(NEW YORK, NY) -- New York Classical Theatre is producing New Visions, a developmental program of original plays by inspired by “classics.” Readings are free and open to the public.
The vision statement of New York Classical Theatre affirms that they “believe that everyone—regardless of social, economic, or educational background—should have the opportunity to enjoy live professional theatre together as a community.”
They recognize that the historic theatrical canon from which American theatre derives its “classics” has a long history of violence, oppression, and erasure of bodies, identities, and voices that are not white, not male, not cis-gendered, not heteronormative, and/or are not able-bodied.
In an effort to expand their mission to address this erasure, NY Classical is embarking on a three-year initiative to develop two new, original plays for production in our 2024 and 2025 seasons. They are seeking plays that explore new ways of viewing the “classics,” expand our ideas of what “classics” can be, and challenge the power structures that undergird the notion of “classics.”
“I am so excited to be producing New Visions in New York City,” says Stephen Burdman, Artistic Director for NY Classical. “It is a wonderful opportunity to explore what we as a company determine to be a classic, and to see contemporary playwrights, prompted by history, bringing their own visions to these brilliant stories.”
The series begins on Tuesday, April 12 at 7:00pm, when NY Classical will present Cercle Hermaphroditos by Shualee Cook in the Church of the Epiphany at 1393 York Avenue. Based on Jennie June’s infamous accounts of 1895 New York, Cercle Hermaphroditos introduces audiences to trans man Ambrose Carlton (EM Grosland) as he searches for a bride at the social club for trans women run by Laureline Reeves (Ianne Fields Stewart). Ambrose’s attempts to find a lady he can legally marry become more difficult than he expected—especially after the club is raided. The reading also features performances by Aneesh Sheth, Robbie Simpson, Diana Marshall Taylor, James Rose, Carl Howell, Daniel Marconi, and Kathleen Salazar with casting by Stephanie Klapper, Lacey Davies, and Kate McMorran of Stephanie Klapper Casting.
Future plays in the New Visions series will include:
Against the Order, a Southeast Asian Muslim-American adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone, by Gursimrat Kaur on Tuesday, May 10 at 7:00pm at The Chapin School, 100 East End Avenue
A Medusa Thread which reimagines the mythical Gorgon as an expert hairstylist in a purgatorial beauty shop over the Arkansas-Mississippi Delta by Candrice Jones on Saturday, June 25 at 12:00pm at the West Harlem Art Fund’s NP/10 Exhibition House in Nolan Park on Governor’s Island.
The Killing Fields, an adaptation of Agamemnon that explores 1990s Black life in northern California, byAnya Pearson on Tuesday, August 16 at 7:00pm at A.R.T/New York’s South Oxford Space, 138 S. Oxford Street, Brooklyn.
Aaliyah in Underland, a Pan-African Philosophy subversion of Alice in Wonderland by Wind Dell Woods on Tuesday, August 23 at 7:00pm at A.R.T/New York’s South Oxford Space, 138 S. Oxford Street, Brooklyn.
“NY Classical’s Literary Director, Matthieu Chapman, has led us to scripts from some of this generation’s most creative playwrights. They truly reflect our city and our local audience communities. We are very grateful to the Howard Gilman Foundation for their generous support of this series,” Burdman added.
About the Playwrights:
Shualee Cook writes plays as a way of asking questions and figuring out what she thinks of some of the world’s proposed answers. She is the winner of a 2020 RAC Artist Fellowship, the 2019 Parity Commission, has been a fellow of the Confluence Regional Writers’ Project, and a resident playwright at Tesseract Theatre in Saint Louis and Stage Left Theatre in Chicago. Productions, readings, and workshops include And Certain Women (Shakespeare Festival St. Louis), Earworm (Tesseract Theatre, Campfire Theatre Festival), Cercle Hermaphroditos (Stage Left Theatre Summer Reading, Queer Village Reading Series), An Invitation Out(Mustard Seed Theatre, Quantum Dragon Theatre, Benchmark Theatre Fever Dream Festival), Sunset Artists of the American West (2016 Chicago New Work Festival, About Face Theatre), and Tempest In A Teapot (R-S Theatrics, 2016 Idle Muse Athena Festival). She has been a finalist for the 2019 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, the 2016 Jane Chambers Award, the 2016 David Calicchio Award, and a two-time finalist for the Goodman Theatre Playwrights Unit.
