And The Award Goes To.....

Can you feel a brand new day for award shows? If not, then this year's Drama League and Outer Critics Award nominations should be the first step to jar your thinking. They are the first to launch a gender neutral nominating process to answer the challenge of representation that gender/non-binary and Trans identifying performers are bringing to the industry this time of year. It's an opportunity to keep the conversation of gender expression ongoing, especially in an industry built on imagination.  

This conversation really came through when Justin David Sullivan refused to accept his Tony nomination eligibility for his role in the show, & Juliet, back in February.  Of course,  the shadier  queens than me said that perhaps one might be putting the cart before the horse, but some might have seen this as the first real attempt to deconstruct gender norms and in some cases the patriarchy.   Meanwhile, some of my friends feel like it may be the "everyone gets a ribbon" line of thinking. I told you they were shady.  

No matter how you choose to view it, the whispers have grown and conversations have begun.  If not now, then when? The Drama League and The Outer Critics Circle contain smaller voting bodies that can manage whatever heat that this new approach will garner in terms of conversations, backlashes, and God willing, some significant changes. Besides, if other categories like Costume Design, Lighting Design, Set Design, Books and Lyrics, Directors, etc, can have mixed candidates, then why should performing be any different? Well, I am not gonna touch that one, but I assure you the conversation is gonna be fire. The Tony Award Nominations are coming on May 3rd, and it will be interesting to see if this new trend is going to continue.

For more about the Drama League Awards, click here.

For more about the Outer Critic CIrcle Awards, click here. 

Since the original posting, the Drama Desk nominees were announced and the same with the performance categories.

SUMMER 1976 or A Couple Of White Chicks Just Talking

 

SUMMER 1976, written by Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, David Auburn and directed by Daniel Sullivan, is the new play that just opened last night at the Manhattan Theater Club's Friedman Theater, featuring 5x Tony Award nominee and 4x Emmy Award winner,  Laura Linney,  and Tony and Emmy Award nominee, Jessica Hecht. Now not to be shady, but the play is basically a couple of white chicks, sitting around talking. It is a pleasant experience like listening to the kinda cool aunts tell their sides of the same story, preferably with some Chardonnay.

It is the story of two women recanting moments in their journey as friends from that fateful day that they met in the Summer of 1976 to some time in the 90's. Honestly as an out, African-American, man, this show is really not meant for me. However, that dang Laura Linney is the quintessential white woman that I cannot resist.  She gets me every time. When Ms. Linney utters her first syllables of dialogue, I lock into her every tonal inflection that can throw the most sarcastic shade with such ease while being so soothing, simultaneously. 

Ms. Hecht matches Linney's sardonic moments with equally fierce retorts and a little hippie flair.  The banter between the women at times becomes slightly banal as you would expect that (and I say this with utmost love) 2 privileged white women can muster up while spending most of the time sitting down, facing the audience, telling their stories for 90 minutes. 

It is a quaint, semi-polite, sometimes cheeky, and lovely evening of theater with no super deep storytelling devices or agendas,  except for the ups and downs of the "friendship" between these women in that slightly intense period of time, especially while they are furniture shopping or running into each other at a museum. It is hard to measure this piece against some of the current projects on Broadway so intense thematically like, LEOPOLDTSTAT or PRIMA FACIA, or the magic of puppetry in storytelling, like in LIFE OF PI, or just the absence of caucasity,  like in FAT HAM. That is what diversity in themes looks like to me on stage.  If you are a Linney and/or Hecht fan, and I am, then this piece will scratch that itch of seeing them in a nice, safe show that will not challenge you too deeply.  It's a safe 90 minute walk down memory lane with a few rocks in the path, and honestly, there is nothing wrong with that. 

Click Here for Information and Tickets.