Theater Odds & Ends

 

[Soon after I started Rick On Theater, I began collecting and stashing articles from various sources for possible future use as posts for the blog.  Items of interest or curiosity or practical use or edification went into a file on my computer.  Over the years, I’ve posted many of them, but some have been too short to republish on their own and I didn’t have something with which to pair them to make a good post.

[I decided to collect a few of those items and present them as what they are: a random collection of theater-oriented “odds & ends.”  They’re not timely or topical—they’re just sort of fascinating.  I hope ROTters will find them so.] 

“ARTIST AS SEERS”

by Raymond J. Steiner 

[Raymond J. Steiner’s Art Times essay, “Artist As Seers,” caught my attention when I read it because my acquaintance, theater director Leonardo Shapiro, about whom I’ve blogged many times in Rick On Theater, often wrote and said that artists were seers and visionaries.  Many of his mentors and role models said so, too—Julian Beck of the Living Theatre and Peter Brook, author of The Empty Space, most prominently among them.

[Beck wrote, for instance: “An actor who brings back from his adventures a moment of communicable penetration is a hero, the light of our lives” (The Life of the Theatre [Limelight Editions, 1972: 5]).

[This essay was published in the “Peeks & Piques!” feature of Art Times [Mt. Marion, NY] 22.5 (Dec. 2005).  Art Times, founded in 1984, is a monthly paper that provides commentary and reportage on the fine and performing arts, including editorials, reviews, essays and critiques; short fiction and poetry; opportunities listings, essays on dance, theater, film, music and an extensive calendar of cultural events.  It’s distributed free at arts centers and galleries.

[One note regarding the posting of this item: Steiner wrote this essay all in one, long paragraph (which would look even longer in Blogger's narrow column), so I've taken the liberty of dividing it up for easier reading.  I trust the author won't mind.]

Long before they became craftspeople and technicians, prehistoric image-makers (dare we call them artists?) were seers. Though largely incomprehensible to us, the abstract squiggles and rectilinear lines chiseled into rocks, tomb markers, and cliff faces meant something to their carvers, but what precisely they signify remains a mystery. In the first place, why such markings? What did they convey to the maker? What to their fellows?

Some, like Otto Rank [Austrian psychoanalyst, writer, and philosopher; 1884-1939], have hypothesized that these markings represent mankind’s earliest attempts at expressing the inexpressible and, as such, represented an incipient spirituality that served as some prototypical ‘religion[‘]. In this sense, then, these early image-makers were our first ‘priests’ since our major religions, being book-based, came long after speech was transformed into a written language—and, as we know, these pre-historic “artists” were around a long, long time before speech as a means of communication came about.

It was only after, when the tools became as important to mankind as had been their original use—namely, to express ‘something’—that the idea of craftsmanship began to arise. As craftspeople became more and more technically proficient in both the making and use of their tools, it then became the doing—and not the tools—that was deemed all-important. Attention thus shifted to process. A foregone conclusion, then, that it would eventually be the product that became the focal point.

In time, it was the object created by a craftsperson proficient in the use of special tools that became all the rage—and thus the concept of “art” was born. From purpose, to process, to proficiency, to product. What an evolution!

But what of that original impetus that started the whole thing going in the first place? What happened to the seer? To the one who tried to point his fellows to a something beyond their senses? Don’t we still tend to think of artists as those who can see more clearly than the rest of us? Do we still owe anything to that original gift of being able to see more than others? And how—and why—did he/she slowly evolve into a mere producer of objects? How did they get from ‘see’-ers to ‘do’-ers?

Ought there not be some homage paid to this business of genuine seeing? After all, these pre-literate stone-scratchers are the great, great, great, great granddaddies and grandmamas of all artists—from [Leonardo] da Vinci [Italian polymath who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect; 1452-1519] to Rembrandt [van Rijn; Dutch painter, printmaker, and draughtsman; 1606-69] to [Berthe Morisot; French painter and a member of the Impressionists; 1841-95] to [Andy] Warhol [American visual artist, film director, and producer; 1928-87] to the very latest wannabe on the block.

Shouldn’t today’s artists be showing/telling us something other than where we’ve been, where we are, or where we’re heading? Shouldn’t they be doing something about giving us a heads-up on where we ought to be going?

Come on, being a seer is where it begins, isn’t it? It can’t all be about technique, trend setting, and sales—can it? When did the impetus first hit you? Remember? What was your vision and why was it strong enough for you to attempt to express it through an image? Is that initial urge to put pencil to paper still there, lurking around in your subconscious? Or have you buried it under a style, a favorite motif, or the theme of an upcoming, juried show?

Have you slavishly followed the same evolution from purpose, to process, to proficiency, to product? Or are you finally going to get serious and get back to that vision? Who knows—it might be you who really has something to share with us.

[Raymond J. Steiner (1933-2019) was a teacher, writer, lecturer, painter, and art critic/reviewer for Art Times, which he co-founded and for which he served as editor.]

*  *  *  *

“GAITHERSBURG INCLUSIVE THEATRE COMPANY

BRINGS GERMANTOWN MENTOR BACK YEAR AFTER YEAR”

by Samantha Schmieder 

[This article, from a local paper from a Washington suburb, just interested me because it was about a generous young woman, still in high school at the time, who made wonderful use of theater to benefit some community residents.  I find it heartwarming.  It ran on 16 April 2015 in The Gazette of Gaithersburg, Maryland.  (It was also published in the Washington Post of 30 April 2015 on the “Local Living: Montgomery Edition,”]

For Northwest High School [Germantown, Maryland, another D.C. suburb just west of Gaithersburg] senior Hannah Kauffman, mentoring ArtStream’s Gaithersburg Inclusive Theatre Company for the past five years has been more than community service — it’s been a passion.

