This Saturday, June 1st, my short play Snip o' the Shears will be having a staged reading at the Hamilton Grange branch of the New York Public Library sponsored by Equity Library Theater of New York.
Saturday's reading features Rebecca Ana Peña and is directed by Rachael Langton. It brings back together the same team that did My Fellow Americans in 2022 at the Secret Theatre's Queens Short Play Festival.
Snip o' the Shears will be presented with a number of other short works, including Barefoot by John DeBenedetto, The Therapy Session by Risa Lewa, Tales of the Times (Metropolitan Diaries) by Martha Morenstein, The Last Burn by Laurie Graff, and Stagecoach Mary by Gail Rivers.
Admission is free, so come out at 1pm to see this afternoon of short work. The Hamilton Grange Library is located at 503 West 145th Street, just blocks from the Hamilton Grange National Memorial.
I just got back from a book event at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center for a book event celebrating the launch of 10,000+ nights: Theatre Before the Plague by Marvin Carlson.
The book is a sequel to a previous book Carlson wrote recounting 50 years of theatre going and ending in 2010. This noticeably slimmer volume covers 2010 through 2019, with discussions of Sleep No More, Blood Knot, Mr. Burns, An Octoroon, Hamilton, and Great Comet among other plays.
During his talk, Carlson suggested that the movement toward immersive theatre was one of the big trends in New York prior to the shutdown related to Covid. Sadly, there hasn't been as much immersive theatre since, though I did enjoy the immersive Great Gatsby last year. I was surprised at how optimistic Carlson was about the future, predicting that all the social distancing would remind us of the indispensability of live performance.
Tomorrow night, I'll be enjoying a live performance of David Willinger's new play Bring Them Back at Theater for the New City. Then on Saturday I have the first rehearsal for a staged reading of Snip o' the Shears, which will be presented at the Hamilton Grange Library on June 1st at 1:00 pm. I hope you can make it!
