The Carlotta Festival of New Plays at Yale is nigh — May 6 through 14 at the university’s Iseman Theater, 1156 Chapel St., New Haven.
That means it’s the end of the school year as well. The Carlotta Festival was named for Carlotta Monterey, the widow of Eugene O’Neill, who insisted that the royalties from his “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” be used to fund scholarships and theater studies at the Yale School of Drama. The 11th annual edition presents full productions of full-length plays by students who are about to graduate from the YSD’s three-year playwriting program. The shows are directed, acted and designed by students.
Tarell Alvin McCraney, Amy Herzog and Christina Anderson are some of the now-well-known playwrights who had shows in the Carlotta Festival when they were students.
This year’s crop of emerging writers and shows: Lindsey Ferrentino, whose family drama “Amy and the Orphans,” directed by Leora Morris, plays May 8, 11 and 14 at 8 p.m. and May 13 at 2 p.m.; “New Domestic Architecture,” a comedy about religion, nature and “spaces” by Brendan Pelsue, directed by Luke Harlan, May 6, 10 and 13 at 8 p.m. and May 12 at 2 p.m.; and “Some Bodies Travel” by Jireh Breon Holder and second-year playwriting student Tori Sampson, directed by Margot Bordelon, May 7 and 12 at 8 p.m. and May 11 and 14 at 2 p.m.
“Some Bodies Travel” is described thus: “A clownish captain and his crew of misfits board a clunky spaceship in search of a new home.”
Tickets are $25, $15 for students. Information: 203-432-1234, drama-yale.edu.
Buckley’s Breadth
Betty Buckley’s range as a singer and an actor is matched only by her bravery in tackling a wide array of strange theater characters.
Roles she originated on Broadway include Grizabella in “Cats,” Edwin Drood in “Drood” and the mother in “Carrie.” At regional theaters she’s been Jenny Diver in “The Threepenny Opera,” Big Edie in “Grey Gardens,” Mama Rose in “Gypsy” and (at Hartford Stage in 1998) Camille in Tennessee Williams’ “Camino Real.”
Buckley brings her solo act “Betty Buckley Live in Concert” to the Ridgefield Playhouse, 80 East Ridge, Ridgefield, 8 p.m. Saturday, May 7. Tickets are $65. ridgefieldplayhouse.org.
