Forced online, an opera festival searches for intimacy
Alexi Murdoch in Wide Slumber for Lepidopterists, part of the Prototype Festival. The Under the Radar, Prototype and Exponential festivals are ready to open our minds with experimental work, even if their doors are shut. Pierre-Alain Giraud via The New York Times.
by Zachary Woolfe
(NYT NEWS SERVICE)
.- The annual Prototype festival of new opera and music theater thrives on intimacy. Its chamber-scale offerings often politically charged, emotionally brutal and just plain loud vibrate the viscera. Prototype has become known for screaming, moaning works like Angels Bone and Prism, which both went on to win Pulitzer Prizes and were clench-your-jaw immersions in suffering, put on in tiny theaters that magnified their effect.
Chosen from among four finalists by a panel of other theater professionals, playwright Aleshea Harris said winning the 2021 Hermitage Greenfield Prize feels like “ultimate pat on the back.”
Presented by the Hermitage Artist Retreat and the Greenfield Foundation, the prize, previously known as the Greenfield Prize, is a $30,000 commission for a new work that rotates each year among creators of theater, music and visual arts. Harris joins previous playwriting winners Craig Lucas, John Guare, Nilo Cruz and Martyna Majok.
Harris, the Obie-winning playwright of “Is God Is” and “What to Send Up When it Goes Down,” has been winning attention and numerous other honors off-Broadway and in theaters around the country for works that build off personal experiences to tell broader stories in an often gritty style.
Playwright Aleshea Harris Awarded 2021 Hermitage Greenfield Prize
The Hermitage Artist Retreat (Andy Sandberg, Artistic Director and CEO), in collaboration with the Greenfield Foundation, has selected OBIE-winning playwright Aleshea Harris as the winner of the 2021 Hermitage Greenfield Prize, given this year in the artistic discipline of theater. Harris will receive a six-week residency at the Hermitage and a $30,000 commission for a new work, which will have its first public presentation in Sarasota in 2023 in collaboration with the Hermitage’s presenting partner, Asolo Repertory Theatre (Michael Donald Edwards, Producing Artistic Director).
The Hermitage’s Artistic Director Andy Sandberg notes that Harris was selected by a distinguished jury that included jury chair Mandy Greenfield1, a member of the Hermitage Curatorial Council and the Artistic Director of Williamstown Theater Festival (Massachussetts); Nataki Garrett, the artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival
Theater to Stream: Festivals, Festivals, Festivals
The Under the Radar, Prototype and Exponential festivals are ready to open our minds with experimental work, even if their doors are shut.
Alexi Murdoch in “Wide Slumber for Lepidopterists,” part of the Prototype Festival.Credit.Pierre-Alain Giraud
Set dates for previews, openings and closings. Fall and spring seasons. Heck: turning up somewhere on time!
Until the pandemic occurred in 2020, many of us perhaps did not realize how much theater relies on appointments. Now that most of them have vanished, with theater and time itself becoming somewhat amorphous, it’s comforting to see that the January festivals are still happening.