New Streaming Theater Company New Normal Rep Announced, Featuring Inaugural Four Play Season
The season will feature works by playwrights Julia Blauvelt, Jack Canfora, Nilo Cruz and Nikkole Salter, and star actors including Marsha Mason, Jill Eikenberry & more.by BWW News Desk
New Normal Rep, a new streaming theater company dedicated to producing reflective and inclusive plays, has announced its inaugural four play season featuring works by playwrights Julia Blauvelt (Airline Disaster, Youthful Journeys of the World), Jack Canfora (Fellow Travelers, Jericho, and Poetic License), Pulitzer Prize-winning and Tony-nominated playwright Nilo Cruz (Anna in the Tropics, Two Sisters and a Piano), and Obie winner and Pulitzer nominee Nikkole Salter (In the Continuum, Carnaval).
On Sunday, San Diego Repertory Theatre will host the world premiere of “Before Fiddler Live from Florence,” Hershey Felder’s sixth music-filled play streamed live from his home in Florence, Italy, since last May.
Fans accustomed to the playwright/actor’s solo shows expect to see him playing piano as he tells the story of a famous composer. But “Before Fiddler” is a first in many ways. Streaming live at 5 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 7, is about the famous 19th-century Yiddish author and playwright Sholem Aleichem, who was known in his day as the “Jewish Mark Twain.” Several of his semi-autobiographical stories about Tevye the milkman inspired the Broadway musical “Fiddler on the Roof.”
Bringing Stages to Storefronts in a Theater-Hungry City
Miami New Drama gave audiences a window on the “Seven Deadly Sins” when it took over part of a pedestrian mall for a production.
Michel Hausmann, the artistic director of Miami New Drama, waves to passers-by from inside one of the storefronts where his company presented “Seven Deadly Sins.”Credit.Scott McIntyre for The New York Times
By Jordan Levin
Feb. 2, 2021
MIAMI As the final performance of Miami New Drama’s “Seven Deadly Sins” ended Sunday night, the actors streamed onto Lincoln Road, thanking the company’s artistic director, Michel Hausmann. They had spent months performing separately, inside adjacent vacant storefronts on this South Beach pedestrian mall, to an audience that watched and listened from a distance.
Miami, one of the top tourist destinations in the U.S., has been hit hard by COVID and the travel shutdown. Officials at Miami International Airport say traffic is off by more than half, impacting hotels, restaurants, and hot spots like Miami Beach. But somehow live theater is happening. In fact, Miami is now home to the largest live production in the country. Jeffrey Brown reports.
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Judy Woodruff:
We want to now raise the curtain on an experiment to keep theater alive, while propping up a local economy amid the pandemic.
Miami, one of the country s top tourist destinations, has been hit hard by COVID and the travel shutdown. Officials at Miami International Airport, where some 90 percent of tourists arrive, say traffic is off by more than half. And that affects hotels, restaurants, and hot spots like Miami Beach.