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noiseartists · 4 years

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The Academy Of Sun: Psychaedelic Pop from Brighton

Formed in Brighton nine years ago, The Academy of Sun is a four-piece comprised of Nick Hudson (piano, synths, hammon organ, harmonium, vocals, percussion, synths), Kianna Blue (bass, synths), Guy Brice (guitars) and Ash Babb (drums). Together, they present dystopian fantastic creations that combine the deeply personal and the poetically arcane. Dark yet buoyant, this is a controlled explosion of psychedelic and dark power pop with atmospheres couched in vast and expansive landscapes and cinematic arrangements.

Nick Hudson's musical juggernaut has been active in various incarnations since 2012, always transcending expectations. The Academy Of Sun has collaborated with Massive Attack's Shara Nelson, members of NYC's Kayo Dot, David Tibet of Current 93, Asva and Matthew Seligman (Bowie, Tori Amos, Morrissey). Hudson has also collaborated with Wayne Hussey of The Mission, as well as Canadian queercore icon GB Jones. Known for explosive and psychedelic live shows, The Academy Of Sun has performed in a medieval castle in Italy, a boat on the Thames, an abandoned railway carriage in Offenbach, colossal churches, The London College of Fashion, The Old Market theatre in Brighton, the MS Stubnitz in Hamburg, Brighton Dome, and a string of L.A. shows in 2019. Having toured 3 continents, highlights include appearances with Mogwai, Toby Driver and Keith Abrams from Kayo Dot, and Timba Harris (Mr Bungle, Amanda Palmer). 'The Parts That Need Replacing' is out now, available across online stores and streaming platforms such as Spotify. The full album 'The Quiet Earth' will be released in summer of 2020 on CD, as well as digitally.

THE INTERVIEW

Who are the group members?

Myself, Kianna Blue, Ash Babb, Guy Brice.

How did you meet?

A poet introduced Kianna and I. We ended up living together, In our modest cottage on the edge of a cliff we kept house goats. Guy was one of them. It became quickly apparent that if he kept his hooves pedicured, he had an incredible way with a guitar. Ash and I met in a local tavern, courtesy of a mutual online awareness via the blog of author Dennis Cooper.

How did you come up with your name?

I'd been reading literature on pagan sun-worshipping cults and came across Heliogabalus, the queer teenage anarchist emperor of ancient Rome. Artaud wrote on him. So I wanted to unleash and harness the unkempt nuclear blaze of that energy within a formalist framework.

What is your music about?

It's about invigoration and alchemy – stimulating the mind and soul in tandem with the body. Music to dance and cry to. It's about pole-vaulting transgressive and subversive narratives over the iron gate of mainstream normativity. Spiraling wells of energy and dynamism. Loud and shimmering vibrancy. “Did I really hear that?”

What are your goals as an artist artistically/commercially?

Artistically I just want to continually evolve my craft, critical faculties, and general state of awareness so as I can get ever closer to precisely articulating the atmospheres, geometries and ghost stories that circle my head like ever-mutating angels, day and night, on the brink of expelling light and form. And in doing so, to gather those who are similarly drawn to peering through the cracks. Commercially, I - and we - really just want to connect this with a bigger audience. We're aware that we're a weird band, and that it's a long game. So it demands stoicism, patience and persistence. The ideal would be to get to a level where we have sufficient economic backing to be able to actually deploy all the ideas we have without compromising on logistics or production values.

What are you trying to avoid as a band?

The music industry.

Why do you make the music you make? Is it in you? Is it your environment?

It's more interior than exterior. Albeit I respond very palpably to landscapes, just not the one that I'm writing this interview from within! Haha. I'm drawn to severe, wild landscapes, and likewise to art and music that evokes such landscapes.

What inspires you for the music or for the Lyrics?

I've always written prose and poetry, and so a key factor in my embarking upon songwriting fifteen years ago was preserving the conditions of unabashed literary aspirations in my lyrics. I like to think/strive to ensure that as much as they might stand successfully alone on the page they also transmit the melodies with ease. I'm drawn to art in any medium that explores and expresses extreme states of being – modes of transcendence, ultimately. Ecstasies, agonies, the uncanny, the transgressive, the sublime. Stillness can also be extreme. Lots of nature imagery. European cinema and literature.

