Fuck Yeah Great Plays!

Because it's not just about musicals.

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@fuckyeahgreatplays

[fuckyeahgreatplays]

this is niche, this is me

[fuckyeahgreatplays]

The Actors With Disabilities Redefining Representation

These performers are creating a new template for the artist-as-activist, challenging their industry — and their audiences — to reconsider what inclusion really means.

RYAN O’CONNELL would like you to know that he is tired and pissed off and horny. He is tired of waiting for what he calls “our ‘Transparent’ moment” (some of his fellow actors call it, instead, “our ‘Pose’ moment”), by which he means a single piece of breakthrough pop culture that makes people aware of a heretofore ignored and stereotyped minority, a prizewinning, noisemaking event that kicks open the door to mainstream omnipresence and ultimately to normalization. He is pissed off that it hasn’t happened yet. “I think about this a lot,” he says. “Why, in this woke-ass culture that we live in, where so much attention is given to marginalized populations, do people with disabilities still largely go ignored?” The actor, who has cerebral palsy, is also, he says, “horny for representation that comes from actual disabled people, because we live in a dark hellscape of a capitalist country. Real power can only be accrued through opportunities, and you need to be given the keys to tell your own story.”

[fuckyeahgreatplays]

Home | HOLD

As theatres shuttered in early spring, and theatre workers sprang to action creating and presenting works online, one facet of the theatre ecology was left out of the Zoom rooms: the designers. Indeed, some sets and costumes are still sitting in dark theatres gathering dust. For the creative teams, there was no strike or closure to mourn the postponed and canceled shows, and few opportunities to create and share new work online.

Enter HOLD: Design for Empty Rooms, a website that showcases halted productions with a soup-to-nuts peek at the design process. From audio files to costume renderings, from color palettes to pre-production photos, the website offers a glimpse at the directions some of the 2020 spring productions were headed.

I really loved looking through these archives, and I think it’ll be an excellent resource for students too!

[fuckyeahgreatplays]

What Happens When a Play Is Paused? Jeremy O. Harris and Collaborators Discuss a Non-Production

“The bodies that exist inside of this play are bodies that have been extensively erased.”

Jeremy O. Harris is an actor and playwright, best known for his plays “Daddy” and “Slave Play.” Harris’s latest, “A Boy’s Company Presents: ‘Tell Me If I’m Hurting You,’” was meant to premiere at Playwrights Horizons’s Mainstage Theater in May; but, like so many other productions this spring, it was postponed by the coronavirus pandemic. (This intensely ambitious work—styled after a Jacobean revenge tragedy—is now slated to run during the 2021-22 season.) Here, a conversation with Harris and two of his creative collaborators about the making of a play still waiting to be realized.

[fuckyeahgreatplays]

As you tune into Hamilton today remember everyone involved is currently out of work. Everyone involved relied on the theatre to get where they got. Hamilton transcended usual theatre audiences, and to make more Hamiltons we need theatre to survive.

[chicagomoonlight]

Email your state reps asking for an extension of the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation. This is what professional theatre artists everywhere are relying on to pay rent. http://tiny.cc/ExtendFPUC

While the link is through the IATSE union, you do NOT need a union affiliation to help. Fill in the right hand side (or bottom, on mobile), it will bring you to an auto-generated email to contact your reps. You can either send the email as is, customize it if you like, or get the phone numbers for your reps and call them.

Broadway is dark until at least January and smaller theatres will remain dark, maybe until next summer or longer. This means that people are out of work. Not everyone got to work on Hamilton. Some of us have worked in the theatre for more than 10 years, have made a living on it, and have no residuals coming in from anywhere. The extra $600/wk (or less depending on what your base unemployment rate is) is literally keeping people from homelessness.

Did you appreciate the work of artists that have dedicated their lives to their craft? THEN HELP US. Signing petitions are great. Sending emails and making phone calls have a greater impact. And guess what? Most of them have voicemail set up so you can call “after hours” and leave a message if you don’t want to talk to anyone.

http://tiny.cc/ExtendFPUC

Must-haves for Entertainment Workers in Subsequent COVID-19 Legislation

We must act now to pressure our representatives to ensure that subsequent COVID-19 legislation puts workers first by: · Making sure wo

[fuckyeahgreatplays]

As you tune into Hamilton today remember everyone involved is currently out of work. Everyone involved relied on the theatre to get where they got. Hamilton transcended usual theatre audiences, and to make more Hamiltons we need theatre to survive.

[fuckyeahgreatplays]

The Bacchae | Free Full Performance by The Classical Theatre of Harlem

[fuckyeahgreatplays]

Phrases We Should Work to Eliminate in the Rehearsal Room

Efforts to dismantling systems of oppression can come in many forms: how we view “time,” how we “check our baggage,” or how we pay our artists, but it can also include our language.

We can dismantle oppression in our language as a means of valuing and honoring individuals in the room. There are a plethora of sayings used in rehearsal environments that cause a BIPOC artist to feel powerless and othered in the room; these phrases will not have the same effect on white artists, who have the privilege of doing their work without that added baggage.

[theatreisgoodforthesoul]

“Father Comes Home From the Wars” (Parts 1, 2, & 3) by Suzan-Lori Parks

Public Theater, 2014

Starring Sterling K. Brown, Louis Cancelmi, Peter Jay Fernandez, Jeremie Harris, Russell G. Jones, Jenny Jules, Ken Marks, Jacob Ming-Trent, Tonye Patano, & Julian Rozzell Jr.

[feniceargento]

“The Hairpiece” from The Colored Museum

“THE BITCH IS BALD”. This scene is so funny. I love Loretta Devine. She’s beautiful now but I’m still always so surprised when I see her when she was younger. She was breathtaking, lawd.   

[fuckyeahgreatplays]

The Colored Museum is a play written by George C. Wolfe that premiered in 1986, directed by L. Kenneth Richardson. In a series of 11 “exhibits” (sketches), the review explores and satires prominent themes and identities of African-American culture. A bunch of the sketches are on YouTube, too!

[milkandheavysugar]

Sammy Davis Jr. backstage at the Majestic Theatre in New York City before the opening of his Broadway show “Golden Boy" (1964)

[fuckyeahgreatplays]

Sign the petition here.

[milkandheavysugar]

James Earl Jones, and father, Robert Earl Jones onstage during the 1962 production of “Moon on a rainbow shawl.” 

[fuckyeahgreatplays]

Short version: The Apollo didn't ask for the petition to become a Broadway house, don't donate at http://change.org, and if you do want to support the Apollo, here's a link to do so: https://apollotheater.org/giving/

[historical-nonfiction]

An Actor Backstage in 1937

He was performing in the WPA Theater troupe’s production of “Haiti: The Story of Pierre-Dominique Toussaint l’Ouverture” at the Lafayette Theater in Harlem, New York City.

[fuckyeahgreatplays]

Antigone, Classical Theatre of Harlem

(Photo by Richard Termine)

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100 plays by people of color

So after Gina Femia’s 100 Plays by Women, and my 100 More Plays By Women, I got quite a few messages for other lists. And while I wish I had the time and resources to do 100 Plays by Trans/Disabled/In Yer Face playwrights, I’m a 1-person operation over here.

But I got a few requests for playwrights of color, so here you go. 

I tried to be pretty inclusive here: there are Nigerian, Native American, Pakistani, Chilean, Vietnamese, and more playwrights in here. Find one that sounds interesting and let me know if you have any favorites.