Tag Archives: Jon Norman Schneider

INTERESTING/NOT-INTERESTING: SARAH RUHL’S EURYDICE REVIVED AT SIGNATURE

Big Stone (David Ryan Smith), Loud Stone (Maria Elena Ramirez), and Little Stone (Jon Norman Schneider) serve as an oddball Greek chorus in Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice at the Signature (photo by HanJie Chow)

EURYDICE
The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday-Sunday through June 27, $105-$172
www.signaturetheatre.org

The Signature Theatre’s revival of Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice is nothing if not “interesting.” In fact, that word appears in the ninety-minute show nearly two dozen times.

Originally staged in 2003, the play reimagines the Ancient Greek legend of the master musician Orpheus; his true love, Eurydice; and Hades, lord of the underworld, reframing it from the point of view of Eurydice and adding her father to the story, making their relationship the center of the narrative. Also known as a Nasty Interesting Man, the lord of the underworld is single, his wife, Persephone, having been eliminated from this plot, in which he sets his desires on Eurydice.

Eurydice: I read a book today.
Orpheus: Did you?
Eurydice: Yes. It was very interesting. . . . It had very interesting arguments.
Orpheus: Oh. And arguments that are interesting are good arguments?
Eurydice: Well — yes. . . .
Orpheus: I made up a song for you today.
Eurydice: Did you!?
Orpheus: Yup. It’s not interesting or not-interesting. It just — is.

Eurydice (Maya Hawke) and Orpheus (Caleb Eberhardt) decide to get married, and on their wedding day she is lured by the Nasty Interesting Man (T. Ryder Smith) to his nearby fancy loft with the promise of seeing a letter from her deceased father (Brian d’Arcy James). “I’m not interesting, but I’m strong. You could teach me to be interesting. I would listen,” the man tells Eurydice. “Orpheus is too busy listening to his own thoughts. There’s music in his head. Try to pluck the music out and it bites you. I’ll bet you had an interesting thought today, for instance. I bet you’re always having them.” The meeting, in which the man declares his love for her, results in Eurydice’s death.

She arrives in the underworld via an elevator during a downpour. She is greeted by a trio of odd munchkin-like clowns who serve as an unhelpful Greek chorus: Big Stone (David Ryan Smith), Little Stone (Jon Norman Schneider), and Loud Stone (Maria Elena Ramirez). Her trip across the River of Forgetfulness has erased her memories; she does not recognize her father, who is excited to see her and must teach her the language of the underworld so she can remember who she is. He builds her a room made of string and they bond all over again, including reading to her from King Lear, not exactly the best example of a father’s relationship with his daughters: “We two alone will sing like birds i’ the cage. / When thou dost ask my blessing, I’ll kneel down / And ask of thee forgiveness; so we’ll live, / And pray and sing.”

Up above, Orpheus writes her letters and composes a symphony that he is able to get to her through a mail slot. Meanwhile, the Nasty Interesting Man is determined to make Eurydice his bride, wooing her by riding around on a tricycle like he’s a deranged young kid at a birthday party. Orpheus figures out a way to enter hell without dying, and he and the lord of the underworld battle for Eurydice’s affections as her father wants whatever she thinks is best for her.

Father (Brian d’Arcy James) and daughter (Maya Hawke) reconnect in the underworld in Signature revival (photo by HanJie Chow)

Ruhl wrote the play as a way to connect with her father, who passed away in 1994 when she was twenty. Much of the ninety-minute show feels overly personal and esoteric, difficult to follow, as if we are being taught a different language that will take more time to understand. Les Waters (Dana H., Recent Alien Abductions), who has directed the play numerous times over the years, might be too close to it, unable to smooth out the many bumps in the narrative. Set designer Scott Bradley and sound designer Bray Poor return from Waters’s 2007 production at Second Stage; the action takes place in a tilted, tiled spa with exposed piping. Oana Botez’s costumes range from Eurydice’s father’s tailored suit to the lord of the underworld’s bizarre get-ups and the Stones’ devilishly clownish, colorful attire.