Tell us what you are looking when trying to achieve your sounds. Do you experiment a lot or have a clear idea of what you want?

I think we all share a delight in unusual sonics – there were some genuinely experimental moments in the studio – for example, the first sound heard on the record is a drone created by my playing a pre-recorded vocal through the speaker of a cassette recorder into the pick-ups on Guy's guitar, which was then sent through waves of delay. We created a MIDI church organ by recording the bass pedals of the church organ of St Mary's, Brighton and turning that into a MIDI instrument. The idea of pitch-bending such a monolithic and defiantly analogue instrument was irresistible. There's one track where we recorded the drum part four times and placed each take peculiarly across the stereo field. And there are field recordings scattered throughout, evoking radioactivity and harsh landscapes. I usually, with each track, have a pretty clear idea of the aesthetic and formal parameters within which experimentation can occur, and we go from there.

Explain your songwriting process.

Sometimes I'll be improvising on piano and motifs will surface that later impose their will upon my subconscious, continually knocking until I open the door and allow them to become a song. Other times I'll have the completed lyrics and sit and just experiment with ways to place them, and edit, and edit until they're homed. Some songs arrive in one swift nuclear wind, and others take years to ferment. I keep a lot of audio notes on my iphone.

Describe your palette of sound.

Rich but not cloying, Psychedelic but not nostalgic. Adventurous. Green and gold. Complex but not arbitrarily technical. Deconstructing, rerouting and inverting obvious formal choices but not at the expense of comprehension.

Who would you want as a dream producer, and why?

Trent Reznor, Bjork, Tim Palmer, David Lynch, Danny Elfman. I thought I'd compensate for not saying 'why' by instead listing five, haha.

If you could guest on someone else’s album, who would it be and why? What would you play?

Well I know he's technically on the cusp of retiring, but assuming this questions dwells in an amorphous temporality (as we do ourselves under quarantine), I'd say Ennio Morricone. Because he's peerless. I would love to have played piano/organ on one of his sixties/seventies film works. To say I've been produced by Morricone and appear on, say, the Sacco and Vanzetti soundtrack, would see me fairly ecstatic.

What musical skills would you like to acquire or get better at?

I'd like develop further fluency in classical notation and orchestration.

Which other musician/artist would you date?

I don't really subscribe to coupledom or its rituals but maybe Jack from These New Puritans. NB. I would never, EVER date a musician. Haha.

Is there a band that if they didn’t exist you wouldn’t be making the music you make?

Probably Mr Bungle. In that they not only blew my mind at a young age with their own music, but laid breadcrumbs for me to explore the family tree of John Zorn, Tzadik, and the sprawling concentric circles of artists making up the experimental underground of LA and NYC.

You are from England. What are the advantages and inconvenient?

Hold my hair back. Well. Its primary advantage is its proximity to the European mainland.

Its disadvantages are manifold and voluminous – aside from a micro-percentage of wonderful, compassionate, intelligent and progressive entities and institutions, its a nasty little hotbed of misplaced Churchillian hubris and post-imperial egocentrism, ruled as a playpen by which neo-liberal public schoolboy millionaires can move their assets around and grow their wealth while 'ironically' masquerading a paper-thin veneer of concern for the public interest and welfare.

Boris Johnson and his monstrous cabal aside, the UK treats its musicians appallingly. I've toured Europe, America and The Middle East and it shames me to say that the worst treatment I've experienced out of any of the countries I've played is that of the UK. I'm not alone in this assertion either.

There are exceptions of course, but as a rule, this sadly remains the case. Ten years of Tory rule certainly hasn't helped this.

What are some places around the world that you hope to play with your band?

There's that amphitheater built into a rock face somewhere in Central Europe. I'd like to do a tour of churches and cathedrals. And acoustically-dynamic natural rock formations.

It's my dream to take The Academy Of Sun on an extensive tour of Europe, but we'd need solid economic backing to be able to do so with production values intact, let alone keep us all afloat while doing so.

So that's something to push for. There's a pueblo in New Mexico called TAOS – obviously it's pre-destined that we play there. I went to Svalbard in the Arctic last year, and there's a beautiful concert hall called Huset right between two glaciers. I'd love us to play there. (Johannes, are you reading this?)

When is the next album/EP due?

June! We inevitably had to postpone the release from its intended release in April, when the whole world went on pause. We're super-excited to have you all hear The Quiet Earth.

