Adam Grant wrote, “The culture of a workplace – an organization’s values, norms and practices – has a huge impact on our happiness and success.” Never has this been truer than in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Gloria, Directed by Kip Fagan at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company.
Fagan has a clear understanding of Jacob-Jenkins’ work, and his staging is brilliant. Life, especially in the work place, is full of ups and downs,
Moving history forward and making progress are not the same thing. In a highly provocative, yet critically acclaimed, exploratory and awkwardly intense theatrical experience, Teacher Caroline and Teacher Stewart takes the 5th grade students of Hanover Middle School— *caw caw* GO HAWKS!— through an interactive and immersive educational model of the Civil War. Only they aren’t really Teacher Caroline and Teacher Stewart, they are Underground Railroad Game’s co-creators Jennifer Kidwell and Scott R.
Think about the story of your life, about how you came to be where you are and have the life you have. Got it? Are you ready to share that story in front of a live audience? For most people the answer is probably no and if the answer is anything that might be uncomfortable to audiences it is probably an even bigger no. But for comedian Felonious Munk, the answer is let’s go.
Everything burns, but not every fire is determined by fate. And Washington DC is certainly on fire in various meanings of the word. Politically, socially, and now thanks to Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, theatrically as well! This is one fire that fate will not put out! The kickoff to Woolly Mammoth’s Incendiary 2017/2018 season— The Arsonists, by Max Frisch and newly translated by Alistair Beaton, is setting the stage and minds of audience members alike ablaze with a conflagration that just won’t quit.
We are all proof and conjecture. But proof of what? And conjecture of what? The human condition? Gender non-binary fluidity? Who can say with the plethora of topics being tackled in Obie Award-Winning playwright Taylor Mac’s Hir, now appearing on stage to conclude Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company’s 37th season. Directed by Shana Cooper, this edgy and evocative powder-keg of a conversation starter falls well within the wheelhouse of the sort of productions that the theatre is known for,
The Vega household on Pike Street, on the lower east side of New York City, is a hectic walk-up on the eve of Hurricane Delores, the biggest potential disaster since Hurricane Sandy hit in 2012. Devoted mother Evelyn is franticly attempting to arrange an emergency generator so her handicapped teen daughter Candi can continue to survive on her ventilator and life support equipment. The transport and emergency shelter services they offer were disastrous the last time during the devastation of Sandy.
The weather has been bad since the beginning of time; it was horrible at the beginning of time. But the weather can get a whole lot worse when a wicked storm tears the lives of a Christian faith-based family asunder without warning. Baby Screams Miracle, a new work by Clara Barron, arrives to the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company stage under the Direction of Artistic Director Howard Shalwitz and it crashes upon the boards much like the storm inside the play crashes into the five members of the family contained within its pages.
A storm is a great metaphor for all the chaos and turmoil in our lives. But what happens with the storm is not only a metaphor but a literal storm breaking down the door? Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company is now presenting Obie Award-Winning Clare Barron’s Baby Screams Miracle on the 2017 side of its current season. In a TheatreBloom exclusive sit-down interview, we’re speaking with yet another married couple housed within the company to explore the working dynamic of this mighty storm in this powerful work.
Returning from the windy city as if often the tradition at this festive time of year, The Second City is back in the nation’s capital with Black Side of the Moon and they’re ready to put hot sauce in our pants with all of their comic antics and feel-good messages in this seemingly unending darkened political time. With roughly one third of the show being rewritten just days before opening due to the surprising political upset in the Presidential Election,
Love. Deception. Soap Opera. Kiss. An evocative new work is pushing the conversational envelope at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in the 2016/2017 season. Revolving around the melodramatic relationships of four individual characters inside a soap opera, but going so much deeper than that simple premise, Kiss is a story like no other. In a TheatreBloom exclusive interview, we sit down with Woolly Company members Gabriela-Fernandez Coffey and Tim Getman, who are starring opposite one another in Kiss,
When you experience something so beautiful, you have to put it into words just to make sure that it is real. Though I purport no ability that will come close to doing Guillermo Calderón’s work an inkling of justice, finding word to convince you to see Kiss at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company for its sheer horrifying beauty and stunning emotional weight is now my mission; the must-see show of the season has risen to the stage with harrowing political relevance,
Boop-boop-be-BLAM! Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company is opening their 2016/2017 season with an honest-to-God firecracker of a play. Delivering the world premiere of Jen Silverman’s Collective Rage: A Play in Five Boops, Woolly sets the bar high for the rest of the conversationally loaded season with this thunderclap of a theatrical experience. In a TheatreBloom exclusive interview we sit down with Beth Hylton, playing Betty Boop 1, and pick her brain on the whole “Boop Experience.”