Five-time Tony nominee d’Arcy James (Shrek: The Musical, Something Rotten) is the star of the show, portraying the kind of caring father anyone would want; from constructing the string room to pretending to walk Eurydice down the aisle, he is hypnotic and charming. Hawke is enticing in her off-Broadway debut, but she and Eberhardt (The Comeuppance, On Sugarland) never quite ignite. Smith (Oslo, Our Lady of Kibeho) is game but appears to have pedaled in from another theater. The character’s appearances made me think of a favorite Looney Tunes cartoon, Hair-Raising Hare, in which Bugs Bunny, giving the orange Gossamer a manicure, says, “My, I’ll bet you monsters lead innnteresting lives. . . . I’ll bet you meet a lot of innnteresting people too. I’m always innnterested in meeting innnteresting people.”

The Orpheus story has been dazzling Broadway audiences since Hadestown opened in 2019; Ruhl’s Eurydice, the conclusion to her three-play series at the Signature following Letters from Max and Orlando, is, well, to put it in one word, “interesting.”

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

POOR YELLA REDNECKS

The cast of Poor Yella Rednecks occasionally breaks out into hip-hop songs (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

POOR YELLA REDNECKS
MTC at New York City Center – Stage I
131 West Fifty-Fifth St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 3, $89-$109
212-581-1212
www.manhattantheatreclub.com
www.nycitycenter.org

Arizona-born Vietnamese American playwright and screenwriter Qui Nguyen follows up his semiautobiographical Vietgone with Poor Yella Rednecks, making its New York premiere at MTC at New York City Center — Stage I through December 3.

In praising Vietgone, I wrote, “Passionately directed by [May] Adrales with a frenetic warmth, the hip-hop immigrant tale — with a sweet nod to Hamilton — is colorful and energetic.” I am happy to say the same thing about Poor Yella Rednecks, except it’s even better than its predecessor.

Once again, the play begins with Nguyen (Jon Norman Schneider), called the playwright, explaining that not everything we are about to see actually happened. “This story is based on true events. All heavily researched. All one hundred percent historically accurate. Well, at least according to my mom.”

It’s August 7, 2015, and Nguyen is sitting at a table, interviewing his mother, Tong (Maureen Sebastian), for a play about how she left Vietnam and began a new life in America. But she thinks it’s a terrible idea and the reason why he is poor. “No one want to hear story about old woman who speak bad English with bald son,” she says. She ultimately agrees to talk with him but with a few important rules: “I don’t want you to only tell happy thing. I see your other play. You like to write romantic and funny. But no life is all romance. And it is not all fun. Sometimes it is hard. We Vietnamese. We good at being hard. I want it to be true and hard.” Another rule relates to speech: “If this going to be my play, I want all the white people to sound like the way I hear them. Let them hear all the stupid stuff they say. . . . And finally, I want to talk good.”

Thus, when Vietnamese characters speak with each other, it is in perfect English, substituting for Vietnamese so the audience can understand what they’re saying. But when a Vietnamese character is actually speaking English, it is in broken English. For example, when the older Tong talks to her son in broken English, that is how she is pronouncing the language; however, when she speaks in perfect English, she is actually talking to him in Vietnamese. It’s handled beautifully by Adrales and the cast, a constant reminder of the immigrant experience.

Tong takes him back to Arkansas in 1975, when she met her future husband, Nguyen’s father, Quang, at a relocation camp named Fort Chaffee, then moved to El Dorado. When the playwright says that it must have been love at first sight, Tong replies, “Mm-hmm. And Santa Claus is real, as is the Easter Bunny, and capitalism works for everybody.”

The playwright (Jon Norman Schneider) interviews his mother (Samantha Quan) in Poor Yella Rednecks (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

The action then shifts to the past as Tong and Quang (Ben Levin) fall in love even though she is still dating Bobby (Paco Tolson) and he is still married to Thu (Samantha Quan), who is raising their two children in Vietnam. Five years later, Quang and Tong are living in a trailer with her mother, Huong (Quan), a foul-mouthed, cynical smoker who takes care of Quang and Tong’s son, Little Man, while Tong works at a local diner and Quang hangs out with his hapless friends, including his bestie, Nhan (Jon Hoche). In an ingenious move, Little Man is a puppet, designed by David Valentine, that is voiced and operated by Schneider as the playwright, essentially the adult son playing himself as a child. It works wonderfully, especially when Huong teaches Little Man how to defend himself.

