taylor price
Peter Solarz
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
Today's Document
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Origami Around
Stranger Things
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
dirt enthusiast
pixel skylines
YOU ARE THE REASON
Kaledo Art
Acquired Stardust
occasionally subtle
JVL
wallacepolsom
Three Goblin Art
h
KIROKAZE
❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
seen from Indonesia
seen from Australia
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Japan
seen from Spain
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Netherlands
seen from Netherlands
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@briefnytw
Welcome to The Brief!
Welcome to The Brief, New York Theatre Workshop’s online dramaturgical and educational resource for further exploration of the themes, artists, and background behind our shows! Click on the buttons below to explore NYTW’s 2019/20 season.
___ New articles are uploaded onto The Brief throughout the run of each show! To explore past productions, click on “archives” above.
Director Sammi Cannold talks about immersing herself in the world of New York Theatre Workshop's Endlings, bringing back her Ragtime on Ellis Island, and ...
Photo Source: Michael Kushner
Director Sammi Cannold is a rising star in New York. The young Harvard alum gained attention and acclaim for her inventive, site-specific revivals; she worked as an associate director with Tony-winning visionaries Diane Paulus and Rachel Chavkin; and this past fall her striking revival of Evita at New York City Center was the talk of the town. Now, Sammi brings Celine Song’s new play Endlings to off-Broadway's New York Theatre Workshop. Sammi helmed Endlings' world premiere American Repertory Theater and worked to develop it at Playwrights Realm and the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. BroadwayBox recently caught up with Sammi to talk about immersing herself in the world of Endlings, bringing back her Ragtime on Ellis Island, and realizing her dream for Evita.
To read the full interview from Broadway Box, click here.
For ages, the sea women of Jeju, off the southern coast of South Korea, have braved treacherous waters for their harvest.
Photo source: Jean Chung for The New York Times
The number of sea women has dwindled to about 4,500, from 26,000 in the 1960s, with 84 percent of them 60 or older.
“Most of the haenyeo will be gone in 20 years unless we have new recruits,” said Yang Hi-bum, a Jeju government official.
For as long as Koreans can remember, sea women have been as emblematic of Jeju as snow-capped Mount Halla at its center. They duck under water more than 100 times a day, grabbing sea creatures barehanded or sometimes with a spear. Resurfacing a minute later, making a plaintive whistle as they exhale, they deposit their catch into a net sack tied to a float.
“Haenyeo were Korea’s first working moms,” said Koh Mi, an editor at the Jeju newspaper Jemin Ilbo and a participant in a nine-year research project on the sea women. “They were a symbol of female independence and strength in Korea.”
To read the complete article from The New York Times, please click here.
Sammi Cannold is leading the way—the question is, who’s going to follow?
Photo Source: Michael Kushner
Director Sammi Cannold had been entertaining a career in theater, but she remembers the exact moment when the prospect shifted from pipe dream to reality—not because her mind changed but because she saw the industry starting to do so.
“A critical turning point for me was when Diane Paulus won the Tony for directing ‘Pippin,’ ” she recalls. “I was interning for the Tony Awards that year and I was standing at the back of the house and I watched her win and I was like, ‘Woah! I look like her! I see that I can do this.’ I don’t know that I would have had that moment if I had not seen someone that looked like me.”
To read the full article from Backstage, click here.
Playwright Martyna Majok discusses her new play ahead of its Off-Broadway bow at New York Theatre Workshop (Playbill)
"I approach these stories, these plays, from the human and the personal. The characters are often loose composites of people I know, combinations of aspects of people I grew up with. … The political is not separate from these characters' lives in America—especially, in the case of this play, regarding the absence of DACA. And Sanctuary City invites an audience into that world, with these particular characters at that particular time, which I think more and more feels like the time we're living in now."
-Martyna Majok,Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and 2050 Artistic Fellow Alum
To read Martyna's complete interview, click here.
Playwright Celine Song takes time to speak with RE: theatre about her play Endlings. Created by artists Maria Paz Alegre and Ray Yamanouchi interview, RE: (Regarding) seeks to make theatre more accessible to a wider, more diverse audience by showcasing fellow artists/professionals in the industry.
You may watch the entire video above or directly here.
We are now in our second week of rehearsals. Let's do a throwback and take a look at the first day of rehearsals at New York Theatre Workshop.
Photo Credit: Marcus Middleton
Rehearsal has begun for Celine Song's Endlings! Let's learn more about Heanyeos and their diving tradition.
Culture of Jeju Haenyeo (UNESCO)
In Jeju Island, a community of women, some aged in their 80s, goes diving to gather shellfish for a living. The Jeju haenyeo (female divers) harvest up to seven hours a day, 90 days of the year holding their breath for every 10m dive. Beforehand, prayers are said for safety and an abundant catch. Transmission occurs in families, fishery cooperatives and The Haenyeo School. The traditional practice advances women’s status in the community, represents the island’s identity and promotes sustainability.
Click here to directly access the video.
Meet the Kids Who’ll Make ‘Sing Street’ Rock (New York Times)
For “Sing Street,” though, they needed kids who looked like kids and could play pop-rock songs by Carney and the Scottish musician Gary Clark. The group they put together included the English actor and “Game of Thrones” alum Brenock O’Connor, who portrays Conor, and Zara Devlin, an actor from Northern Ireland, as Raphina — along with a clutch of affable and energetic actor-musicians, one of whom is still in high school.