Gursimrat Kaur is a playwright and screenwriter whose work grapples with questions of identity in our modern society and dissects subjects of faith, doubt, and cross-cultural human connection. Select works include Radiance, At the Battlefront, Julia, Of the Celestial Bodies, and a modern retelling of a prominent 16th century Punjabi folklore Mirza-Sahiba. Her plays have been developed at the Curious Theatre Branch, MOXIE Theatre, Naatak, Wild Imagining Theatre, HBMG Foundation, The Playwrights’ Center, Monson Arts, and Elsewhere Studios, among others. She is the recipient of The Allan Havis Playwriting Award (UC San Diego) and Award of Merit for Individual Screenwriting (Southern Shorts) and has been finalist for Jane Chambers Award, ScreenCraft Stage Play Competition, and Jerome and Many Voices Fellowships at The Playwrights Center. She was the 2019-2020 Core Apprentice at The Playwrights’ Center. She's a recent graduate of The University of Texas at Austin’s MFA Playwriting program where she was a James A. Michener Fellow. She’s currently an American Woman Fellow at Dramatic Question Theatre and working as an apprentice at The Playwrights’ Center.
Playwright, poet, and educator Candrice Jones is from Dermott, Arkansas. She writes love letters for and to women of the American South. Candrice is a VONA Playwriting alum and CalArts Critical Studies MFA recipient. She is the author of the full-length play, Crackbaby (2010 Wasserstein Prize Nomination) and FLEX(developed at the 2020 Humana Festival of New American Plays). She has been a resident fellow at Ground Floor housed by the Berkeley Rep, the Bay Area Playwrights’ Festival, MacDowell’s Colony of the Arts, and Djerassi’s Colony of the Arts. Candrice lives and works in Minneapolis where she has received a 2019-20 Many Voices Fellowship and a 2020-21 Jerome Fellowship from The Playwrights’ Center.
Anya Pearson is an award-winning actress, playwright, poet, producer, and activist. Her choreopoem “Made to Dance in Burning Buildings” was showcased at Joe’s Pub by The Public Theater and received its World Premiere at Shaking The Tree. Anya is currently working on a series of projects (in dialogue with Made to Dance) aimed at empowering other survivors of sexual violence and combatting rape culture. Her adaptation of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure commissioned by Bag&Baggage Productions which focused on mass incarceration and its effect on black families, The Measure of Innocence, was included on the 2020 Kilroys List. She was a finalist for the 2019 National Black Theatre’s I Am Soul Playwriting Residency. Anya runs a production company called Urban Haiku whose mission is to produce groundbreaking work that transcends the traditional boundaries of theatre while also serving as the catalyst for art and community action to combine for real social change. She is a member of Actors’ Equity Association, LineStorm Playwrights, Couch Film Collective, and a graduate of the William Esper Studio. Her best production is her 7 ½ year-old daughter, Aidee, who can be seen, most nights, trying to circumvent bedtime by asking deep philosophical questions like: “When are we going to see the world? When is my life going to truly begin?”
Wind Dell Woods is a playwright, scholar, and educator. He holds an MFA in Playwriting from Arizona State University. As a theatre artist, his work explores the topics of race, gender, identity, community, and memory. He is influenced by Hip Hop music/culture, as well as ancient and modern mythology. His research interests are in the fields of Hip Hop Theatre, Hip Hop aesthetics, narratology, blackness and performance, as well as the themes of death and rebirth, identity, gender, and slang.
The mission of New York Classical Theatre is to create and reinvigorate audiences for the theatre by presenting all-free productions of popular classics and forgotten masterpieces in public spaces throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn. They firmly believe that everyone—regardless of social, economic, or educational background—should have the opportunity to enjoy live professional theatre together as a community. Their free, engaging performances interpreted for approachable spaces inspire experienced theatergoers to reconnect with the classics and build new and future audiences.
Now celebrating their 23rd Season, NY Classical has served over 275,000 people with 43 all-free productions: King Lear (2021, 2009), The Importance of Being Earnest: Two Ways (2018), Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth (2017, 2008, 2001), The Rivals, The Winter’s Tale (2016, 2004), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2016, 2000), Measure for Measure, The Taming of the Shrew (2015, 2002), As You Like It (2014, 2005), The Tempest, The Seagull, A {15-Min!} Christmas Carol (2017, 2013, 2012), Twelfth Night (2012, 2002), Playing Moliere, Henry V, The School for Husbands, The Rover, Much Ado About Nothing (2010, 2003), Richard III, Hamlet, Misalliance, Cymbeline, The Recruiting Officer, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Comedy of Errors, Mary Stuart, All’s Well That Ends Well, Scapin, The Feigned Courtesans, The Triumph of Love, and King Ubu.