Some artists you recommend

I can't get enough of Oingo Boingo right now – Danny Elfman's band that split in 1995. Peerless songwriting, arrangement, production and performance. Otherwise, Arca is amazing. I'm listening to a lot of Nico. Devouring Clive Barker's early novels. Revisiting Diamanda Galas' earlier catalogue. Watching a lot of Chris Marker and Maya Deren. And I just read Marina Abramovic's memoir, which is profoundly inspiring.

Anything else you want your fans to know?

Mainly – thank you for your support, engagement and enthusiasm, especially during this wayward, hazy and anxiety-inducing time. We hope you'll enjoy the record, and we're super-psyched to play shows all over the place when concerts are indeed a viable concern once again. Stay well, breathe deep, and celebrate and nurture the connections that enrich, comfort, soothe and embolden you.

MORE ON THE BAND

Find The Academy Of Sun here:

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#Brighton

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newyorktheater · 5 years

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Below is a selection from an Off-Broadway season full of starry faces like Daveed Diggs, Jake Gyllenhaal, Isabelle Huppert, Uzo Adubi et al, in plays by Lynn Nottage, Suzan-Lori Parks, Martyna Majok, Anna Deavere Smith, Lydia Diamond, Enda Walsh, Donald Margulies, Halley Feiffer, Luis Alfaro, John Guare, Florian Zeller et al; and musicals by Tom Kitt (Next to Normal), Duncan Sheik (Spring Awakening) and Dave Malloy (Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812.) It can feel overwhelming

Daveed Diggs in White Noise

Jake Gyllenhaal in Seawall/A Life

Isabelle Huppert in The Mother

Uzo Aduba in Toni Stone

Chris Noth in The Mother

Justice Smith in The Mother

Composer Dave Malloy – “Octet”

playwright Luis Alfaro – “Mojada”

playwright Martyna Majok – “Sanctuary City”

Tim Blake Nelson, author of “Socrates”

Anna Deavere Smith

Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks – White Noise

Halley Feiffer, playwright and star of The Pain of My Belligerence

Playwright Stefano Massini – The Lehman Triology

Cillian Murphy in Grief is the Thing With Feathers

Lynn Nottage — The Secret Life of Bees

Composer Duncan Sheik — The Secret Life of Bees, and Alice By Heart

Composer Tom Kitt – Superhero

Theaster Gates, Black Artists Retreat

Playwright Leah Nanako Winkler – God Said This

Marin Ireland in Blue Ridge

Playwright Christopher Shinn – Dying City

Playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury — Mary Seattle

Playwright John Guare — Nantucket Sleigh Ride

To make the sorting more manageable, the shows are largely grouped together by the theater that’s presenting or producing them, in order of my preference for those theaters (determined by such factors as their recent track record, the promise of the new season, and by the overall experience I’ve had with the theater as theatergoer and critic.) After my favorite theaters, I list some individual shows from other theaters.

Some might argue there is little distinction anymore between Broadway and Off-Broadway, especially in a season when so many downtown darlings are moving to Broadway, such as Taylor Mac,Tarell Alvin McCraney, Dominique Morisseau, Anais Mitchell (See Spring 2019 Broadway Preview Guide: A Season of Theater Geniuses Making Their Broadway Debuts)

Yet, Off-Broadway remains less expensive and, frankly, potentially more rewarding. It’s also more sprawling — not quite possible to present all the riches of a season in a single post.

I’ve put a red check mark — √ — besides a few shows about which I’m especially excited or intrigued. (I’ll only know if my excitement was justified once I see them.)

Click on the theater’s name for more information about the theater, and on the show title for more about the individual production.

(Also check out my monthly calendar of openings)

THE PUBLIC THEATER

425 Lafayette Street and in Central Park. Twitter: @PublicTheaterNY

The Public is on a roll once again, and not just because it originated Hamilton. , The successful downtown empire that Joe Papp created half a century ago offers a eclectic, inclusive mix of challenging and entertaining theater. Truth is, I could put a check mark next to nearly every one of its offerings in the Spring.

Under the Radar Festival

January 3- 13

The 15th annual festival presents 21 artists from nine countries. See details of this and several of the January theater festivals in my January 2019 New York Theater Openings

√ Sea Wall/A Life

February 1 – March 31. Opens February 14.