“I started in eighth grade with no expectations,” said Kauffman, who turns 18 on April 25 [she’d be 27 now]. “We have 18 or 20 actors with a complete range of abilities. Just being able to see them grow over the five years I’ve been here has been amazing.” 

ArtStream’s general mission statement, according to its website, is to “create artistic opportunities for individuals in communities traditionally underserved by the arts.” Part of that occurs through its Inclusive Theatre Companies in Gaithersburg; Silver Spring; Arlington, Va.; and Raleigh, N.C.; and at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., that are open to adults with intellectual disabilities, learning disabilities and those who are on the autism spectrum. There are two groups in Gaithersburg, and Kauffman has been working with Group B.

Nicolette Stearns, a co-founder of ArtStream, has children around Kauffman’s age and noticed her in their plays and social groups [she’d have been about 13 then].

“We needed mentors at ArtStream. She’s kind, smart, a quick study, respectful and very much a leader in the group. I asked if she wanted to come and she never left,” Stearns said.

Montgomery County Public Schools students must each earn 75 Student Service Learning hours in order to graduate and 260 or more for a special tassel to wear at graduation, Kauffman explained. She said she has earned 900 SSL hours in the five years she has been involved in ArtStream.

“It’s just one of those things you have to like doing. Even if I didn’t get the SSL hours, I would still do it,” Kauffman said.

Stearns explained that Kauffman is a prime example of a student really taking something away from their SSL hours rather than just doing something once and moving on.

“She actually comes in and makes a difference. She came here, wanted to give and she really is someone who took a lot away,” Stearns said. She added that Kauffman has even used her experience at ArtStream to guide her future career path and is planning on studying musical theater as well as speech pathology in college.

Not only does Kauffman mentor the members, but she performs in the play with them, as well. She explained that sometimes being up on stage and working with the actors with lines and choreography helps everything run smoothly.

“We do an original musical every year that is derived solely from the actors, director and team. For us by us,” Kauffman said.

This year’s play, “Broadway Story,” also features a play within the play called “Gaithersburg the Musical.” During rehearsals on Tuesday, the actors practiced a song lamenting the woes of the Red Line as they waited for the metro at Shady Grove. 

[The Red Line is a line of the Washington Metro System that runs in a loop south from north of Bethesda and Rockville in Montgonery County, into central DC and returns to Montgomery County through Silver Spring and Wheaton to Glenmont in an elongated U pattern.]

Terrel Limerick, 43, lives in Rockville and is one of the actors in this year’s production. His favorite part of the program is when all of the actors, mentors and directors work together to write their original play.

“We write all together. We have to talk and give ideas back and forth,” Limerick said. “I like to give my ideas and they like to hear my ideas and they put all the ideas together for the play.”

Kauffman said her favorite part of each cycle is the time they all take at the beginning to write the play.

“These unconventional ideas you don’t think will go together that completely do,” Kauffman said, smiling, while recalling the space monsters and Greek mythology from previous years.

“Broadway Story” and Group A’s play, “The Lost Toys,” will be performed at The Historic Stage at Olney Theatre Center from May 7 to May 10. Both plays, according to Stearns, are “very sweet stories about family, finding who your people are and belonging.”

“All my friends come see the shows. They all know the actors, they love seeing the actors, they love the actors,” Kauffman said. “And I love the actors, too, for all of their quirks.”

[Samantha Schmieder is a University of Maryland graduate who wrote for The Gazette for over a year-and-a-half.  She’s now the Corporate Communications Manager at JBG Smith, a real estate investment trust based in Bethesda, Maryland.

[I have tentatively identified the high school senior from Germantown on whom Schmieder’s article above focuses.  A website called RocketReach, a sales intelligence platform intended to streamline the sales processes which features an extensive contact database, lists a Hannah Kauffman from Germantown, Maryland, who was active with ArtStream from 2009 to 2022.  I can’t be certain, but the listed credits strongly suggest she’s the Hannah Kauffman about whom the Gazette article reports.

[The site says that she has a 2020 Bachelor of Arts degree in Theatre (Musical Theatre Track) and Bachelor of Science in Speech Language Pathology from Indiana University of Pennsylvania (Indiana, Pennsylvania) and a 2022 Master’s degree in Speech-Language Pathology/Pathologist from West Virginia University (Morgantown).

[Kauffman has experience as a graduate assistant at WVU, and from work at ArtStream; as a teaching artist with Imagination Stage, a Bethesda theater arts organization that presents productions for young people by professional actors and artists and offers a range of programs for children and families; and as a sales lead for Janie and Jack, the San Francisco-based children’s clothing manufacturer.  She’s currently a Speech Language Pathologist at CommuniCare Health Services, a provider of skilled nursing care with headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio (and eight healthcare centers in Maryland and Virginia).]

*  *  *  *

“BROADWAY POLISH ADDED IN CHICAGO”

by Michael Paulson 

[If you know anything about the history of commercial theater in the U.S. since the end of World War II, you know that plays that land on Broadway used to do a try-out tour to work out the kinks and find their sea legs.  That’s what the Cole Porter song from Kiss Me Kate, “Another Op’nin’, Another Show,” is all about: Another op’nin’, another show / In Philly, Boston or Baltimo’, / A chance for stage folks to say “hello” / Another op’nin’ of another show.  Philly, Boston, and Baltimore were among the city’s the Broadway try-outs played—Washington and New Haven were others.

[But touring got too expensive as post-war inflation pushed costs up, and the New York preview performances were created.  But as you’re about to read, sometimes it’s still a good idea to test the show in front of an audience outside the Big Apple before letting the highly critical New York theatergoers loose on your baby—not to mention the acerbic review-writers with their mighty sharp pens (think the late John Simon or Frank Rich, the Butcher of Broadway).

[So producers find a city with a sophisticated and theater-wise populace, but one that’s gentler than we Gothamites.  According to Michael Paulson, who writes about theater for the New York Times—but used to cover religion—some producers think that town is Chicago.  Maybe . . . after all, it does have a play named after it!