When Nhan announces that he’s moving to Houston to find better opportunities and it turns out that Quang hasn’t quite settled things with Thu yet, Tong starts to reevaluate who she is and what she wants out of life.

Tim Mackabee’s set is structured around five large neon letters — Y, E, L, L, A — that occasionally light up in different colors and are moved around to expose smaller sets attached to them, from a living room and a bar to the diner and a fast-food joint. They were designed to evoke the letters in the fabled Hollywood sign; just as that sign beckons wannabe stars to California from all over the world, the Y-E-L-L-A letters represent the American dream that Asians have when they emigrate from their countries to the United States — and encounter hatred, bigotry, language barriers, and other elements that do not make their transition easy. Several scenes also occur in and around a pickup truck, revealing that the vehicle is a favorite not only for a certain stereotyped group of white men who like country music and beer.

The big letters, along with comic-book-like projections by Jared Mezzocchi, are also a nod to Nguyen’s success as a writer for Marvel Studios and founder of the New York–based Vampire Cowboys troupe; Nguyen even has Marvel legend Stan Lee (Tolson, who portrayed the playwright in Vietgone) show up once in a while and deliver statements about heroes. Valérie Thérèse Bart’s costumes hit their target, and Lap Chi Chu’s lighting ranges from bold to intimate.

As in Vietgone, the cast, nearly all of whom appeared in that show at South Coast Rep and/or MTC, displays their vast talents by often breaking out into exciting raps; the original music is by sound designer Shane Rettig, arranged by Kenny Seymour, choreographed by William Carlos Angulo, and with music direction by Cynthia Meng. “I know you think I’m joking — what the hell am I smoking? / But being next to you is what got my heart thumping / Our kiddies will be cuties, bring over that fine bootie / Nothing’s gonna stop us with our combined beauty,” Quang declares. “Let me reintroduce myself / I’m better known as that shorty that you up and left / I must be crazy, baby — thought you were dead / We threw a funeral to commemorate your death,” Thu announces. “Cuz I’m more than just pretty, my brain is damn witty / Gimme one hot second — Imma run this city / Yo, say that I shouldn’t — I’m my own woman / Stronger than any man and twice as good looking,” Tong proclaims. “Even if they mad at you, you gotta be true to you / Every scar you wear, you show the shit that you went through / Ya gotta stand strong, be strong, head strong, ya ain’t wrong / So come on listen close, this here’s our fight song,” Huong tells Little Man.

Jon Norman Schneider (left) portrays the playwright and his younger puppet self in New York premiere from MTC (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

Nguyen (She Kills Monsters, Living Dead in Denmark) and Adrales (The Strangest, Golden Shield) are in total sync; nearly every minute rings true, and the pace never lags. Schneider (The Coast Starlight, Once Upon a (korean) Time) is warm and charming as the playwright, Hoche (King Kong, Life of Pi) is a hoot as Nhan and various rednecks, Levin is hunky as Quang, Quan is cute and lovable as Huong, Tolson (The Knight of the Burning Pestle, Children of Vonderly) gives Bobby an unexpected edge, but Sebastian (The Best We Could: A Family Tragedy, Soul Samurai) steals the show as Tong, who stares adversity right in the face but refuses to give up, in many ways representing the Asian diaspora in America.

Early on, right before the official interview begins, Tong tells her son, “Let me tell you what kind of story white people want to hear.” He asks, “Wait, why only ‘white people?’” She replies, “Because only white people like to watch a play.” He argues, “All sorts of people watch plays, Mom.” To which she counters, “Yes, all sorts of white people. It look like a Fleetwood Mac concert. It so white. . . . Maybe I don’t want to dig up old history just so you can make a few dollar on play white people won’t like.”

