Deaf Broadway’s version of “Waitress.” A new show by Suzan-Lori Parks. A 4,000-year-old epic play. Shakespeare on immigration. Monteverdi on race relations. Opera singer Anthony Roth Costanzo’s take on Charles Ludlam’s take on Maria Callas
Below are samples of the wide range of theater in the recently announced summer seasons of two glorious New York venues, with shows that are free or low-priced and mostly outdoors.
The preview below, roughly in chronological order, intertwines selections from Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City, which is presenting hundreds of performances from June 11 to August 9, all free or “Choose-What-You-Pay,” and from Little Island’s fifth summer, May 19 to September 28, offering 110 performances by more than 300 artists in two outdoor theaters, the Amph (where tickets are $25) and The Glade (where shows are free.)
The selections fit a broad definition of theater, but consider them only a taste and a tease of two overwhelming calendars for lovers of live performance on limited budgets.
MAY
The Counterfeit Opera: A Beggar’s Opera For A Grifter’s City
Little Island’s Amph
May 29–June 15
A new adaptation of John Gay’s A Beggar’s Opera of 1728 (which was also the inspiration for Brecht/Weil’s Three-Penny Opera), which criticizes corruption and skewers politicians. The cast includes Ann Harada and Lauren Patten. It sets the antihero robber Macheath in the streets of 1850s Manhattan. It has a book and lyrics by Kate Tarker, original music by Dan Schlosberg, and direction by Dustin Wills.
JUNE
Safe Space
Lincoln Center’s Josie Robertson Plaza
June 14 – October 14
Trinidad-born artist Miles Regis’s “augmented reality experience” that, with the help of your smartphone, transforms Lincoln Center into “a hidden canvas bursting with color and light.”
RUN AMOC Festival
Lincoln Center
June 16 – July 18
A dozen productions by the American Modern Opera Company, including The Comet/Poppea (June 18-21), at David H. Koch Theater, which fuses Monteverdi’s The Coronation of Poppea (1642) with W.E.B. Du Bois’s short story The Comet (1920) about a post-apocalyptic future that initially leave just two humans on earth, one Black, one white. It stars Davóne Tines and Anthony Roth Costanzo. (See also September below.)
Oh Sankofa!: A Juneteenth Celebration
Lincoln Center’s Hearst Plaza and Damrosch Park
June 19
A celebration of the holiday of Juneteenth, which celebrates the end of slavery.
First: music, choral performances, dance, animal tales, slave narratives, and educational fables by such performers as actress/comedian Phyllis Stickney; multimedia artist Vinson Fraley; dancer and Urban Bush Women Co-Artistic Director Chanon Judson
This is followed by Black Artist United’s artistic exploration of the evolution of the holiday with performances by Norm Lewis, Capathia Jenkins, Darius de Haas, Lillias White, Brian Stokes Mitchell, J. Harrison Ghee.
No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin
Little Island’s Amph
June 21 – 25
A stage version of Meshell Ndegeocello’s Grammy-winning album celebrating the centennial of the birth of author James Baldwin, weaving together voices, text and sound.
Mahabharata
Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater
June 24 – 29,
Why Not Theatre’s visually stunning retelling of the 4,000-year-old Sanskrit epic about a family feud. Led by an international South Asian cast.
The Case of the Stranger
Little Island’s Glade
June 26
Whitney White’s new song cycle uses Shakespeare’s text to explore contemporary themes of immigration
Stamptown
Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park
June 28
The annual variety hour (actually 90 minutes) offers vaudeville, stand-up, cabaret, circus, drag, dance, improv, performance art.
JULY
The Gospel at Colonus
Little Island’s Amph
July 8 – 25
Shayok Misha Chowdhury (Public Obscenities) directs this revival of Lee Breuer’s African-American musical version of Sophocles’s tragedy about Oedipus.
Waitress
Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park
July 23
Deaf Broadway, a five-year-old company made up of Deaf performers, gives a live staging in American Sigh Language of the musical Waitress by Sara Bareilles and Jessie Nelson, with direction by Sandra Mae Frank (a performer in the Broadway revival of Spring Awakening.) Unlike. past practices, the cast will not be performing in front of a film version of the musical, but rather just accompanied by a recording of the musiv
Living Library: Celebrating 60 Years,
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
July 23-27
Tours of the Library’s treasures, children’s storytimes, reading parties, film screenings and more.
BAAND Together Dance Festival,
Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater
July 29 – August 2
Five of NYC’s most iconic dance companies—Ballet Hispánico, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet, and Dance Theatre of Harlem—reunite on one stage
Eugene Onegin
Little Island’s Glade
July 30 – 31
Rachel Chavkin directs Sarah Gancher’s new bluegrass take on Tchaikovsky’s classic opera, based on the novel by Pushkin about a selfish dandy who lives to regret his rejection of a young woman’s love.
The Tune Up
Little Island’s Amph
July 30 – August 3
Suzan-Lori Parks and her nine-piece band blends short plays and music in a piece, directed by The Flea’s Niegel Smith, and described as “a Punk-Couture Medicine Show for the People,” which doesn’t help much, but if it’s anything like her Plays for the Plague Year, I’m in.
AUGUST
The Lights
Little Island’s Glade
August 2-3
A song cycle composed by Matt Aucoin of poetry by Ben Lerner.
Arthur Russell: The Platform on the Ocean
Little Island
August 10
An island-wide six-hour marathon celebrating the eclectic composer Charles Arthur Russell Jr. with performances by the likes of Laurie Anderson
SEPTEMBER
Galas
Little Island’s Amph
September 6 – 28
Real opera singer Anthony Roth Costanzo stars in Eric Ting’s revival of Charles Ludlum’s campy play about diva Maria Magdalena Galas (rhymes with Callas)