[Paulson’s report on Broadway in Chicago ran in the New York Times on 13 January 2016; it appeared on the paper’s website on 12 January under the headline “Before Broadway, Musicals Make a Detour to Test the Waters in Chicago.”]

CHICAGO — When the director Jerry Mitchell was looking for a place to try out a new musical about a struggling shoe company saved by a drag queen, he picked Chicago because the city was familiar (Mr. Mitchell grew up in the Midwest [born in Paw Paw, Michigan, in 1960, grew up in St. Louis, Missouri]) and the audiences friendly (compared with New York).

That show was “Kinky Boots,” and after Chicago’s embrace, it moved to Broadway [4 April 2013-7 April 2019 (2,505 performances); Al Hirschfeld Theatre] and won a Tony Award for best new musical. So a few years later, when Mr. Mitchell was ready to see what theatergoers might make of a jukebox musical about Gloria and Emilio Estefan, he again chose Chicago — and after some nipping and tucking, that show, “On Your Feet!,” also landed on Broadway, where it is pulling in more than $1 million a week [5 November 2015-20  August 2017 (746 performances); Marquis Theatre; no Tonys].

Now Mr. Mitchell is back in Chicago, for the third time in four years, using a five-week run here to find what works and what doesn’t with “Gotta Dance,” a Broadway-bound musical about older adults learning to dance hip-hop for a New Jersey basketball team’s halftime show.

[Gotta Dance débuted 28 December 2015-10 January 2016 at Chicago’s Bank of America Theatre. The Broadway transfer was postponed and the show retitled Half Time. Then the Broadway run was canceled and Half Time was rescheduled for a limited engagement at Milburn, New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse, 31 May-1 July 2018. No Broadway opening has been announced.]

“I come to this town to do my work, so when I get to New York, I don’t have to do the work,” Mr. Mitchell said. “The performances get sharper, and everything just gets focused. Chicago, for me, is a great place to do that.”

Over the last several years, Chicago has emerged as the go-to city for Broadway tryouts, consolidating a key position in the commercial theater industry as a stream of new musicals try to find their footing here.

The reasons are manifold. Most important, producers say: The city has a large population and a strong theater scene, meaning that there is a sizable base of experienced showgoers. And the audience mix resembles that of the Broadway audience: mostly female, older and more affluent than the general public, and with a significant dose of out-of-town tourists.

“You know you’re seeing the actors, the sets, just the way it’s going to be done in New York, minus the changes and tweaks, and it is a lot cheaper,” said Roger Zawacki, a 66-year-old retired high school administrator and theater director who saw “Gotta Dance” in late December and then offered an endorsement on Twitter, calling it “so much fun that it made me want to be a senior citizen. Oh wait, I am.”

There are other reasons as well. Several large downtown houses — in a newly revitalized theater district — are configured like Broadway stages, allowing sets built to be used here to be reused in New York. The State of Illinois has adopted tax credits to encourage local production of shows headed to Broadway. Labor unions, hungry for the related jobs, have embraced the challenge of making frequent changes to shows even after opening night.

And Chris Jones, the theater critic for The Chicago Tribune, is known for authoritative but also instructive reviews that producers say often help them persuade creative teams to make difficult but necessary changes.

Since a rollicking tryout of “The Producers” in Chicago in 2001, more than two dozen musicals with Broadway aspirations have had premieres here. A vast majority have been at commercial theaters, although a handful have been at nonprofits; many have successfully transferred, but some flamed out in Chicago (“First Wives Club,” which played early last year, appears to be the most recent example), while others transferred and then flopped (“Amazing Grace,” “The Last Ship” and “Big Fish,” to name a few).

[First Wives Club premièred at The Old Globe Theater in San Diego, California, on 17 July through 23 August 2009 and then opened on 16 February 2015 at Chicago’s Oriental Theatre and closed on 8 March; no New York production has been scheduled. Amazing Grace had a 17 May–10 June 2012 production by Goodspeed Musicals in Connecticut and a pre-Broadway run in Chicago at the Bank of America Theatre from 19 October to 2 November 2014. It opened on Broadway on 16 July 2015 and closed on 25 October (116 performances).

[After a tour of the United Kingdom and a run on the West End, Sting’s The Last Ship opened a U.S. tour at Los Angeles’s Ahmanson Theatre from 25 June to 16 February 2020. The show played the BoA Theatre in Chicago from 25 June to 13 February 2014. It opened at the Neil Simon Theatre on 26 October 2014 to 24 January 2015 for 105 performances.

[Big Fish opened at Chicago’s Oriental Theatre on 2 April 2013 and closed on 5 May.  It transferred to the Niel Simon Theatre in New York City on 6 October 2013 and closed on 29 December for 98 performances.]

Several more new musicals with Broadway hopes are on Chicago’s calendar, including Nickelodeon’s first theatrical venture, “The SpongeBob Musical,” based on the animated TV show “SpongeBob SquarePants” and featuring original songs by pop stars including Cyndi Lauper, John Legend and the Flaming Lips.

[The SpongeBob Musical opened at the Oriental Theatre in Chicago on 19 June 2016 and closed on 10 January.  SpongeBob SquarePants débuted in New York at the Palace Theatre on 4 December 2017-16 September 2018 for 327 performances. The production won the 2018 Tony for Best Scenic Design of a Musical and six 2018 Drama Desk Awards: Outstanding Musical, Outstanding Actor in a Musical for Ethan Slater, Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical for Gavin Lee, Outstanding Wig and Hair for the hair design by Charles G. LaPointe, Outstanding Set Design for a Musical for David Zinn, and Outstanding Director of a Musical for Tina Landau.]

Russell Hicks, the Nickelodeon executive overseeing that project, said that when he turned to theater experts for advice, “it was the consensus that was brought to us: Chicago is a great place to start.”