At the matinee I saw, the audience appeared to be at least half Vietnamese or Vietnamese American, both young and old, and they and the white people reacted in unison to the unconventional, important story taking place onstage. Eliciting a wide range of emotions, the show accomplishes what theater does best, bringing people of different backgrounds together to focus on the human condition, reaching into the past while giving us hope for the future.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

THE COAST STARLIGHT

TJ (Will Harrison) and Jane (Camila Canó-Flaviá) consider what might be in The Coast Starlight (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

THE COAST STARLIGHT
Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Through April 16, $103
212-362-7600
www.lct.org

Sliding Doors meets Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author and the Twilight Zone episode “Five Characters in Search of an Exit” in Keith Bunin’s The Coast Starlight, making its New York City debut through April 16 at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater.

The ninety-five-minute play takes place on board the Coast Starlight, a real Amtrak train that travels from Los Angeles to Seattle in thirty-six hours. The premise is wholly relatable: Various individuals get on the train and sit in the same car, where they wonder about the identity of their fellow travelers and consider what might happen if they engaged one another in conversation. Who hasn’t been on a train, bus, or plane and thought about who was sitting nearby, thinking about who they might be and maybe even saying hello.

“One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off,” Mr. Bernstein (Everett Sloane) says in Citizen Kane. “A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn’t see me at all, but I’ll bet a month hasn’t gone by since that I haven’t thought of that girl.” There’s an inherent sadness in every fleeting glimpse we humans have of each other, that maybe life would have turned out differently if we had made a different choice in that instant.

For years, Missed Connections listings have appeared, first in newspapers and magazines, now online, from people who saw a stranger somewhere, regret not having introduced themselves, and are now trying to find that person. It was captured beautifully in Adrian Tomine’s November 8, 2004, New Yorker cover depicting a young man and a young woman in aligning subway trains, both reading the same book, looking at each other as if they understand they were meant to be together but might never get the chance.

Characters engage in imaginary conversations in moving play at Lincoln Center (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

In The Coast Starlight, the half dozen characters are all heading somewhere, but it’s not necessarily where they want to be going, and their inner and outer journeys could potentially be changed if only they had said something. “It’s an awful thing to feel like you don’t have a home,” Jane (Camila Canó-Flaviá) says about halfway through.

TJ (Will Harrison) is a navy medic about to go AWOL to avoid being sent back to Afghanistan. Jane is an aspiring animator visiting her boyfriend who she may not love anymore. Noah (Rhys Coiro) is a veteran and a drifter caring for his ailing mother. Liz (Mia Barron) is a loud, lively woman who has just ditched her lover at an Extraordinary Couples Workshop. Ed (Jon Norman Schneider) is a harried, drunk traveling salesman working for a questionable invention company. And Anna (Michelle Wilson) is a married mother who has just had to identify the body of her dead brother.

The play is primarily a series of imaginary conversations, as if the characters decided to speak to one another, sharing intimate details of who they are and what they want out of their daily existence.

“I wanted to lean across the aisle and say to her: I have no idea where I’m headed today — I just decided I’d get on a train and head north,” TJ says about Jane, who responds to the audience, “If he’d told me that, I’m not sure what I would’ve said. TJ: “Then I wanted to tell her: I’ve lived in California for a year and till this morning I’ve never been north of San Diego.” Jane: “And then I probably would’ve said: Well, I’ve never been to San Diego.” TJ: “You should definitely go sometime. It’s totally weird.”

“I wanted to tell all of you: Obviously I’m nowhere near the person I intended to be,” Ed says. “But I’m the only person I can be under the circumstances. I know how shitty today was and I hold no illusions about tomorrow.”

These six diverse people are not having their best day, and they have no idea what the future has in store for them. They are lost souls contemplating what happens next, not necessarily looking forward to it. Worried that he’s going to be caught and brought back to face justice for military desertion, TJ says, “Then I remembered nobody could be looking for me because I wasn’t missing yet.”

A whirlwind conclusion brings it all into perspective, focusing on the concept of “What if?”