Hi,
The “thea-taaah” is so cultural! People come and stare at the feelings that the performers are having and those feelings are art! At least that’s what Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company is presenting with the firecracker opener of their 2016/2017 season with the world-premiere of Jen Silverman’s Collective Rage: A Play in Five Boops. Directed by Mike Donahue, this evocative and explosive exploration of women, relationships, love, and above all— pussy— will rock your world from the time the first of the quintet of Betty Boops are introduced through to the sentimental,
The fourth act of a play is known as “the sensation scene.” This is the point where the play unites the A-plot with the B-plot, crams the moral of the story down the audience’s throats, and then overwhelms the senses with something spectacular, usually a lot of smoke and flames. But what happens if you’ve not only overwhelmed the senses of your audience but completely shocked and stunned them with an unabashedly forward and unapologetically galvanizing performance charged with racial controversy?
“The theatre community here <Washington DC> is something other cities can only dream of.” An earnest and rewarding quote pulled directly from the lips of David Ives, this year’s recipient of “Outstanding Original Play or Musical Adaptation” at the 32nd Annual Helen Hayes Awards Ceremony. Just one of 236 nominees being celebrated over the course of the evening, Ives’ statement captured the tone of the evening early on with the aforementioned quote given during his award acceptance speech.
Images create reality. The imagination creates images of our reality. There is a line, even in our imaginations, that we should not cross, but to enforce such a notion would be impossible. In a frighteningly realistic and none-too-distant futuristic world where the “Nether” (formerly the internet) has become the contextual framework for being, it’s okay to forget who you are and discover who you might be. It’s the golden opportunity to live without consequence in a reality that is not one’s own.
Let them eat— s’mores? Following along through Season 35 at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, their world premier of Lisa D’Amour’s work Cherokee settles nicely into the “let them eat” theme of the season. In a TheatreBloom exclusive interview we’re talking with Woolly Company Member and Director John Vreeke about his involvement with the project and why it interested him.
Thank you, John, for taking time to phone in with us for this interview.
We sometimes think we visit our souls when we enter a museum, take a stroll on a beach, or walk through a forest. We search for a key to connecting with our roots or with reality when we take that drive-by study of unfamiliar culture or lifestyle. Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company‘s new world premiere work, Cherokee by Obie Award-Winning playwright Lisa D’Amour, directed by John Vreeke, seeks to expose the subtext beneath those superficial whims that drive us to seek that connection.
Beauty is a function but there is more to life than glittery things. The raw and striking humanity that is viciously exposed beneath the opalescent and lavish lifestyle of the spoiled queen of France kicks off Season 35 at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. Marie Antoinette, a revolutionary work written by David Adjmi, is starting off the season with an illustrious bang. Lavish extravagance never looked so good as it does strutting down the stage at Woolly but in the eyes of the masses such expenditures have their price.
Let them eat cake! The infamous words that everyone attributes to Marie Antoinette. But did you know that she never actually said those words? In a full-disclosure, up-close-and-personal one-on-one interview with Woolly Mammoth Company Member Kimberly Gilbert, we go in depth with the actress about what it has been like getting ready to take on the iconic role of Marie as Woolly opens their 35th season of “Let them Eat” with the show Marie Antoinette.
This review will begin when you say “Start the fucking review!”
Presuming you’ve said that— or at the very least read that— then you’re in the right mind frame to enjoy the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company’s remount of Aaron Posner’s original work Stupid Fucking Bird. Inspired by and loosely adapted from Chekhov’s The Seagull, the production’s initial popularity has called for a resurgence in its existence.
Are you able to walk up to your neighbor’s house and borrow a cup of sugar? Does anyone even do that anymore? Or is it just easier to go down to the 24-hour food mart and buy what you need rather than trying to determine if you have a functioning relationship with your neighbor? Do you even know the people that live next door? A compelling, yet highly humorous, socio-economical commentary on the devolution of neighborhoods in modern America is what comes to the stage to kick off Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company’s 34th Season: America’s Tell-Tale Heart.