Out-of-town runs are expensive — Mr. Mitchell said his tryouts cost $1.5 million to $2.5 million [$1.9- 3.1 million in 2025] — but they are built into the capitalization of the ensuing Broadway productions. Audience feedback is assessed instinctively — are people in the seats laughing? crying? yawning? — but also, sometimes, more methodically, via focus groups and surveys.

“We’ve been at just about every performance, sitting in every section of the theater, to watch the audience watching the show,” said Dori Berinstein, one of the producers of “Gotta Dance.” Her co-producer, Bill Damaschke, added, “You become a bathroom stalker for a lot of anecdotal response.” (So far, the creators have taken steps to make the 20-something head of the dance squad more likable, and have written new songs that they may introduce later on.)

Most of the commercial productions take place in one of the five theaters operated by Broadway in Chicago, a subsidiary of the Nederlander Organization [second-largest owner of Broadway theaters, with nine, plus five in Chicago], which has aggressively courted pre-Broadway tryouts (some of which later wind up in Nederlander-owned theaters in New York).

Lou Raizin, the president of Broadway in Chicago, cited the work presented at nearly 250 Chicagoland theaters, as well as the increasing number of Broadway-bound productions beginning here, to argue that the city is “now the third-most-important theater city in the world, behind New York and London.”

And the theater operators have a partner in labor, which is eager for the associated jobs. “It’s found money, and it’s putting a lot of people to work,” said Craig Carlson, a third-generation Chicago stagehand and leader of the local stage workers’ union [International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) – over 170,000 members: technicians, artisans, and craftspersons].

As in other cities around the country, there are several nonprofit theaters that are developing musicals with Broadway aspirations: Last fall, Chicago Shakespeare Theater mounted “Ride the Cyclone,” a Canadian musical that has received strong reviews as it heads toward a likely production in New York [world première in Canada followed by American première from 29 September 2015 until 8 November; opened Off-Broadway at the Lucille Lortel Theatre on 30 November 2016, closing on 18 December], and next summer, the Goodman Theater is mounting “War Paint,” a new musical that features the Broadway stars Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole as competing cosmetics industry titans [18 July-21 August 2016; Nederlander Theatre, 6 April-5 November 2017 (236 performances)].

There are also a pair of commercial houses in the suburbs, the Marriott and Drury Lane theaters, that are mounting musicals with Broadway aspirations.

“Until recently, we just did revivals, and some of our subscribers, who have been with us for 30 years, have seen some shows multiple times,” said Kyle DeSantis, the executive director of Drury Lane, which began producing new musicals with New York aspirations last year. “It’s nice to have new titles for them.”

Drury Lane first mounted “Beaches,” a musical adaptation of the Bette Midler film, last year [24 June-16 August 2015; no Broadway dates have been announced], and this year is presenting “Hazel,” a musical adaptation of the comic strip/television series [NBC, 1961-1965; CBS, 1965-1966], directed by the Tony-nominated choreographer Joshua Bergasse (“Smash”) [6 April-26 May 2016; Broadway opening hasn’t been announced].

For actors, the Chicago tryouts are a challenge (many leave children with relatives in New York), an adventure (they tend to live in a few apartment buildings recommended by the production), and a chance to develop their roles.

“The purpose of being here is to change things, experiment,” said Nancy Ticotin, a 58-year-old Broadway veteran (“Gotta Dance” will be her sixth show) playing Camilla, a character excited by trying to master hip-hop dance, as well as by a relationship with a much younger man. “Yesterday, I said to Jerry, can I say this word, instead of that word? He said, ‘Try it!’”

[From 2000 to 2010, Michael Paulson covered religion for the Boston Globe.  Since 2010, he’s worked at the New York Times, where he initially continued his religion coverage.  His work at the Times reflected his early politics roots and continued to tie religion to national issues.  Since April 2015, Paulson has covered theater at the New York Times.]  

*  *  *  *

“PROSECUTORS: PRODUCER BILKS 7 INVESTORS

OUT OF $165K FOR FAKE BROADWAY SHOW” 

[This report was broadcast on WCBS-TV (Channel 2) on 19 August 2016, reported by CBS2’s Jessica Layton.  Aside from its sheer audacity—you’ll see what I mean when you read the short report—the similarity to a Max Bialystok scheme, which Layton points out, make this an irresistible post for ROT.  If theater is often art imitating life, then this story is absolutely life imitating art—and I wonder if con artist Scahill figured as much.

[I also wonder how Mel Brooks felt when he first read a report like this one—because you know it went viral!] 

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – It seems like the kind of crime Mel Brooks made famous, except this one was a flop.

Roland Scahill [b. 1975] claimed to be the lead producer of a new Broadway show and scammed $165,000 from seven would-be investors in less than three months, according to District Attorney Cyrus Vance’s [b. 1954; New York County (i.e., Manhattan) District Attorney: 2010-22] office.

Scahill, 41 [in 2016], told his investors he had secured the rights to opera star Kathleen Battle’s [American soprano known for her distinctive vocal range and tone; b. 1948] life story and that Lupita Nyong’o had signed on to star in a production [a one-woman play] about her at Broadway’s Booth Theatre, prosecutors said. He also told them Netflix would film the bogus show, dubbed The KB Project, and make it available online, according to prosecutors.

Scahill told his victims he was raising money for the show at a rate of $15,000 per share [equivalent to $19,700 in 2025] to fund the first stages of production, prosecutors said.

After a while, the investors wanted their money back, and Scahill sent them checks which bounced, prosecutors said. He had already spent it on stocks, options, credit cards, rent as well as food, alcohol and entertainment, according to prosecutors.

“This indictment closes the curtain on Roland Scahill’s phantom production,” Vance said. “My Office will continue working to safeguard the integrity of this vital industry.”

