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The Importance of Play – A Keynote Speech by Regina Victor

The following is a transcript of the speech given by Editor-In-Chief and Cultural Designer Regina Victor at the American Stage Lift Every Voice New Play Festival on March 3rd, 2023 at the James Museum in St. Petersburg, FL. Published exclusively on Rescripted.

Hello everyone, what a marvelous gathering!

As Patrick said, my name is Regina Victor, my pronouns are they/them pharaoh, and I’m so grateful to be here at the Lift Every Voice New Play Festival. Thank you to the James Museum, and the team at American Stage for hosting us here together, to celebrate six new opportunities to play.

I want to start with a moment of collective memory. I want us to think back to the first moment we ever saw a play, when we knew we wanted to be creators and producers for the stage. Think back to that time, and think about, possibly even cherish, the amount you have accomplished since that moment. The stories you’ve shepherded, the lives you’ve changed, the joy you’ve discovered. Continue reading “The Importance of Play – A Keynote Speech by Regina Victor”

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Women take control in Remy Bumppo’s timeless remount of Anna in the Tropics

Marela, the youngest daughter of a Cuban Cigar Factory Owner, casts a spell to bring sweetness to Juan Julian’s journey from the island of Cuba to Ybor City, as she and her mother Ofelia (the expressive, incomparable Charín Álvarez) and sister, Conchita, anticipate his arrival. Juan Julian (in an affecting performance by Arash Fakhrabadi) whose voice is “like a Persian canary,” is the new lector. His job is to read books to the Cigar rollers as they work. The characters and a digital dramaturgy packet both note that this tradition comes from the customs of the Taino people (the Indigenous people of Cuba, a first-contact tribe) listening to storytellers as they roll tobacco leaves.

Nilo Cruz’s 2003 Pulitzer Prize winning play is a Cuban American adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Cruz deftly crafts character relationships and factory politics to examine many of the same industrial binaries Tolstoy obsessed over. Machine vs. tradition, speed vs. leisure, with cigarette vs. cigar taking center stage. All are so incredibly specific to the play’s 1929 setting while simultaneously resonant today. 

Continue reading “Women take control in Remy Bumppo’s timeless remount of Anna in the Tropics”

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Flip The Script: Theatre Down Under

This is a new theatre series covering artistic experiences outside the city of Chicago. Kristin Idaszak writes about the various works they saw at the Sydney Festival. 

A few weeks after the bomb cyclone deep froze Chicago and floods battered the southeast coast of Australia in late December 2022, I arrived at the Sydney Festival, an international festival of performance and culture in Australia. These meteorological events, as well as Australia’s massive brush fires of 2019 and 2020, were on my mind. I was thinking about the weather because I hoped traveling eight thousand miles from home and exploring unfamiliar aesthetic and literal landscapes would reinvigorate my own creative practice, which focuses largely on the environment and the climate crisis. 

Emerging from my own pandemic-induced artistic hibernation, I was eager to experience work that offered new creative methodologies, and reconceived the look, feel, and sound of environmental performance. My first week at the festival consisted of a double-header of pieces inspired by climate change, Sun  & Sea and Polar Force, followed by a dance theatre performance grounded in First Nations dramaturgy.

Continue reading “Flip The Script: Theatre Down Under”

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Playbill Article Opens Conversation About Danger, Safety and Standards for Broadway, So Why Aren’t We Talking About That?

On February 8th, 2023, playbill.com published an article by Margaret Hall, entitled “Physical Assault Vomit in the Aisles, Stalking in the Streets: Why Audience Misbehavior Has Gotten Out of Hand”.

The article consisted of interviews from Front of House staff on Broadway, whose compelling testimonies created an unignorable narrative: the culture of Broadway theatres and their patrons is unsustainable, disrespectful, and at times dangerous. It was met with immediate buzz and urgent discourse. On Friday February 10th, 2023, the article was pulled from playbill.com. It will be edited, and re-published at a later date. Below is an excerpt from the original piece: 

“Tessie, a former actor turned front of house worker, began working at a family friendly musical in the winter of 2021. Since beginning the position, they have been “spat on, shoved, had my ass slapped, and been screamed at more times than I could count.” Still, they consider themselves lucky; one of their coworkers was shoved down a staircase by an irate patron, resulting in a serious hip injury. Continue reading “Playbill Article Opens Conversation About Danger, Safety and Standards for Broadway, So Why Aren’t We Talking About That?”