Arnulfo Maldonado’s set is a rotating platform with six movable train seats. Daniel Kluger’s sound, Lap Chi Chu’s lighting, and Ben Pearcy’s projections (for 59 Productions) makes the audience feel that they’re also on the train, motoring north through gorgeous scenery, although only flashes of light and color stream by. Ásta Bennie Hostetter’s everyday-dress costumes help give identity to the characters.

Directed by Tyne Rafaeli (Epiphany, I Was Most Alive with You), the play occasionally gets lost itself, the dialogue running off the rails; it’s not clear why the stage spins or why the actors continually rearrange their seats, and Kluger’s interstitial music is too standard.

Harrison (Daisy Jones and the Six) is affecting in his off Broadway debut, speaking in a manner that emphasizes how unanchored TJ is. Canó-Flaviá (Dance Nation, Mac Beth) is warm and gentle as Jane, Coiro (Dinner at Eight, Boy’s Life) is compelling as the unpredictable Noah, and Barron (Dying for It, Domesticated) nearly rips the roof off the Newhouse in her entrance scene, screaming into her cellphone as if no one else is around. Wilson (Confederates, Sweat) is touching as Anna, while Schneider (Once Upon a [korean] Time, Awake and Sing!) does his best with a character who is more tangential, not as deeply nuanced.

At one point Jane imagines telling TJ about James Turrell’s Dividing the Light Skyspace at Pomona College. She explains, “The artist who made it, he believes that the sky is way too enormous for us to really comprehend it. So he builds these little rooms all over the world with holes cut in their ceilings so you can look up at the sky like it’s a picture in a frame. It’s so much cooler than I’m making it sound. I promise you’ll never look at the sky the same way again.”

It’s an apt metaphor for the Coast Starlight, both the train and the play. (Notably, Pearcy was an assistant to Turrell for ten years.) I’ve been on long train rides, and I’ve sat several times in Turrell’s first US Skyspace, Meeting, which is on permanent view at MoMA PS1. I’m not sure that, having seen Bunin’s show, I will be more amenable to engage strangers in conversation, but I’m likely to wonder a whole lot more about who they might be.

ONCE UPON A (korean) TIME

Once Upon a (korean) Time offers a remarkable theatrical experience at La MaMa (photo by Richard Termine)

ONCE UPON A (korean) TIME
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club
The Ellen Stewart Theatre
66 East Fourth St. between Second Ave. & Bowery
Tuesday – Sunday through September 18, $60-$80
212-475-7710
ma-yitheatre.org
www.lamama.org

“Fairy and folk tale tropes offer modern authors . . . ideal frameworks and well-known terms of reference through which to explore the meanings and mythologies of war, both real and imagined. They do so for children and adults alike,” editors Sara Buttsworth and Maartje Abbenhuis write in the introduction to their 2016 book, War, Myths, and Fairy Tales (Palgrave Macmillan). Playwright and actor Daniel K. Isaac and director Ralph B. Peña take that approach to the next level in Ma-Yi Theater Company’s explosive yet intimate Once Upon a (korean) Time, running at La MaMa through September 18.

The ninety-five-minute show was inspired by Isaac’s biological family as well as his chosen family — in a moving program note he explains, “I am an only child of a Korean immigrant single parent [who fled south during the Korean War]. I do not know my biological father or his side of the family or their history. My maternal grandparents passed before I was born. . . . I have been disowned multiple times for being gay. . . . So the notion of ‘family’ is complicated for me.”

The notion of family is central to the play, which unfurls across a series of interrelated vignettes in which different kinds of battles provide opportunities to tell Korean folk tales as both distraction and metaphor in the midst of heated conflict. The first chapter, “Earth,” takes place in a trench in the 1930s, where two soldiers are under brutal attack. “We gotta get outta here / How do we get outta here / Should we make a run for it / Let’s make a run for it / I don’t wanna die / I’m too young to die / I don’t wanna be here / Get me out of here get me out of here get me out,” one of the soldiers cries out. He demands that the other soldier retell him the legend of brothers Heung-bu and Nol-bu: After their parents die, one sibling inherits everything and banishes the other and his pregnant wife and child. But a single seed from a previously injured baby jeh-bee (swallow) results in magic calabashes that just might right the wrongs.