Scahill faces charges of criminal possession of stolen property, grand larceny and scheme to defraud.

New Yorkers had mixed reaction to the investigation.

“I think it’s absolutely disgusting. It makes me sick when stuff like that that happens in the city,” Christopher Poyiatzis of Queens told CBS2’s Jessica Layton.

“It’s not surprising . . . right? I think what’s surprising is the people invested without having all the facts,” another person said.

Running a show starring some of the best names in the business? It’s nice work if you can get it, but the only ticket Scahill has right now is the one to jail.

His attorney told CBS2 the client pleaded not guilty. Attempts at reaching the producer were not successful.

[In 2017, Scahill, owner of RMS2 Productions, pleaded guilty and was convicted of stealing $205,000 [$264,000 today] by falsely claiming to be producing a play based on the life of Kathleen Battle.  He was charged with Criminal Possession of Stolen Property in the Second Degree, a class C felony, one count; Grand Larceny in the Third Degree, a class D felony, seven counts; Scheme to Defraud in First Degree, a class E felony, one count.

[Scahill was sentenced to six months in jail and five years’ probation.  In addition, he must also undergo psychiatric treatment and repay $189,000 [$243,000] to his investors over the next six years.

[According to court papers, Scahill sold shares in the non-existent show for $15,000 and got investors to buy extra shares by representing that that Netflix had agreed to film and broadcast a performance.  Not only were none of Scahill’s claims true, “representatives for [Battle, Nyong‘o, and the Shubert Organization, which owns the Booth Theatre] say Scahill never approached them and that they never had any deal with him.”  

[Most of the alleged scam took place between October 2014 and August 2015.  It fell apart in late 2015 when several investors demanded their money back.  Scahill reportedly sent them checks that bounced, then ceased all communications with the investors.

[Music critic Michael Walsh (b. 1949) described Kathleen Battle as “the best lyric coloratura in the world.” She rose quickly in the ranks of the opera world and branched out into other types of music.  She soon gained an international reputation and was in demand all over the world.  She was admired by both audiences and critics.

[Battle was not only collecting a stack of laudatory reviews and articles, she was showered with awards and honors.  But in the early 1990s, her relationship with the leadership of the Metropolitan Opera was straining.  She was gaining a reputation for being difficult and exacting.  She began exhibiting harsh, willful behavior with both company members and management.

[In a February 1994 article entitled “Battle Fatigue,” Time magazine reported that Battle was “renowned for leaving a trail of ill will in her wake wherever she goes.”  The Met general manager Joseph Volpe, said Time, cited Battle for “unprofessional actions” and “summarily fired” her.

[The singer claimed that she had no idea there was a problem and didn’t understand shy she’d been fired.  She ceased performing opera immediately and has only recently made overtures to returning to the musical form that made her famous.

[It was reputedly this contretemps and its consequences that was to be the focus of The KB Project.]

'FLEX'

 

[When I read the review of Candrice Jones’s FLEX in the New York Times on 25 July, I didn’t pay it much attention.  Despite Naveen Kumar’s praise (“a slam-dunk New York debut”; “the playwright Candrice Jones excels equally in sly, sitcom humor and in the swift-tongued rhythms of teenage and athletic talk”), it didn’t seem like a play that would hold my interest.

[I may have judged it on too little information.  The play, about to close its Off-Broadway première, may have more to offer, both dramatically and theatrically, than I understood.  On CBS 2 News at 6PM nine days later, Dave Carlin reported some facts about the Lincoln Center Theater production that piqued my attention, particularly that the cast plays an actual, unchoreographed basketball game on stage during the show.

[I’m posting four published articles on FLEX (which is sometimes written in upper and lower case letters, but seems to be officially written in all caps, so I’ll follow suit outside quotations) from different outlets.  Below is Carlin’s WCBS report, followed by an insider’s chronicle of the road the play took from Arkansas to New York City from American Theatre; a New York Times article on sports, especially basketball, on New York and regional stages; and an online review of the LCT production of FLEX.

[For the sake of the record, here’s the book on the play:

[FLEX was developed in the Berkeley (California) Repertory Theatre’s Ground Floor Residency between 19 June and 1 July 2018 and played the next year from 19 to 28 July at San Franciso’s Bay Area Playwrights Festival.

[Jones’s play was then selected for the Actors Theatre of Louisville’s renowned Humana Festival of New American Plays for 2020.  The COVID pandemic shut-down was instituted in March of that year, however, two days before FLEX was scheduled to open at ATL.

[A reading at the Arkansas New Play Festival at TheatreSquared in Fayetteville on 22 August 2021 served as further development and a production at TheatreSquared between 29 June and 17 July 2022 was designated as the play’s première, along with a production at the Theatrical Outfit in Atlanta from 7 September to 2 October 2022.  FLEX has had multiple productions around the country since then, including its New York première.

[Under the direction of Lileana Blain-Cruz, FLEX opened for previews in the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center, LCT’s 299-seat Off-Broadway house, on 23 June 2023; it had its press opening on 20 July and will close on 20 August. 

[Candrice Jones (b. 1981) is a Steinberg playwright and educator from Dermott, Arkansas, a small town with a population of 2,316 in Chicot County in the southeast corner of the state on the border with Mississippi.  (The Steinberg Playwright Award is given annually by the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust to up-and-coming American playwrights with distinctive voices.)  Dermott is the model for the play’s Plainnole (Plain Ol’?), Arkansas.

[Jones has been a fellow at the literary magazine Callaloo for poetry at Brown University and in London.  She’s also been a VONA Playwriting Fellow, and CalArts MFA Critical Studies recipient.  (VONA, or Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, is an arts organization founded in order to provide emerging writers of color with workshops and mentoring by established writers of color.)