Tom Sturridge and Jake Gyllenhaal appear separately in a pair of plays, Sturridge in Simon Stephen’s “Sea Wall,” a monologue about love and the human need to know the unknowable, and Gyllenhaal in “A Life,” and Gyllenhaal in Nick Payne’s A Life, a meditation on how we say goodbye to those we love most.

√White Noise

March 5 – April 14. Opens March 20.

Daveed Diggs (Hamilton) returns Off-Broadway in a new play by Suzan-Lori Parks, directed by Public Theater artistic director Oskar Eustis. Long-time friends and lovers Leo, Misha, Ralph, and Dawn are educated, progressive, cosmopolitan, and woke. But when a racially motivated incident with the cops leaves Leo shaken, he decides extreme measures must be taken for self-preservation.

Ain’t No Mo’

March 12 – April 21. Opens March 27.

In this satire by Jordan E. Cooper that began at the Fire This Time Festival, African-Americans leave en masse a country plagued with injustice.

Socrates

April 2 – May 19.

A new drama about the Greek philosopher written by Tim Blake Nelson and directed by Doug Hughes. Michael Stuhlbarg portrays Socrates.

Mobile Unit: The Tempest

April 29 – May 19

Mojada

July 2 – August 11

Luis Alfaro, whose “Oedipus El Rey” bowled me over, returns with the New York premiere of his drama inspired by the Ancient Greek story of Medea

PARK AVENUE ARMORY

Everything I’ve seen at the Park Avenue Armory in the past couple of seasons has been spectacular, from A Room in India to The Damned to The Head and the Load, and this season looks to continue the feast. The theater they present is largely European, cutting-edge, often hybrids, and they sometimes require patience and an open mind. But, offered in the vast expanse of the Armory’s Drill Hall, these aren’t just shows; they’re events.

Simon Russell Beale, Ben Miles and Adam Godley in The Lehman Trilogy

√ THE LEHMAN TRILOGY

March 22–April 20, 2019. Opens March 27

Italian playwright Stefano Massini’s play, adapted by Ben Power and directed by Sam Mendes (The Ferryman!) stars acclaimed actors Simon Russell Beale, Adam Godley, and Ben Miles and the Lehman brothers and their sons and grandsons over nearly two centuries, climaxing with the end of the firm that bore their name in the crash of 2008.

EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED AND WOULD HAPPEN

June 3–9, 2019

Artist and composer Heiner Goebbels reenacts 100 years of history to show a world in strife through performance, sound, movement, and moving image

DRILL

June 20–July 21, 2019

Immersive, site-specific film installation Drill by Hito Steyerl that mounts new commissions by the Armory alongside pre-existing works in a dynamic installation exploring the world’s power structures, inequalities, and obscurities

In the Fall:

ANTIGONE

September 25–October 6, 2019

Japanese director Satoshi Miyagi’s multicultural adaptation of Antigone, which stages the classic Greek tragedy within a large river of water and incorporates traditions from Japanese Noh, Indonesian shadow play, and Buddhist philosophy

BLACK ARTISTS RETREAT 2019: SONIC IMAGINATION

October 11–12, 2019

Theaster Gates’ Black Artist Retreat, hosted for the first time outside of Chicago and designed to facilitate the exchange of ideas and innovation among black visual artists, recreating the kind of public-spirited dialogue associated with the civil rights movement of the sixties. As part of the weekend’s event, the public is invited to a roller skating celebration party in the Drill Hall amidst an installation of Gates’ seven-foot-tall disco-ball glacial sculptures, known as housebergs.

JUDGMENT DAY

December 5, 2019–January 11, 2020

The world premiere of a new adaptation of Ödön von Horváth’s 1937 play Judgment Day, part moral fable, part sociopolitical comedy, part noirish thriller commissioned by the Armory and directed by Richard Jones

NEW YORK THEATER WORKSHOP

79 East 4th Street. Twitter: @NYTW79

NYTW has gotten much attention over the past few years for presenting David Bowie’s musical “Lazarus,” “Othello” with movie stars Daniel Craig and David Oyelowo, and “Mary Jane.” Its fare has ranged from the innovative and tuneful — “Hadestown” — to the cutting edge and incomprehensible — “Fondly, Collette Richland”

Fall 2018 offered a surprise hit, What The Constitution Means To Me, and a controversial debut, Slave Play. Based on their track records, the offerings in Spring 2019 sound extremely promising, though we’re still not yet told much about them.