Want to learn more about some members of our Sing Street cast? Read the entire article here.
Photo Credit: Timothy O'Connell for The New York Times
We're getting closer to opening! But let's check these throwbacks to the first days of rehearsal from a month ago!
Photo Credit: Marcus Middleton
When the Movie Sing Street Pierced Rebecca Taichman’s Soul, She Knew She Had to Bring It to the Stage (Playbill)
Rebecca Taichman was scrolling through movie options at home when she landed upon Sing Street, John Carney’s Dublin-set story of a 16-year-old who starts a band in a quest for love and to escape the realities haunting Ireland in the early 1980s. “There aren’t that many pieces of art that pierce me like this film did—to the bone,” recalls the Tony-winning director. “As the credits rolled, I wrote immediately to my agent—still tear-soaked—hoping the rights might be available.”
To access the entire article, click here.
What Rock Music Taught Me About Identity & Transformation: Ingrid Dahl at TEDxFiDiWomen
Ingrid Hu Dahl is the Director of the Bay Area Video Coalition's Next Gen youth programs, which provides young adults the media skills in film, audio, gaming, design and code to participate in creating media and impacting social change. She holds a Master's degree in Women's & Gender Studies from Rutgers University, lectures nationally and internationally, and is a founding member of the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls in Brooklyn, New York.
Click here to directly access the TedTalk on Youtube.
“MUSIC IS IDENTITY” | Reign LaFreniere | TEDxMountainViewHighSchool
Music is identity. Reign LaFreniere is an 18 year old musician, actor, and film director attending the San Francisco Asawa School of the Arts for filmmaking. All his life he has worked towards his artistic dreams and visions, and has overcome bullying and judgement that hindered those dreams. He now is finishing up his first EP, Taking Back Winter, after 3 years of musical exploration. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.
Click here to directly access the TedTalk on Youtube.
"Radio Killed the Radio Star" Music Video - The Buggles
From CNET's article "The Day that Video Killed the Radio Star"...
On August 1, 1981 -- 35 years ago today -- a channel launched that was to change music history. Music Television, or MTV, kicked off for the first time at 12:01 a.m., Eastern Time, with the now legendary words: "Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll."
Then the opening chords accompanied Trevor Horn of The Buggles singing the first line of "Video Killed the Radio Star."
It turned out to be prophetic choice for the channel's first music video. By October 1981, record sales of the artists played on MTV but not radio stations were starting to boom. Radio stores were reporting overall sales rising up to 20 percent, while bands such as Adam and the Ants, Men at Work, Judas Priest and Bow Wow Wow started to enjoy popularity in America.
If you haven't yet, watch this amazing music video above!
Click here to directly access the Music Video.
Click here to read CNET's full article.
History of Music Videos (highsnobiety)
The music video giant [MTV] launched at 12.01AM Eastern Time on 1 August 1981 with The Buggles’ video ["Video Killed the Radio Star"], which had first aired two years previously on Top of the Pops in lieu of a live performance. The message of The Buggles’ hit — that advances in technology could pre-empt a cultural shift — proved prescient when the pop artists who created the most talked-about videos... began to dominate the musical landscape...
To read the full article, click here.
Those Were the Days - Dublin in the 80s (Dublin City Council)
In 2016, the Irish director and screenwriter spoke with NPR Fresh Air's Ann Marie Baldonado about his film Sing Street. Baldonado asked Carney to describe Dublin in the '80s, in the time that his story takes place.
I felt that the '80s were the '60s in Dublin in a sense, if you know what I mean. Ireland didn't really have the '60s, the sexual liberation and the - you know, that the rest of the world had - or certain parts of the world. And so it came sort of 20 years later.So the '80s felt as a young kid that there was something going on, you know, a feeling that the, sort of, the church were finally sort of losing their grip. People were beginning to experiment with sexual identity. They were beginning to experiment more outrageously with clothes. And I think I was in school right in the middle of that period. And it was a very interesting place to be 'cause it really felt like a very backward place and it felt like it was just beginning to sort of change and come into its own.
The Dublin City Council has made an online gallery of photographs capturing these moments of change and uncertainty in Dublin that Carney described.
Mass unemployment and continuous emigration. On-going tragedy in Northern Ireland. Planning scandals. Hurricane Charlie, dreadful summers, pea-souper smogs. Urban decay and phone queues. Pirate radio stations, disco balls and leg-warmers. Eurovision highs and lows. Zig and Zag. The 1980s have a lot to answer for.
To read the article written by the Dublin City Council click here.
To access the image gallery curated by the Dublin City Council click here.
Photo Credit: Dublin City Council
How MTV Changed the World with its Industry of Cool (SBS)
To understand the characters and some of the world of Sing Street, one must understand the monumental impact of MTV and how it changed the way people created and consumed popular music.
The launch of cable television redefined television in the 1980s. While there was an obvious audience for 24-hour news and movies, making CNN and HBO almost sure-things from launch, music videos weren't looked upon as having much value at all. When MTV launched with cheap music videos, nobody anticipated that it would revolutionise entertainment...