[Jones’s primary goal, she declares, is to write love letters for and to women of the American South.  From 2014 to 2018, she produced Re-Imagining the Self, a ten-minute-play showcase hosted by Little Rock Central High National Historic Site and the Weekend Theater.  She’s the author of the full-length play Crackbaby (Wasserstein Prize Nomination [established in memory of playwright Wendy Wasserstein for an outstanding script by a young woman who hasn’t yet received national attention]).

[Jones has been a resident fellow at Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and MacDowell in Peterborough, New Hampshire.  She’s scheduled to be a resident playwright at Djerassi Resident Artists Program in Woodside, California, in the fall of 2024.  Jones was a 2019-20 Many Voices Fellow and 2020-21 Jerome Fellow at the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis.  In 2022, she received the Celebrate! Maya Award.  Currently, Candrice Jones lives in Little Rock where she’s working on play and musical commissions.] 

“NEW PLAY ‘FLEX’ TAKES WOMEN’S BASKETBALL
FROM THE COURT TO THE STAGE”
by Dave Carlin 

[The article below was broadcast on CBS 2 News at 6PM on 3 August 2023.]

NEW YORK – High school women’s basketball is creatively brought to life in a new play at Lincoln Center.

It’s about ambition that can turn friendships foul, and the actors play the game for real on stage and must adapt the plot accordingly.

Summer youth basketball is getting propelled from the playgrounds and landing on a Lincoln Center stage in “Flex” by Candrice Jones.

“I’m having a ball on stage,” said Erica Matthews, who plays Starra Jones.

Starra is determined at all costs to rise from her high school team and go pro, but the arrival of new player, Sidney, played by Tamera Tomakili, threatens Starra.

“Sidney being there is basically her saying, you’re not going to the WNBA, and that is a hard pill for Starra to swallow,” Matthews said.

Starra plots a secret betrayal that threatens to unravel the team.

As the teammates deal with friction, a hidden romance and teen pregnancy, the actors multitask with lots of running, jumping, passing and shooting.

Depending on how the games on stage go, the script changes, and there are two endings.

But win or lose at the end, the play’s message is the same.

“This sport has brought us together because it is a communal thing, and I think that is the heart of the story, is that, at the end of the day, we need community, we need to be together in order to make kind of everyone’s dream come true,” Tomakili said.

“She still learns that no matter what, your journey is your jurney,” Matthews said. “Learning to play with the team, it isn’t always about you.”

Turning the actors into athletes was basketball consultant Amber Batchelor, of the group “Ladies Who Hoop” [“a nonprofit organization that empowers women of all ages and fosters community through the game of basketball”].

“Jumping into the theater world and being connected to this project has been the thrill of my life,” she said. “Especially some of the character work between Starra and Sidney, and those one-on-one games was really fun to choreograph . . . [.] I think each and every one of them were surprised at how quickly when you just get kind of the basics and fundamentals.”

Batchelor added, “We’re in this amazing time now, there’s a real evolution of the women’s game – not just basketball, but women’s sports as a whole . . . [.] You’re going to see a lot of women playing at all ages.”

The action on a real court or a theatrical one has the power to bring you to your feet, cheering.

“Flex” plays through Aug. 20 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center.

*  *  *  *
“‘FLEX’: TAKING THE LADY TRAIN FROM THE ARKANSAS DELTA TO LINCOLN CENTER”
by Kim Euell 

[Kim Euell’s chronicle appeared in the Theatre Communication Group’s monthly magazine American Theatre on 12 July 2023.  As the title indicates, it traces the path of Candrice Jones’s play from background in Dermott, Arkansas, to the stage of the Mitze E. Newhouse Theater at New York City’s Lincoln Center.]

Candrice Jones’s new play about a Southern girls’ basketball team has come a long way, but it hasn’t been a layup.

Flex, Candrice Jones’s play about an ambitious girl’s high school basketball team in rural Arkansas, is on the move. In the past year, the team known as the Lady Train has journeyed from its co-world premiere at Northwest Arkansas’s Obie-winning TheatreSquared and at Atlanta’s Theatrical Outfit, and now to New York City’s Lincoln Center Theater, where it’s currently in previews, to open officially on July 20. Under the inspired direction of LCT resident director Lileana Blain-Cruz, the Lady Train’s New York debut feels almost miraculous, given the blindsiding bumps it hit along the way.

Jones’s play is set in the year 1997, the inaugural year of the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA). This momentous event beams a beacon of hope to a group of young Arkansas women, who see winning their state tournament as a ticket out of a dead-end existence in a town where the options are working in a spice factory or at local prisons, or enlisting in the military. But before these young women can get to state, they must overcome a formidable obstacle—i.e., a star player is pregnant, and the coach does not allow pregnant girls to play.

Flex’s developmental journey began when Candrice brought an early draft into a playwriting workshop I conducted for Voices of the Nation (a.k.a. VONA) in the summer of 2017. VONA produces the country’s only multi-genre writing conference specifically for writers of color. Our dramaturgical collaboration continued after the workshop into the following summer, when Flex was among the roster of plays developed at Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor Residency. In 2019, Flex was at the Bay Area Playwright’s Festival prior to being selected for the 2020 Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville.

In Louisville, the cast worked with a professional coach on polishing their basketball skills (as they would do years later in New York), in addition to rehearsing their roles with the play’s director. But two days prior to Flex’s anticipated world premiere, ATL suspended all performances due to COVID-19. Given the intense rehearsal schedule and the demands of tech, the reality of the enveloping pandemic had not penetrated the productions’ bubble—until it burst. When the cast gathered on Mar. 18, 2020, at a downtown Louisville restaurant, to celebrate director Delicia Turner-Sonnenberg’s birthday, the celebration felt more like a wake.

This shutdown was especially hard on Candrice, as the Humana premiere would have marked her first full production as a playwright. As the months passed, she busied herself writing and developing new scripts. Eventually she was contacted by Dexter Singleton, director of play development at Fayetteville’s TheatreSquared. He wished to develop the script at the Arkansas New Play Festival, and, if all went well, to premiere the play the following summer (with Turner-Sonnenberg back as director).