Hurricane Diane

February 6, 2019—March 10, 2019. Opens February 24.

In this play by Madeleine George directed by Leigh Silverman, Diane is a gardener who is actually the Greek god Dionysus, returning to the modern world to gather mortal followers and restore the Earth to its natural state.

√?Sanctuary City

Opens May 6.

There are few clues as to the particulars of this play, but it’s written by Martyna Majok, last year’s Pulitzer Prize winner for “Cost of Living.,” who in such dramas as Ironbound and “queens” has given a voice to the new immigrant. “DREAMers. Lovers. Life-long friends. Negotiating the promise of safety and the weight of responsibility, they’ll fight like hell to establish a place for themselves and each other in America”

√?Anna Deavere Smith project

Opens July 15 (?)

No clue whatsoever as to its subject, but her one-woman shows about race riots in Crown Heights (“Fires in the Mirror”) and Los Angeles (“Twilight”), about health care (“Let Me Down Easy“), and about the school to prison pipeline (“Notes from the Field“) have made it clear that Anna Deavere Smith is one of our country’s greatest theater artists.

PLAYWRIGHTS HORIZONS

416 W. 42nd St. Twitter: @PHNYC

Annie Baker’s “The Flick” is one of six plays that originated at Playwrights Horizons that have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The theater offers new plays and musicals that are consistently worthwhile, in an environment that feels dedicated both to the theater artists and the theatergoers.

If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka

February 15, 2019 – March 31, 2019. Opens March 10.

In the village of Affreakah-Amirrorkah, no one questions that Akim is the one true, perfect beauty — not even her jealous classmates. But they’ll be damned before they let her be the leading lady in this story. A decidedly contemporary riff on a West African fable by Tori Sampson

The Pain of My Belligerence

March 29, 2019 – May 12, 2019. Opens April 22.

Halley Feiffer’s play about an eight year relationship between journalist Cat and devilishly charming Guy, which charts a rapidly changing America.

A Strange Loop

May 24, 2019 – July 07, 2019. Opens June 17

Michael R. Jackson’s musical about a black, gay writer, working a day job he hates while writing his original musical: a piece about a black, gay writer, working a day job he hates while writing his original musical

ATLANTIC THEATER

Cofounded in 1985 by David Mamet and William H. Macy, this theater entered in a whole new realm of achievement with the acclaimed musical The Band’s Visit

Blue Ridge

Opens January 7. Closes January 26.

Marin Ireland stars in this play by Abby Rosebrock as aprogressive high-school teacher with a rage problem who retaliates against her unscrupulous boss and is sentenced to six months at a church-sponsored halfway house, where she attends to everyone’s recovery but her own.

The Mother

February 20 – April 7. Opens March 11.

Isabelle Huppert stars in a play by Florian Zeller (The Father) as a woman suffering from clinical depression and grasping for stability after her grown children move on to build lives of their own.

√ The Secret Life of Bees

May 12 – July 7. Opens June 13.

A musical adaptation of Sue Monk Kidd’s beloved novel, with music by Duncan Sheik and book by Lynn Nottage, about two runaways in 1960s South Carolina, taken in by beekeeping sisters.

ST. ANN’s WAREHOUSE

Although, as with Park Ave Armory, St. Ann’s Warehouse primarily presents avant-garde European exports, this Brooklyn theater climbed up in my preference thanks to Taylor Mac’s homegrown “ 24-Decade History of Popular Music ,” then nailed it with “The Jungle.” Its production of “Oklahoma!” is moving to Broadway.

THE B-SIDE: “Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons”

March 4-24

The Wooster Group brings the 1965 LP to life, channeling the voices of the men performing work songs, blues, spirituals, preaching and toasts on the record via an in-ear receiver, and providing context via the book Wake Up Dead Man: Hard Labor and Southern Blues.

Grief is the Thing With Feathers

April 20 – May 12

Adapted and directed by Enda Walsh from a novel by Max Porter, the play tells the story of Crow visiting a family whose mother just died. “This sentimental bird is drawn to the grieving family and threatens to stay until they no longer need him.” Stars Cillian Murphy.

