In Los Angeles, we have L.A. Theatre Works, which has been recording live theater for decades in front of a live audience. These shows are then available for radio broadcast. Even without sets and lights, just Foley, the live performances have been remarkable events, often more satisfying than live theater itself. Now in New York, Audible Inc., the leading creator and provider of premium audio storytelling, is bringing live staged shows to the Minetta Lane Theatre. Each show will be recorded as an Audible Original and released to a global audience. Tickets are on sale now for the Minetta Lane productions. In addition, there are four other Audible Originals utilizing amazing theater folk, such as director Rachel Chavkin and playwright Adam Rapp, available now or soon at Audible.
Next year, a new stage production of the Eugene O’Neill epic Long Day’s Journey into Night, directed by Tony Award nominee Robert O’Hara, will play six weeks only from Tuesday, January 11 – Sunday, February 20, 2022, starring Bill Camp as James Tyrone, Elizabeth Marvel as Mary Tyrone, and Ato Blankson-Wood as Edmund Tyrone.
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LILI TAYLOR IN WALLACE SHAWN’S THE FEVER
18 PERFORMANCES ONLY, October 8 – 24
Co-produced with The New Group, this production, directed by Scott Elliot, will mark 30 years since Shawn won the Obie Award for Best New American Play in 1991.
What’s the cost of comfort? Playwright, actor and cultural icon Wallace Shawn (My Dinner with André, The Designated Mourner) captures the crisis of conscience of a privileged American traveler visiting a war-torn country. Faced with the disparity between her rarified world and the real world, she can’t help but wonder if she’s part of the solution, or part of the problem.
Elliot said, “As we reopen our theaters, I can’t think of any work, more than The Fever, that captures what only theater can: an absolute intimacy and confessional relationship between performer and audience. When we last presented The Fever during the 2008 financial crisis, I knew I needed to explore it every decade or so. Our current crisis, or should I say nightmare, along with our renewed attempts to face the inequalities built into our lives, should allow us to see the speaker’s journey in fresh ways.”
The Fever’s creative team includes Arnulfo Maldonado (scenic design), Qween Jean (costume design), Cha See (lighting design), and Justin Ellington (sound design). Valerie A. Peterson is the Production Stage Manager. Technical Supervision is by Hudson Theatrical Associates and General Management is by Baseline Theatrical (Andy Jones & Jonathan Whitton).
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New York Premiere
The Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts’ production of
And So We Walked:
An Artist’s Journey Along the Trail of Tears
Thursday, October 28 – Saturday, October 30
Written and Performed by DeLanna Studi
Co-Produced with Octopus Theatricals
DeLanna Studi, Cherokee performance artist and activist, shares a powerful, multi-faceted dramatic memoir in And So We Walked: An Artist’s Journey Along the Trail of Tears. This frank, heartwarming and inspiring story recounts the experience of a contemporary Cherokee woman (Studi) who, with her father, embarks on an incredible 900-mile journey along the Trail of Tears to truly understand her own identity and the conflicts of her nation. The play recounts the six-week journey, which retraced the path her great-great grandparents took in the 1830s during the forced relocation of 17,000 Cherokee from their homelands. And So We Walked draws on extraordinary interviews, historical research, and the artist’s personal experience to convey the complexities and conflicts with which the Cherokee wrestle. Studi received the 2016 Butcher Scholar Award from The Autry Museum of the American West in acknowledgement of her work on And So We Walked.
The creative team for And So We Walked includes John Coyne (scenic design), Andja Budinich (costume design), Norman Coates (projection and lighting design), and Bruno Louchouarn with John-John Grant & Sarah Elizabeth Burkey (sound design and original music).
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An Evening with Solea Pfeiffer
Three Performances Only:
Thursday, November 4 – Saturday, November 6
Up-and-coming leading lady of stage and screen Solea Pfeiffer will make her NYC solo concert debut in “An Evening with Solea Pfeiffer.” Pfeiffer, who in recent years has received massive acclaim portraying iconic roles in Hamilton (LA), the Broadway-bound Almost Famous (The Old Globe), The Light in the Piazza (Lyric Opera of Chicago), Songs for a New World, and Evita (New York City Center), is set to bring her powerhouse vocals and gift of storytelling to create an enchanting musical experience for her audience. Armed with her immense versatility as vocalist, the Zimbabwe-born performer weaves together pieces from her most unforgettable roles as well as the artists who have influenced her career along with personal stories and anecdotes that showcase her wit, warmth, and endless charm. As the city welcomes audiences back to the theatre, “An Evening with Solea Pfeiffer” will surely be an unforgettable event.
