Theatre in the Coffee Shop

What a treat to have upcoming productions to share in back-to-back months! You’ll find the details on my latest rehearsal room adventure below, as well as previews of a few ongoing projects returning for the fall. As autumn approaches, I can’t quite decide whether this summer felt long or short, but I am looking forward to the refresh of a change in the seasons and the return of some favorite long-standing collaborations.

This Month: Ordinary Days @ Joe Coffee Waverly, Sept 17-27

Continuing with my recent circuit of stage management for musicals, I am back in rehearsal for an exciting and unique reimagining of Adam Gwon’s Ordinary Days. Set in a site-specific staging in the original West Village location of Joe Coffee, our production embraces the cozy fall coffee shop atmosphere for an intimate experience of this charming and nostalgic small-ensemble piece. You won’t want to miss it, and I encourage reserving tickets a little earlier than usual given the limited seating capacity (...it’s a coffee shop) !  

Ordinary Days is a small musical with a big impact, a musical written by New Yorkers for New Yorkers. Following four New Yorkers and their many antics across the Big Apple, this show has been a cornerstone of the indie musical theatre canon since its premiere in 2008. The show is a love letter to the unique melancholy of trying to tell your story in a city where everyone else is doing the same. We are so thrilled to partner with Joe Coffee for this site-specific production, set in the historic Waverly Cafe. 

“Back to School”: Upcoming Calendar

Mondays @ 8pm, Beginning Sept 14 - Take Root with Forager Theatre Company 

Weekly dance classes with Forager are about to make their return for the fall! Take Root is a pay-what-you-can, all-levels dance class, and our Monday evening classes offer a rotation of instructors and teaching varied styles. Each class includes a warm-up, technique primer, and fun choreographed combo. 

Opening October 9 - Mainstage Season 45 at The Growing Stage

This fall I celebrate TEN years of writing and designing Student Activity Guides for each mainstage production at TGS! Season 45 kicks off in October with the opening production of Matilda. 

Fall Episodes Coming Soon - This is a Classic Podcast from Expand the Canon

For this fall’s edition of ETC’s This Is A Classic podcast, we’ve curated conversations between members of the team on a variety of topics. I have been at work editing audio for these delightful chats between our researchers, and look forward to sharing them with our listeners over the coming months.

Recent Highlights & Recommendations

Some favorite media and performances from the past month (or two)!

Reading The Eye of the World  by Robert Jordan

On Stage If you’ve talked classical theatre with me you probably know how much I care about The Winter’s Tale, so I loved catching a recent workshop reading of Mary Elizabeth Hamilton’s new work 16 Winters from Apocalyptic Artists Ensemble. (And as it seems it never made it into a previous post, I’ll also voice my enthusiasm for NAATCO’s wonderful re-imagining of Henry VI, which took the stage at The Public earlier this summer.)

In Community I thoroughly enjoyed catching the ferry over to Staten Island for the Women’s Playwright Collective’s Not Forgotten Play Festival, celebrating the development of new work by local femme writers.

Around Town Recent theatregoing weekends brought me – finally – to catch the innovative site-specific dance piece The Circuit on the streets of Dumbo, and to explore an impressive exhibition of Theodora Skipitares’ incredible work at this summer’s International Puppet Fringe on the Lower East Side.