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‘The Great Khan’ Muddles the Past, Present and Plot

The Great Khan by Michael Gene Sullivan is positioned to be a dynamic ensemble play that examines our troubled global history through the eyes of contemporary high schoolers. The theater immediately establishes a youthful setting with vibrant lighting and Chance the Rapper playing over the speakers. In the first scene, we meet a guarded Jayden who is shaken awake by an armed intruder, a young girl named Ant. Redtwist Theatre’s summary of this play promises that these are our two main characters. This premise is lost well within the first act, and Ant quickly becomes a background character on Jayden’s journey. Continue reading “‘The Great Khan’ Muddles the Past, Present and Plot”

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A Surreal Thrill Ride in ‘Among the Dead’ at Jackalope Theatre

Among the Dead is the story of Ana (played with a grounded pathos by Malia Hu), a young Korean American woman in 1975 who arrives in a hotel room in Seoul with a box of her recently deceased father’s ashes, as well a multitude of questions about her own family history. Upon receiving a gift from the hotel’s mysterious handyman Jesus (yes, that Jesus, played with an easygoing charm by Colin Huerta), time and space begin to fracture around her in a gloriously surreal joyride. Catapulted back into the past as her white American father (a textured and tortured performance from Sam Boeck) and her Korean mother (the incredibly charismatic yet tragic Jin Park) first meet, both stranded in the jungle at the end of World War II, Ana must puzzle through the tumultuous sequence of political, social, and interpersonal factors that led to her own existence.

Hansol Jung’s script does excellent work combining unsettling surreality with hilariously relatable characterization, and Kaiser Ahmed’s direction ratchets up the tension and mystery with ease. The incredible set design from Paloma Locsin is on its face simple and straightforward, consisting of little more than a normal 1970’s hotel room. As the show unfolds, however, interactive elements across the set subvert their functions at key moments, shocking the audience and keeping us on our toes.

The lighting design from Samuel Stephen deserves particular praise for so effectively creating the show’s surreal atmosphere. The contrast between the everyday yellowish-white wash of the hotel room and the vibrant colors, wild moods, and otherworldly emotions of Ana’s time-bending journey couldn’t be more stark.

For all its time-and-space-bending mind-fuckery, however, at the end of the day Among the Dead is telling a deceptively simple story; that of Ana attempting to heal from a trauma that she didn’t even know her father had unjustly passed down to her. At its core, the show is about the catastrophic decisions of one deeply damaged man, their far-reaching consequences, and how to heal from them. The fact that we are shown this story through the lens of a gripping and spooky thrill ride, sprinkled with mind-blowing twists and heartwarming humor, is not just a nice added bonus but a thematic necessity. Uncovering these types of secrets in this cruel and chaotic world, Among the Dead seems to say, is always going to be unnerving, uncomfortable, even horrifying. But the deep satisfaction of the resulting catharsis cannot be argued with – making this show an absolute must-see.

Among the Dead runs at Jackalope Theatre until December 11th.

Rescripted is a community-funded publication, and we are grateful for your support. If you’d like to support arts journalism like this, consider subscribing to our Patreon by clicking this link. 

CAST
San Boeck (Luke)
Malia Hu (Ana)
Colin Huerta (Jesus)
Jin Park (Number Four)

CREATIVE
Hansol Jung (playwright)
Kaiser Ahmed (director)
Monét Felton (associate director)
Paloma Locsin (scenic designer)
Isaac Pineda (costume designer)
Samuel Stephen (lighting designer)
Quinn Chisenhall (master electrician)
Michael Huey (sound designer)
Sheryl Williams (intimacy/fight choreographer)
Catherine Miller (casting director)
Isabelle Cheng (dramaturg)
Anna Brockway (stage manager)
Josh Derby (asst. stage manager)

Photo credit: Joel Maisonet

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‘Our Dear Dead Drug Lord’ at Steep Theatre casts a bloody spell of empowerment for young women

Rich with blood sacrifices, teenage angst, and unfiltered punches to the gut, Alexis Scheer’s intimate and formidable Our Dead Dead Drug Lord is the play every 90’s kid lesbian must see this fall. Squeeze (the tenacious Elena Victoria Feliz), Zoom (the eager Lauren Smith), and Pipe (the imposing Isabella Maria Valdes) of The Dead Leader’s club assemble to welcome their newest member, Kit (the daring Isabel Rivera), who may or may not be the secret daughter of their latest subject of study, Pablo Escobar. At first, it seems like the girls’ biggest concern is convincing their private school to reinstate their official club status for their college applications and a disturbing yet familiar teenage lust for toxic men – but under the surface, they are wading through much murkier water.

Sophiyaa Nayar’s moving and tactfully directed production makes excellent use of Steep’s new home. Sydney Lynne’s crafty set design puts the audience inside the club’s scrappy treehouse. Produced in an old church with no lighting grid or rigging yet installed, lighting designer, Eric Watkins aptly illuminates the fort with a combination of string lights, lanterns, and a spooky swinging lightbulb.

As someone who used to have to frequently explain having a dead dad to other kids, most of whom wouldn’t experience a loss of the sort for many more years, I quickly learned that humor was the best way to prevent cloying attempts at empathy. The deep laughter throughout this play, and especially following the line “because my dad died,” was a dynamic display of artistic excellence with credit to both Scheer and Nayar’s comedic timing, which rang exceptionally poignant for me.

While my own admittedly anachronistic high school resume credit of Grief Support Group Co-Facilitator never involved seances or cocaine, the guilt, the shame, and suffering felt by Scheer’s willfully ferocious characters remain profoundly familiar and heartbreaking. I felt a visceral solidarity with the older women in the audience who clutched their friends’ hands for dear life (see here for a detailed content warning and list of mental health resources). And yet, with the most powerful piece of brujéria saved for the very end of the play, I left Steep Theatre more hopeful and empowered than ever.