Arkansas is ranked the second poorest state in the nation, just behind neighboring Mississippi. So I was somewhat taken aback upon arriving at the award-winning modern architectural facility that houses TheatreSquared. Artistic director Robert Ford and executive director Martin Miller had leveraged the resources to build a stunning wish-list facility with two state-of-the-art performance spaces on the ground level, and a flexible rehearsal and performance space upstairs. Remarkably, TheatreSquared managed to continue producing a full season even as the pandemic raged.

On the day of the new-play festival’s staged reading of Flex in summer 2021, it played to a large, enthusiastic (masked) audience in attendance. At the conclusion of the reading’s talkback, one audience member shouted, “Let’s take this train all the way to New York!” Prophetic words indeed.

Fast forward to the spring 2023. As part of the dramaturgical research for the Lincoln Center Theater production, I’m taking a road trip to the playwright’s hometown of Dermott, Ark., to see how it informed her play. The plan is to rendezvous with Candrice in Little Rock, then set off to Dermott the following morning. Candrice calls to remind me that Fayetteville, which is a well-resourced university town, is “a bubble,” warning me of “sundown towns” I will be passing through, where I should not stop under any circumstances. “Travel with a full tank of gas,” she intones. I am heading out of the Ozarks into the Deep South.

Along the freeway I spot some curious signs. One points out the road to the town of Toad Suck. Large billboards feature Donald Trump, standing alongside a uniformed military officer, warning against the use of electronic balloting machines. (They all say “President Trump,” as though he is still in the White House. Time warp.)

One of the reasons I feel compelled to visit Dermott is because I have been told repeatedly that the Arkansas Delta, where Flex is set, is nothing like Fayetteville, my only Arkansas point of reference. I am also aware that major cultural icons hail from the Delta region: Sister Rosetta Tharpe (whose music is featured in the production), Johnny Cash, Basketball Hall of Famer Scottie Pippin, and playwright Endesha Ida Mae Holland.

During my time in Dermott (pop. 1973 and shrinking), Candrice drives us to many of the locations referenced in the play. We pass the Piggly-Wiggly on our way into town, and we drive by the Morris-Booker Community College, now permanently closed. There are two prisons in the area, a federal and a state facility. We drive in search of dirt basketball courts, only to discover that they have now all been paved over.

Having read that the Delta encompasses the state’s highest concentration of poverty, I quickly deduce that rural poverty does not necessarily resemble urban poverty. There are no unhoused people and no panhandlers to be seen. But the markers of prosperity and development that were so visible in Fayetteville are glaringly absent. Motels, grocery stores, and restaurants are in short supply. Abandoned houses are noticeable, their roofs caving in from lack of upkeep.

On the plus side, the Delta is a treat for the senses, as the soothing sounds of crickets and chirping birds fill the air. Heading out of downtown, I inhale the smell of the rich, dark soil visible in the wide open fields under limitless blue skies. We in the Dirty South, y’all! This is the region that inspired a Kesselring Award-winning play.

On our final day we visited Dermott’s public school, whose campus encompasses kindergarten through grade 12. Candrice’s entire senior class comprised 25 students. Entering through the front doors, we pass through hallways lined with glass cases full of trophies. The gymnasium walls are adorned with individual life-sized banners of uniformed male and female basketball players. Groups of eighth graders file in for physical education and immediately begin shooting baskets.

Candrice engages with a group of girls, asking them their family names, then telling them whose aunt or cousin she played on the team with. While this is happening, one of the girls begins nonchalantly spinning the basketball on the tip of her index finger, Harlem Globetrotter-style. This is when it fully dawns on me how deeply ingrained basketball culture is in this town.

For our visit, we stay in the gracious two-story home where Candrice and her siblings grew up. Railroad tracks border the expansive backyard. It is this proximity that inspired Candrice to name the team in the play the Lady Train. An apt name it turned out to be for the journey that was to come.

Candrice has done a masterful job of maximizing every opportunity to further develop the script. At TheatreSquared, when the final shot that determined the outcome of the championship game was taken, the stage went to black. When the lights came up audiences saw the Lady Train holding their trophy.

At Lincoln Center Theater, by contrast, the audience follows the championship game action quarter by quarter as though they are at courtside. And when the final shot is taken, hit or miss, it determines how the play ends for that performance. When I attended one of the two performances that ended with a “loss,” I was impressed to see that the losing ending was equally if not more moving than the “win.” 

Blain-Cruz is an ideal director for this play because of her highly physical approach to staging. She begins each rehearsal with movement and utilizes bumping dance music as an energizer when needed. “I do not underestimate the amount of focus, concentration, and stamina that this show takes—bravo!” she told the actors after their first full run-through.

Flex may be best understood as Candrice’s love letter to women of the rural South. One homage that would be recognizable only to residents of the Delta is the story that the Lady Train’s coach tells about winning the state championship with only four girls on the court. Candrice told me that this is in fact a true story—a feat accomplished by Gloria Harris, legendary coach of the Delta Lady Pirates.

In addition to basketball, the music in Flex provides another portal of entry into the world of the play. Songs like Montell Jordan’s “This Is How We Do It,” Kurtis Blow’s “Basketball,” Aliyah’s “Are You That Somebody,” and Xscape’s “Just Kickin’ It” transport me back to the ’90s, when I joined the artistic staff of the Tony-winning Hartford Stage in Connecticut. I accepted the position of director of play development to help open the door for underrepresented writers in American theatre. (I knew of only one other person of color in a similar position at a mainstream theatre at the time). Back then, the plays being produced by writers of color in mainstream theatres at the time were typically works that would not challenge the subscriber audience’s assumptions about minority cultures. I knew there were much more impactful stories that were being overlooked and writers who were falling through the cracks.

