Meet Vera Stark" sometime in the future. She's won a Guggenheim Fellowship, a MacArthur Genius Grant and a Pulitzer Prize (for "Ruined"), and yet your "Fabulation" was the only time I've seen Nottage performed in Bloomington-Normal.

Lynn Nottage’s works fit the NRT mission statement perfectly. For our 2013-2014 season we are considering “Ruined.” There is a Nigerian IWU theater major who is part of the NRT Company. She has performed in several of our productions in the past and would be a perfect choice to play Sophie. So I do see more Nottage in our future as well as many other playwrights whose works I’m excited about.

A Look at New Route's New Space

New Route's Main Stage season continues with "Suppos'd to" tonight, tomorrow night and Sunday at the YWCA, 1201 North Hershey Road, Bloomington. "Suppos'd to" stars Irene Taylor and is directed by Don Shandrow.

Next up will be "The Ladies: a Musical Love Letter," a musical revue featuring the songs of iconic African-American female vocalists. "The Ladies" was conceived and directed by Phil Shaw and features Jennifer Rusk singing with David Shields at the piano and Myles Singleton on trumpet. "The Ladies" will be performed June 15-17 and 22-24.

"Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine" comes back August 31, with performances continuing on September 1-2 and 7-9. "Fabulation," which deals with the downward spiral of a successful, snobby professional woman who has all but erased any memory of where she came from, is the work of award-winning playwright Lynn Nottage; it stars Jamelle Robinson and is directed by Gregory D. Hicks for New Route Theatre.

"Sunset Limited," a play by Cormac McCarthy, is next on the schedule, running October 5-7 and 12-14.  Phil Shaw will direct this story of a black man who saves the life of a white man who tried to end it all by throwing himself in front of a train. Guilt, responsibility, faith and humanity are just some of the issues these two men grapple with in this combination novel/play/rumination.

Ian Mairs' "Our David" fills the last slot in 2012, with performances November 30, December 1-2 and 7-9. Bridgette Richard directs "Our David" for World AIDS Day, as it involves a tense relationship between neighbors, one a widow who has lived in the same Florida home for absolute ever, and the other a gay man from New York who's moved to Florida in the wake of losing everyone he loved to AIDS. The David in the title is the nude statue by Michelangelo, and the object that brings these two bereaved neighbors together.

Opening 2013 for New Route is Katori Hall's "The Mountaintop," which traces the last night in the life of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. Don Shandrow directs performances from February 1-3 and 8-10. The 2009 London production of "The Mountaintop" won Katori Hall the Olivier Award for Best New Play, making her the first black female playwright ever to win that award. "The Mountaintop" hit Broadway in September of last year, with Samuel L. Jackson as Reverend King and Angela Bassett as Camae.

Keep on eye on this page for all that's new with New Route.