FIVE SHOWS TO CATCH IN SEPTEMBER
Connecticut’s theater season kicks off COVID-style
Despite all odds, Connecticut’s fall theater season has begun. One show is live and outdoors, some are livestreamed and some are pre-recorded. All are, in some respect, real theater, presented by the local companies you know and love.
Seven months after the coronavirus shutdown began, with nearly all theaters still unable to reopen their main venues, few online shows look like Zoom conferences anymore.
Expect solid production values, decent sound and lots of creativity.
Here, in chronological order, are five hot shows for September.
Kennedy: Bobby’s Last Crusade
West Hartford’s Playhouse on
Park had arranged for David Arrow to perform his one-man 100-minute show about Bobby Kennedy as a timely election-year drama. Set during Kennedy’s tragically shortened 1968 quest for the White House, “Bobby’s Last Crusade” includes excerpts from the senator (and former U.S. Attorney General)’s actual stump speeches as well as glimpses into his personal life. It was originally hoped that Arrow could perform the show live at Playhouse on Park, but when that prospect became unlikely, the play was staged in a New York theater where it was filmed for streaming.
Playhouse on Park is offering “Kennedy: Bobby’s Last Crusade” for two and a half weeks online, and also has arranged two opportunities to screen the show in a more communal
Written and performed by David Arrow, directed by Eric Nightengale. A filmed version of the play is online Sept. 16 through Oct. 4 via Playhouse on Park, playhouseonpark.org, for $20; the screening can be activated anytime between those date, and once activated is available for 48 hours. There are also two public, socially distanced screenings: Sept. 22 at 7 p.m. in Dunkin’ Donuts Park, 1214 Main St., Hartford ($12.50; parking fee is $7) and Oct. 1 at 7:30 p.m. at the Ingersoll PoP-Up Drive-In, Edmond Town Hall, 45 Main Street, Newtown. ($20 per car; rain date is Oct. 4).
Months ago, the Long Wharf Theatre pushed its planned 2020-21 season back a year. In the meantime, it promised a series of events, held online or in socially distanced public spaces, that would address contemporary social issues and the trying circumstances in which America finds itself today.
Those efforts begin now with the latest edition of New Haven Play Project, a community-based ensemble theater-making program that the Long Wharf began a couple of years ago. This year’s project is described as “a sprawling, multidisciplinary film intersecting the lived experiences of Muslim, immigrant, and refugee storytellers and their distinct journeys to finding a home in New Haven, Connecticut.” The theater ties the theme to “President Trump’s executive order expanding immigration restriction in the United States.” The film’s Sept. 25 premiere will be followed by a livestreamed talkback with its storytellers and artists.
The Hill-Stead Museum has been a godsend for local theater and dance companies who can’t perform in their own spaces. The museum has a spacious lawn that’s suitable for distanced outdoor cultural events. Since July it has been hosting playreadings, dance performances, comedy nights and whatever else can done safely and effectively with limited sets, props and tech equipment.
On Sept. 25 and 26, the Sonia Plumb Dance Company is dancing “Duos and Trios” drawn from Plumb’s original works “Water Wars” (the scene “Displaced,” with music by Simsbury-based composer Cory Gabel) and “The Dance of da Vinci 2.0,” a “sneak peek” from the work-in-progress “Penelope’s Odyssey” plus “Too Close to the Light,” a tribute to the legendary dancer and lighting designer Loie Fuller (1862-1928).
Plumb is a modern choreographer with a respect for classic dance styles, including ballet, and strong conceptual instincts. Her “Dance of
TheaterWorks Hartford begins its 2020-21 season — and its new “membership” model where a different show is offered (in whatever format makes most sense at the time) every month for a year — with a staged online reading of a new musical-in-progress about the Memphis sanitation strike of 1968, a landmark event for civil rights and organized labor that also served as the occasion for Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech. TheaterWorks (which staged the MLK drama “The Mountaintop,” set on the day of that same speech, in 2013) has been hosting the show’s creators