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New York Premiere
Approval Junkie
Tuesday, November 16 – Sunday, December 12
Written and Performed by Faith Salie
Directed by Amanda Watkins
Faith Salie’s Approval Junkie, developed in collaboration with and directed by Amanda Watkins, will finally make its New York premiere after original rehearsals were postponed in March 2020.
From winning her high school beauty pageant, to picking the perfect outfit to wear to her divorce, Faith Salie is the ultimate approval seeker. A comedian and Emmy Award-winning journalist best known for her roles on NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! and CBS News Sunday Morning, Salie has adapted her story into the heartfelt (and disturbingly hilarious) one-woman show, Approval Junkie. Through her witty, candid, and sometimes heartbreaking recollections, Salie reflects on a lifetime of looking for validation in all the wrong places — and reveals how she finally won gold stars from her toughest critic…herself. The World Premiere of Approval Junkie was originally produced by The Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, GA.
Approval Junkie’s creative team includes Jack Magaw (scenic design), Ivan Ingermann (costume design), Amanda Zieve (lighting design), Brandon Bush (sound design), and Alex Basco Koch (projection design). Justin Scribner is the Production Stage Manager. Technical Supervision is by Hudson Theatrical Associates and General Management is by Baseline Theatrical (Andy Jones & Jonathan Whitton).
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Here are the shows at Audible.com
DEEP FAKE
Available Now
Written by Sharyn Rothstein
Directed by Rachel Chavkin
Sound design by Justin Ellington
Featuring Sanjit De Silva, Blake DeLong, Sakina Jaffrey, Rebecca Naomi Jones, Hannah Kallenbach, Ian Lassiter, and Nidra Sous la Terre
Shape the future. Lose your soul. And just keep smiling. The My Fair Lady story gets a thoroughly modern, thoroughly invigorating update in this unsparing (and hilarious) look at America’s capitalist tech culture. Eli is a tough young woman who makes paper flowers on Venice Beach, where she lives in a homeless tent camp. A chance encounter with a smug tech CEO, Hig, sparks an intriguing quid pro quo: she brings him an image-burnishing entrepreneurial offer, and he, in turn, hires her to present GAL—his new artificial intelligence service—at an upcoming conference. The clash of cultures results in a surprisingly insightful exploration of the shady side of AI, sexism in the tech world, economic disparity, and the human cost of relentless progress.
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The New York Times’ Critics Pick whose world premiere engagement at the Public Theater in March 2020 was cut short by the pandemic
COAL COUNTRY
Available September 30, 2021
Written by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen
Original Music by Steve Earle
Directed by Jessica Blank
In 2010, the Upper Big Branch mine explosion in West Virginia killed 29 men, and tore a hole in the lives of countless others.
In this riveting, emotionally stunning new work based on first-person accounts by survivors and family members, Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen, award-winning writers of The Exonerated, and three-time Grammy Award-winning country/folk legend Steve Earle (the Audible Original (The Moment in) 1965 (When Rock and Roll Becomes Art), dig deep into the lives and loss of the most deadly mining disaster in recent U.S. history.
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DESCENT
Available from October 21, 2021
Written by Alexandra Wood
Directed by Natalie Abrahami
Sound design by Ella Wahlstrom
Featuring Jason Barnett, Tara Fitzgerald, Shobna Gulati, Sirine Saba, Frida Saba-Storey, and David Sturzaker
Some family secrets can’t be buried.
It’s Christmas Eve and Lara anxiously anticipates the arrival of her sister, Cleo, so she can reveal a shocking family secret that has been haunting Lara since their mother’s death. By confronting revelations about their grandfather’s shameful past, Lara is hopeful that she and Cleo can make reparations and exorcise this ghost from their lives. The ghost, however, won’t be appeased so easily… Alexandra Wood’s new play—twisty, suspenseful, and written exclusively for audio—will convince you that you really can’t escape your past.
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THE CUBE
Available from November 11, 2021
World Premiere by Adam Rapp
Directed by Whitney White
Starring Carla Gugino and Juliana Canfield
An invitation to a mysterious theatrical performance changes the lives of two women in Adam Rapp’s riveting new audio play The Cube. Magda, an upper-class white woman, is shocked to the core by what she sees—and questions her complicity. Ruth, a Black woman who played a role in the show, is thrilled to be part of it—until she discovers her performance is all too convincing. A visceral and truly immersive audio experience that tackles issues of race, privilege, and cultural blindness.