Two women (Sonnie Brown and Jillian Sun) meet during the 1992 LA riots in Once Upon a (korean) Time (photo by Richard Termine)

The scene is brilliantly directed by Peña on Se Hyun Oh’s bold set, which is highlighted by two massive vertical boulders that rotate throughout the play to form a variety of walls, blockades, caves, and other barriers. As the soldiers hide behind rocks, bullets fly past and bombs explode ever closer; the audience is seated on the same side of the trench as the soldiers, immersing everyone in the dire situation. Oliver Wason’s lighting and Fabian Obispo’s sound, along with projections by Yee Eun Nam and Phuong Nguyen’s costumes, make us feel like we are all in harm’s way. It’s about as powerful an opening scene as I’ve experienced in a long time.

The involving depiction of the horrors of war continues with “Water,” set in a WWII comfort station where three Korean women, one a virgin, are being sexually, physically, and psychologically abused by viciously hostile Japanese soldiers. To distract the virgin from what is soon to happen to her, the other two women share the story of Shim-Cheong, a woman who sacrifices herself in order to save the life of her blind father.

A through line begins to develop as the action moves to a cave during the Korean War (“Heaven”) where the story of the Tiger and the Bear is told, a convenience store (“Fire”) amid the 1992 LA riots supplemented with the tale of the Grandma and the Tiger, and a contemporary gathering where three couples meet at a Korean BBQ restaurant and put it all in context as they await the future.

The stories within the stories offer compelling Korean myths to accompany the central narrative, especially since the outstanding cast goes back and forth between portraying the mythological figures and the “real” characters, sometimes as plays within the play. In “Water,” for example, one of the comfort women tells the virgin that she will be Shim-Cheong, then lays out the plot, gives her her motivation, and even makes a key alteration to her costume.

A Korean BBQ restaurant is the setting for the poignant conclusion of Daniel K. Isaac play (photo by Richard Termine)

Obie-winning Ma-Yi founding member and producing artistic director Peña and Isaac, who previously worked together on Lloyd Suh’s The Chinese Lady — Isaac is best known as an actor, appearing in numerous plays as well as in Billions and other television shows and films and will next be seen in You Will Get Sick at Roundabout next month — also zeroes in on the ideas of legacy, tradition, and belonging, from defending one’s homeland to emigrating overseas. As soon as the young woman walks into the convenience store, the older woman says, “I telling you story.” The young woman asks, “Like once upon a time?” The older woman replies, “No / That American thing.”

At the BBQ restaurant, the six people discuss such fairy tales as Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast as well as their family histories. “Korean stories are so funny,” Jon says. “And usually way more gruesome,” Sasha adds.

Once Upon a (korean) Time is both funny and gruesome, an expertly told tale that excites the eyes and the ears and keeps the heart pumping. There are no lags; something is always happening onstage, and constant movement and projections keep the audience entranced. The seven actors are extraordinary, with Sonnie Brown, Sasha Diamond, David Lee Huynh, Teresa Avia Lim, Jon Norman Schneider, David Shih, and Jillian Sun playing multiple roles. A jubilant scene in which the Sea Dragon bursts into a musical number could have felt out of place but instead is a welcome break from all the solemnity, even as he eagerly declares, “I hear we have a virgin in the house!”

Once Upon a (korean) Time is a gripping, all-too-real story of intergenerational trauma. Peña has called it “insane,” and insane it is, in only the best way. Isaac has dedicated the play to his mother, who will not be able to see it because she refuses to get vaccinated. And that’s a genuine shame, because her son has given the rest of us a remarkable theatrical experience.