IRISH REPERTORY THEATER

Listed here because it’s offering the “Sean O’Casey season”

The Shadow of a Gunman

January 30 – May 25, 2019

Juno and the Paycock

March 9 – May 25, 2019

The Plough and the Stars

April 20 – May 25, 2019

PRIMARY STAGES

In their second year in their new location at the Cherry Lane in the West Village, Primary Stages has a promising season lined up.

God Said This

January 16 – February 15

In Leah Nanako Winkler’s play, five Kentuckians face mortality in very different ways.

Little Women

“May to June”

Kate Hamill’s take on Louise May Alcott’s novel

LINCOLN CENTER THEATER*

@LCTheater

The shows at Lincoln Center’s Off-Broadway venues are inexpensive (especially at the Claire Tow theater, where initial-run tickets cost $20) and often rewarding. I’m hoping that someday they will be literally more inviting to independent New York theater critics.

Mary’s Seacole

February 9 – March 24

In this new play by Jackie Sibblies Drury (Fairview), Mary (Quincy Tyler Bernstine) is an ambitious Jamaican woman determined to live a grand life; her adventures take her across oceans and eras, from a battlefield of the Crimean War to a contemporary nursing home, and many times and places in between.

Nantucket Sleigh Ride

February 21 to May 5

In a new play by John Guare, John Larroquette portrays a playwright turned New York stockbroker, who ventures from Manhattan to Nantucket island one day on a surreal errand. “He gets mixed up with a giant lobster, Roman Polanski, a pornography ring, Walt Disney, stranded children, a murder, and Jorge Luis Borges…”

ROUNDABOUT* LAURA PELS

The empire that is now Roundabout includes three Broadway theaters, and that’s where most of the attention is focused, mostly on star-studded revivals, especially musicals. But its fourth building houses two Off-Broadway theaters (one of them a tiny “Black Box” theater.) It is in its Off-Broadway facility that Stephen Karam’s The Humans originated, which went on to Broadway and Tony love. The Roundabout’s “Underground” series discovers new playwriting talent, with tickets priced at $35.

Merrily We Roll Along

January 12 – April 7. Opens February 19.

Fiasco Theater reimagines Stephen Sondheim’s musical about a trio of showbiz friends who fall apart and come together over 20 years, going backwards in time.

Something Clean

May 4 – June 30. Opens May 30.

Playwright Selina Fillinger’s new drama slips into the jagged cracks of a sex crime’s aftermath—the guilt, the grief, and the ways we grapple with the unthinkable.

√ Toni Stone

May 23 – August 11. Opens June 20

Uzo Adubi stars as the first woman to go pro in the Negro Leagues, in this play by Lydia Diamond directed by Pam McKinnon, based on a true story.

MANHATTAN THEATER CLUB*

This looks like a good lineup, but It’s hard to embrace a theater completely when you don’t get to see many of its plays.

The Cake

February 12 – March 31. Opens March 5

In what sounds like a recent Supreme Court case, Debra Jo Rupp portrays a baker in North Carolina who refuses to create a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. The difference — one of the brides is the daughter of a dear friend, now deceased. The play is by Bekah Brunstetter (who writes for the TV series This Is Us.)

Continuity

May 7 – June 9. Opens May 21

Though the description doesn’t tell us very much — a comedy “in six takes where storytelling and science collide…” — it is written by Beth Wohl (playwright of the odd but satisfying Small Mouth Sounds) and directed by Rachel Chavkin (Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812).

Long Lost

May 14 – June 30. Opens June 4.

A play by Donald Margulies (Dinner with Friends) directed by Daniel Sullivan. “When troubled Billy appears out-of-the-blue in his estranged brother David’s Wall Street office, he soon tries to re-insert himself into the comfortable life David has built with his philanthropist wife and college-age son. What does Billy really want?”

SECOND STAGE*

This 40-year-old theater has became the fourth “non-profit” to produce theater both on and Off Broadway.

Superhero

January 31 – March 24.Opens February 28.

A musical, with music and lyrics by Tom Kitt (Next to Normal) and a book by John Logan (Red), about “a fractured family, the mysterious stranger in apartment 4-B, and an unexpected hero…”

Dying City

“Begins May 2019”

Christopher Shinn’s play is set in a spare Manhattan apartment, where a young widow receives an unexpected visit from the twin brother of her deceased husband. Dying City explores the human fallout of global events, including the Iraq War and the terrorist attacks of 9/11, through the interwoven stories of three characters

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS

Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish moves to Stage 42, opening February 21st.