Our Dear Dead Drug Lord runs at Steep Theatre’s new location, 1044 W Berwyn Ave, until December 10. Masks and proof of vaccination are required for this production.

Rescripted is a community-funded publication, and we are grateful for your support. If you’d like to support arts journalism like this, consider subscribing to our Patreon by clicking this link. 

CAST
Kit – Isabel Rivera
Squeeze – Elena Victoria Feliz
Zoom – Lauren Smith
Pipe – Isabella Maria Valdes
Additional Roles – Liliana Renteria
Additional Roles – Adriel Irizarry

CREATIVE
Director – Sophiyaa Nayar
Stage Manager – Lauren Lassus
Scenic Designer – Sydney Lynne
Lighting Designer – Eric Watkins
Associate Lighting Designer – Liz Gomez
Costume Designer – Serena Sandoval
Scenic Collaborator – Shannon Evans
Sound Designer – Matthew Chapman
Props Designer – Lonnae Hickman
Intimacy & Fight Choreographer – Gaby Lobotka
Choreographer – Jenn Freeman
Assistant Costume Designer – Jessica Gowens
Assistant Director & Brujéria Consultant – Daniela Martinez
Dramaturg – Kristin Leahey^
Dialect Coach– Sándor Menéndez
Production Manager – Jennifer Aparicio
Technical Director – Darren Brown
Co-Casting Directors – Lucy Carapetyan & Lisa Troi Thomas                                         Assistant Stage Manager – Lili Bjorklund
Graphic Designer – Stu Kiesow
Photographer – Jeremy Hall
Costume Embroidery – Uncommon Closet

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‘Enough To Let The Light In’ Creates Terror Out of Love’s Shadows

Paloma Nozicka’s two-hander script, Enough to Let The Light In, grips you from the very beginning and doesn’t let go. Director Georgette Verdin builds a deliberate pulse underneath the work, aided by Stefanie M. Senior’s spooky’ sound design and Sotirios Livaditis’ set, full of delightful tricks that drive the action forward. 

Enough to Let The Light In  is one of the tightest and most satisfying new plays I’ve seen in a long time. The economy of language and onstage movement means every action matters, even where a guest hangs their coat becomes a point of dramatic tension. It’s very hard for a story to get ahead of me, and I noticed pretty much every suspicious thing or could-be suspicious line of dialogue. Georgette Verdin directs the piece with a swift and intentional hand, with incredible attention to the details. The actors are so compelling, I forgot what I’d seen, and was shocked all over again by the discovery that my suspicions were correct! Continue reading “‘Enough To Let The Light In’ Creates Terror Out of Love’s Shadows”

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‘Botticelli in the Fire’ at First Floor Theatre Paints a Raw, Toxic, and Familiar Portrait of the Italian Renaissance

CONTENT WARNING: This review and the production it covers contain discussions of sexual violence, including childhood sexual abuse.

Today, in a small beach town outside Barcelona, I feel a thrill of excitement as I stumble upon an almost-familiar work of art by Sandro Botticelli. A prudent maiden moves to cover the nude and iconic figure from his most recognizable painting, The Birth of Venus. This is not the colossal oil on canvas housed in Italy’s Uffizi Gallery, but a smaller portrait-shaped rendition with only two of the many figures shown. An adaptation by Botticelli himself, and just the week before I had seen another adaptation of this same painting at The Den, produced by First Floor Theatre.

I am obsessed with literature inspired by great paintings. Girl with a Pearl Earring, The Improbability of Love, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. These stories, inspired fictions about the artistic process, are all uniquely moving, evocative, and tragic. First Floor Theatre’s production of Botticelli in the Fire has all these same ingredients for success and more — an up-and-coming new director in Bo Frazier, spectacular design and production elements, a rockstar cast  — and yet, Jordan Tannahill’s script falls short of its potential.

Continue reading “‘Botticelli in the Fire’ at First Floor Theatre Paints a Raw, Toxic, and Familiar Portrait of the Italian Renaissance”

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Ritual as Reclamation in ‘What To Send Up When It Goes Down’

When audience members enter What To Send Up When It Goes Down by Aleshea Harris, produced by Congo Square Theatre, we shuffle quietly into the lofted warehouse-style space. As we find our seats on either side of Lookingglass’ playing space, it feels a bit like the beginning of a wake, and in a way it is. A few cast members mill about the space, and one (Joey Stone at our performance) hands out black ribbons to wear in solidarity with Black people that have been victims to, or killed by police violence. 

At this performance, Chanel Bell announces we will be performing this ritual for Botham Jean. The performers invite the audience into a circle to begin the ritual to commemorate one of those felled by racist violence. A participant may choose not to take part in the ritual, but they just ask that you center Black voices in the space, and don’t disturb those who do choose to participate. Continue reading “Ritual as Reclamation in ‘What To Send Up When It Goes Down’”