THE MANIC MONOLOGUES: A VIRTUAL THEATRICAL EXPERIENCE

Who: Tessa Albertson, Anna Belknap, Ato Blankson-Wood, Mike Carlsen, Maddy Corman, Alexis Cruz, Mateo Ferro, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Sam Morales, Bi Jean Ngo, Armando Riesco, Jon Norman Schneider, Heather Alicia Simms, C. J. Wilson, Craig Bierko
What: Monologues about how real-life individuals are dealing with mental illness
Where: McCarter Theatre Center
When: Thursday, February 18, free, 7:00 am
Why: In May 2019, Zachary Burton and Elisa Hofmeister brought their show, The Manic Monologues, to Stanford University, an evening of true stories about people dealing with mental illness. The project was inspired by a psychotic breakdown Stanford University PhD geology student Zach suffered; he was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder. The play has now been reimagined for online viewing by director Elena Araoz with multimedia designer Jared Mezzocchi; it will start streaming through McCarter Theatre Center on February 18 at 7:00 am, performed by an all-star cast and featuring interactive design and technology, including sound, writing, and doodling. “With this digital endeavor, McCarter hopes to reinforce its role as a cultural organization dedicated to innovative projects that spark timely dialogue and strengthen community,” McCarter resident producer Debbie Bisno said in a statement. “In pivoting to virtual creation in Covid, we’ve uncovered exciting ways of combining art and ideas. And, we are excited to make this work, and the conversation around mental health, accessible to a wider and more diverse audience than we would have in a traditional live staged-reading format. These are silver linings!”

Presented in association with Princeton University Health Services, the 24 Hour Plays, and Innovations in Socially Distant Performance at the Lewis Center for the Arts, The Manic Monologues, originally planned for a staged reading prior to the pandemic lockdown, consists of twenty-one real-life tales told by actors Tessa Albertson, Anna Belknap, Ato Blankson-Wood, Mike Carlsen, Maddy Corman, Alexis Cruz, Mateo Ferro, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Sam Morales, Bi Jean Ngo, Armando Riesco, Jon Norman Schneider, Heather Alicia Simms, C. J. Wilson, and Craig Bierko; in an effort to further reduce the stigma surrounding mental illness, there will also be links to a resource guide, video interviews with experts and advocates, the script, and other related material.

THE NAATCO NATIONAL PARTNERSHIP PROJECT: ROMEO AND JULIET

Who: National Asian American Theatre Company, Two River Theater
What: Virtual benefit reading of modern verse translation
Where: Two River Rising,
When: Wednesday, September 30, and Thursday, October 1, $25, 7:00
Why: In 2015, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival announced “Play On Shakespeare,” an ambitious project in which thirty-six contemporary playwrights would provide modern translations of all thirty-nine of the Bard’s plays. On September 30 and October 1, the NAATCO National Partnership Project (NNPP), in a collaboration between the National Asian American Theatre Company and Two River Theater in New Jersey, will present an online benefit reading of South Korean playwright Hansol Jung’s (Wild Goose Dreams, Cardboard Piano) interpretation of Romeo and Juliet, originally commissioned for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. The all-Asian American cast features Mitchell Winter as Romeo, Stephanie Hsu as Juliet, Joel de la Fuente as Capulet, David Huynh as Mercutio, Tina Chilip as Tybalt, Vanessa Kai as Lady Capulet, Mia Katigbak as the nurse, Andrew Pang as Friar Laurence, Jon Norman Schneider as Petruchio, and Jeena Yi as Benvolio, with all performers taking on multiple roles; Obie winner Chay Yew (A Language of Their Own, Wonderland) serves as director.

“To most theater lovers, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is a dramatic palimpsest; resonant and complicated, it remains a core myth for many,” TRT artistic director John Dias said in a statement. “Itself layered with borrowed stories and cultural appropriation, R&J beats with a universal heart of love and hate. The play still has much to teach us, and I love the echoes and layers that Hansol has added to it.” The first part of the show will be livestreamed on September 30 at 7:30, with part two streaming October 1 at 7:30, followed by a Q&A. A portion of the proceeds will go to the Asian Pride Project, which “celebrates the journeys, triumphs, and struggles of LGBTQ individuals and our Asian and Pacific Islander families and communities.” Future NNPP productions include NAATCO collaborating with Long Wharf Theatre on Madhuri Shekar’s Queen in February 2021 as well as with New York Theatre Workshop and Soho Rep.