PTP/NYC’s Julius Caesar will start streaming on September 24 and features a female and nonbinary cast from Middlebury College
Who: PTP/NYC (Potomac Theatre Project)
What: Zoom plays
Where: PTP/NYC YouTube channel
When: Thursday, September 24, October 1, October 8, October 15, free (donations accepted), 7:30 (each show streams through the following Sunday)
Why: Every summer we look forward to the arrival of PTP/NYC (the Potomac Theatre Project) at the Atlantic’s Stage 2 in Chelsea. For thirty-three years, the troupe has been presenting works in Maryland and New York and at Middlebury College, where it was founded in 1987 by Cheryl Faraone, Richard Romagnoli, and Jim Petosa. The company specializes in revivals of shows by the inimitable Caryl Churchill and Howard Barker as well as Anthony Minghella, Sarah Kane, Neal Bell, Snoo Wilson, Harold Pinter, Vaclav Havel, Tom Stoppard, and others. But because of the pandemic lockdown, PTP/NYC’s thirty-fourth repertory season is going virtual, running online September 24 through October 18, with a new Zoom show streaming every Thursday night at 7:30 on YouTube and available for viewing through the following Sunday. The season begins September 24 with Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, directed by Faraone and featuring a female and nonbinary cast from Middlebury College: Em Ballou, Ellie Bavier, Becca Berlind, Olivia Blackmer, Nuasheen Chowdhury, Catie Clark, Maggie Connolly, Molly Dorion, Meili Hwang, Charlotte Katz, Wengel Kifle, Emily Ma, Peyton Mader, Gabi Martin, Sara Massey, Wynn McClenahan, Madison Middleton, Gabby Valdivieso, and Daphne West.
On October 1, PTP/NYC will stage Barker’s Don’t Exaggerate (desire and abuse), directed by Romagnoli and starring Robert Emmet Lunney as a WWI soldier who comes back from the dead. On October 8, Dan O’Brien’s intimate The House in Scarsdale: A Memoir for the Stage will be performed by O’Brien and Alex Draper, directed by Christian Parker. And on October 15, PTP/NYC revives Churchill’s Far Away, directed by Faraone — who previously helmed the British playwright’s Serious Money, The After-Dinner Joke, Vinegar Tom, and Top Girls for PTP — with Ro Boddie, Nesba Crenshaw, Caitlin Duffy, and Lilah May Pfeiffer. “These four plays, stretching across centuries, wholly different in form, structure, and plot, are nonetheless alike in distrust of structures both public and private, mordant humor, and at times a chilling view of the world we inhabit,” the company said in a statement. “This season recalls a founding tenet of the company — to present work which reflects ‘the nightmares and hoaxes by which we live.’” Tickets are free but donations to PTP/NYC are accepted, with ten percent going to the National Black Theatre.