Alice By Heart (MCC). January 30 to March 10. Opens February 26 Two friends who escape in the cherished story of Alice in Wonderland during the London Blitz of World War II. The musical is by Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater, the team that came up with Spring Awakening.

Fleabag (Soho Playhouse) February 28 – April 7 The play by Phoebe Waller-Bridge that inspired the BBC television series currently being shown on Amazon Prime.

Daddy (Vineyard/New Group at Signature) February 12- March 24. Opens March 5. In the second Off-Broadway play by Jeremy O. Harris (who gained some notoriety with his Slave Play in the fall), Alan Cumming plays Andre, an older white art collector who befriends Franklin, young black artist on the verge of his first show. Their bond creates a battle of wills with Franklin’s mother.

Diary of One Who Disappeared (BAM) April 4-6 In 1917, Czech composer Leoš Janáček became obsessed with a married woman 40 years his junior. In the throes of despair, he penned more than 700 love letters and a haunting 22-part song cycle called Diary of One Who Disappeared, about a village boy who falls in love with a Romany girl. Director Ivo van Hove, in collaboration with Flemish opera company Muziektheater Transparant, brings his trademark physicality and stripped-down aesthetic to bear on Janáček’s opera.

Octet (Signature) April 30 – June 9 Dave Malloy, composer and conceiver of Natasha, Pierre and The Great Comet of 1812, is not through experimenting. His new musical is scored for an a cappella chamber choir and explores high-tech addiction, his libretto inspired by Internet comment boards, scientific debates, religious texts and Sufi poetry.

Other companies and theaters worth checking out:

Ars Nova

Classic Stage Company

Mint Theater

Mayi Theater Company

There are also commercial shows put together by independent producers that are presented in theaters for rent, such as:

Cherry Lane Theatre Daryl Roth Theatre Gym at Judson Lucille Lortel Theatre New World Stages Orpheum Theater The Players Theatre Snapple Theater Center Theatre Row Union Square Theater Westside Theatre

*THE ASTERISK: Off-Broadway AND Broadway

*Just to complicate matters, several of the resident theaters also present shows in Broadway theaters they own – Lincoln Center (Vivian Beaumont Theater), Manhattan Theater Company or MTC (the Samuel J. Friedman), the Roundabout Theater Company (American Airlines, Stephen Sondheim, Studio 54), and Second Stage Theatre, which has bought the Helen Hayes. Their Broadway offerings are listed in my Broadway 2017-2018 Season Guide

What Is Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off Broadway?

Off-Broadway theaters, by definition, have anywhere from 100 to 499 seats. If a theater has more seats than that, it’s a Broadway house. If it has fewer, it’s Off-Off Broadway.

There are some terrific Off-Off Broadway theaters, sometimes confused for Off-Broadway. These include (but are not limited to)

The Flea

Labyrinth Theater

LaMaMa ETC.

New theaters and theater companies crop up all the time.

Monthly Calendar of Openings

Because there are so many shows Off-Off Broadway, and their runs are so limited, I include them in my monthly theater preview calendar (along with Broadway and Off Broadway openings) posted near the beginning of each month.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

For more information about Off-Broadway, go to The League of Off-Broadway Theatres and Producers (aka The Off-Broadway League). This should not be confused with the Off-Broadway Alliance, which is a separate organization (though they should probably merge, no?)

What’s Off-Broadway Dough? Does that mean there’s not much of it? pic.twitter.com/KHH1kApUzb

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) September 4, 2016—-

Off Broadway Spring 2019 Preview Guide Below is a selection from an Off-Broadway season full of starry faces like Daveed Diggs, Jake Gyllenhaal, Isabelle Huppert, Uzo Adubi et al, in plays by Lynn Nottage, Suzan-Lori Parks, Martyna Majok, Anna Deavere Smith, Lydia Diamond, Enda Walsh, Donald Margulies, Halley Feiffer, Luis Alfaro, John Guare, Florian Zeller et al; and musicals by Tom Kitt (Next to Normal), Duncan Sheik (Spring Awakening) and Dave Malloy (Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812.) It can feel overwhelming

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