The first day of classes at Wesleyan University is Sept. 7. The university’s Center for the Arts is ready, with its first theater event of the school year happening Sept. 16 and 17. It’s the New England premiere of Wesleyan alum Kaneza Schaal’s “GO/FORTH,” a multi-media “meditation on loss, grief and ritual” with Egyptian Book of the Dead overtones. Other highlights of the CFA’s 2016-17 season: the Connecticut premiere of choreographer Camille A. Brown’s “BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play” Oct. 7; the New England debut of choreographer Darrell Jones’ “Hoo-Ha” Nov. 18 and 19; the New England premiere of theater artist Karin Coonrod’s “texts&beheadings/ElizabethR,” performed by members of the Compagnia de’ Colombari Feb. 17; and the return of the dance troupe Urban Bush Women March 3 with the Connecticut premiere of the John Coltrane-infused “Walking With ‘Trane.”
Boy, they sure like to mess with upper-case letters and word spacings in the titles of shows at Wesleyan! Longtime CFA director Pam Tatge left this past April to become the executive director of Jacob’s Pillow. Hopefully the CFA will continue to be the leading presenter of experimental theater and modern dance events in Connecticut. Details at 860-685-3355, wesleyan.edu/cfa.
Michael Barker Manages In Westport
The Westport Country Playhouse has a new managing director, and it’s another guy named Michael.
Michael Barker is a Yale School of Drama grad who during his time in the theater management program served as the associate managing director of the Yale Repertory Theatre for its 2009-10 season (the season of “Eclipsed,” “Pop!,” “Compulsion” and “Battle of Black and Dogs”) and managing director of the 2008 Yale Summer Cabaret (an ambitious summer which included new works plus “The Who’s Tommy”). Since Yale, Barker’s been in California — as managing director of the Antaeus Company from 2010-11, general manager of the Laguna Playhouse from 2011-13 and most recently managing director of the Marin Theatre Company. He will start work in Westport next month.
Michael Ross, WCP’s managing director since 2009, announced in December 2015 that he was returning to Baltimore’s Center Stage, where he’d been managing director from 2002-08 (Hartford Stage has a managing director named Michael, too: Michael Stotts.)
Connecticut Theater Women, Unite!
A Connecticut chapter of the League of Professional Theatre Women has been formed. Two “launch events” have been announced, with a slew of important guests. Both are panel discussions, with the shared theme “Lean In and Branch Out: Claiming Our Voice as Women in Connecticut Theater.” The first talk is on Monday, Aug. 15, at the University of Hartford’s Handel Performing Arts Center, and features theater director Lucie Tiberghien, playwright T.D. Mitchell (whose “Queens for a Year” will kick off the Hartford Stage 2016-17 season next month) and Hartford Stage associate artistic director Elizabeth Williamson. The second discussion is Sept. 12 at Westport Country Playhouse with that theater’s Anne Keefe, Broadway producer Pat Flicker Addiss, director Jenn Thompson (Goodspeed’s “Bye Bye Birdie,” TheaterWorks’ “The Call”), actors Mia Dillon and E. Katherine Kerr.
The LPTW’s Connecticut chapter was founded by Lauren Yarger (theater critic for the Journal-Inquirer newspaper and the Connecticut Arts Connection website), Goodspeed Musicals special events coordinator Mary Miko, Tracey Moore of the Hartt Theatre Division at the University of Hartford and producer/director Marie Reynolds. Moore will moderate the Hartford debate and Reynolds will moderate the Westport one.
In a phone chat the other day, Yarger says “over 100 women have expressed an interest in getting involved in the chapter. There wasn’t a connection for women working in theater here, no place for them to meet up.” You don’t have to join the chapter as a member to attend the events, which are open to the public. Beyond the launch events, the group hopes to create a festival of new work by women theater artists, similar to the Women’s Voices Theater Festival in Washington, D.C. It will also bestow “seals of approval” on Connecticut theaters that demonstrate gender parity in their hiring and casting practices.
Registration is required for both launch events here (for Hartford) and here (for Westport).
Staying Dirty
When Christopher Tierney came to Hartford in May, starring in the national tour of “Dirty Dancing — The Classic Story On Stage,” he said that it would be one of his last turns as Johnny Castle. Tierney did leave the tour, but (like Patrick Swayze walking back into the camp talent show) has returned to it, and will be in the show when it plays the Palace Theater in Waterbury Oct. 7-9. Bronwyn Reed will play Baby. Eleanor Bergstein, who wrote the screenplay for the 1987 “Dirty Dancing” movie and was instrumental in adapting it for the stage, told me that Tierney was “special.” In my Courant review of the show when it played The Bushnell, I wrote that Tierney “has the same rare blend of cockiness, accessibility, star quality and dance talent as did Patrick Swayze.”
Shaking Up Elm Shakespeare
Some New Haven. Some Lenox, Mass. Some Czech Republic. Some elsewhere. That’s the cast make-up for the Elm Shakespeare Company production of Shakespeare’s environmentally diverse “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” staged in New Haven’s Edgerton Park Aug. 18 through Sept. 4. The production is directed by the renowned Tina Packer of the Lenox-based theater Shakespeare & Co.
Czech actor Frederick Secrease, who’s played Othello and Macbeth for the Prague Shakespeare Company, is Oberon. Shakespeare & Co. veterans Kristin Wold, Dave Demke and Steven Godoy are Titania, Theseus and Lysander respectively. Two longtime Elm Shakespeare company members get plum roles: Raphael Massie is Bottom and Jeremy Funke is Flute. North Haven native Evan Gambardella, who attended New Haven’s Educational Center for the Arts and Boston University, plays Puck. Rounding out this multi-cultural, gender-balanced, something-for-everyone cast are Tai Verley as Hippolyta, Anthony Peeples as Demetrius, Caley Milliken as Peter Quince, Anna Paratore as Hermia, Jordan Simpson as Snug and Nathan Tracy as Snout. There’s even a second-generation casting coup: The woman playing Helena, Stephanie Jean Lane, is the daughter of Colin Lane, the off-Broadway stalwart who’s appeared in numerous Elm Shakespeare shows over the years.