Working closely at Hartford Stage with then artistic director Mark Lamos and resident director Bart Sher (currently resident director at Lincoln Center Theater) we succeeded in attracting the audience that every regional theatre claimed they wanted—one that reflected the diversity of its community. We had all ages, races and backgrounds on our stages and in our seats. I’ve often referred to my time at Hartford as my “Camelot” moment. And like the legendary Camelot, it didn’t last.

Riding the Lady Train into Lincoln Center has been a particularly satisfying experience for me, as it bookends the work I started at Hartford Stage. Candrice Jones exemplifies a compellingly authentic voice, staging facets of Black Southern life not widely seen on American stages until now. I doubt that this production could have happened as recently as five years ago. For one thing, Blain-Cruz, who chose to direct it, has only been a resident director at Lincoln Center Theater since 2020. As in the play, the winds of change are blowing. Let us see how far they can take us.

[Kim Euell is an Ashland/Bay Area-based playwright, dramaturg, and educator who teaches theater and film courses at the University of Southern Oregon.  She’s the co-dramaturg for FLEX at Lincoln Center Theater.]

*  *  *  *
“PLAYWRIGHTS WITH HOOP DREAMS”
by Sopan Deb 

[The article below appeared in the “Arts & Leisure” section of the New York Times of 23 July 2023.]

In Inua Ellams’s new play, “The Half-God of Rainfall” [New York Theatre Workshop (Off-Broadway), 31 July-21 August 2023], the gods play thunderous games of basketball in the heavens. For Candrice Jones’s “Flex,” high schoolers practice their defensive stances while scraping by in rural Arkansas. Near the end of Rajiv Joseph’s “King James” [Manhattan Theatre Club (Off-Broadway; co-produced with Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Chicago), 16 May-18 June 2023], the two main characters play a one-on-one game of basketball using a crumpled up piece of paper after waxing poetic about the greatness of the N.B.A. star LeBron James.

Basketball hasn’t just been on the playgrounds of New York City this summer. Hoop dreams are also playing out onstage, highlighting a theater, ahem, crossover that has become more pronounced in recent years.

While basketball is not as popular as, say, American football, its cultural reach surpasses that of other American team sports because its players are among the most publicly recognizable. (Three of the 10 highest-paid athletes in the world, when including endorsements and other off-field endeavors, according to Forbes, are N.B.A. players.)

“Watching a basketball game is the same excitement I get from watching great theater,” said Taibi Magar, the director of “The Half-God of Rainfall.” “It’s like embodied conflict. It’s executed by highly skilled performers. When you’re watching Broadway, you feel just like you’re watching N.B.A. performers.”

For Joseph, who grew up in Cleveland, basketball is the most culturally important sport partly because so many international stars play in the N.B.A., like the Denver Nuggets’s Nikola Jokic, who is Serbian, and the Milwaukee Bucks’s Giannis Antetokounmpo, who’s from Greece.

“It’s drawing from every place on the planet, which means that the sport has become a really important athletic pursuit globally,” said Joseph, whose play “King James” just ended its run at New York City Center.

And basketball’s prevalence in pop culture — including in the worlds of hip-hop and fashion and more recently in film and television — has also penetrated the theater space. Dwyane Wade, who retired from the N.B.A. in 2019, was among the producers of the Broadway shows “American Son” [Booth Theatre (Broadway), 4 November 2018-27 January 2019] and “Ain’t No Mo’” [Joseph Papp Public Theater (Off-Broadway), 27 March-5 May 2019; Belasco Theatre (Broadway), 1-23 Dec 2022].

“Even if one hasn’t played on a team or hasn’t played organized ball, we all have access to basketball,” Jones, who wrote “Flex,” said in a recent interview. “You go in any hood or any small town, someone has created a basketball goal.”

In casting “Flex,” which is in previews at the Lincoln Center Theater’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, prospective actors recorded themselves playing basketball as part of the audition process. Jones and the show’s director, Lileana Blain-Cruz, who both played basketball in high school, said they wanted the basketball being played onstage to look authentic.

“People have different styles, different ways of shooting, different personalities, different kinds of swagger,” Blain-Cruz said. “We care about the individual in the role that they play and how they’re playing it. And I think that aligns itself to theater.”

Jones’s play, set in rural Arkansas, tells the story of a girl’s high school basketball team in 1998, which aligned with the second year of the W.N.B.A. So as the audition process advanced, the actors were asked to dribble, shoot and do layups for the creative team. Once the cast was set, some rehearsals weren’t about staging at all: The cast had basketball practice at nearby John Jay College.

“There’s a kind of ensemble quality to it,” Blain-Cruz said about the sport. “Like an ensemble of actors playing together, a team of basketball players performing together. Together, they create the event.”

Minutes later, as Lauryn Hill’s “Doo Wop (That Thing)” blared, Blain-Cruz led a warm-up with the cast that included hip openers and upward arm stretches. It could have doubled as pregame preparation. The set itself had a basketball hoop hanging in the rear, and a basketball court painted on the floor. “Flex” refers to a type of play basketball teams run, and the staged work features several instances of game play.

“There’s a real rigor. It is real,” Blain-Cruz said. “That’s what’s so satisfying, I think, about sports onstage. There’s an honesty to it, right? Dribbling the ball is actually dribbling the ball. We’re not performing the idea of dribbling the ball.”

After a recent outing to a New York Liberty game, the actress Erica Matthews, whose character, Starra Jones, is the 17-year-old point guard of the fictional team, said watching the players reminded her of watching live theater.

“Basketball is very intimate. You can play a one-on-one game in a small amount of space,” Matthews said. “They’re actually performing on a stage and with the way the audience is surrounding them, the way they’re cheering, it’s basically storytelling.”

Downtown at the New York Theater Workshop, Ellams’s “The Half-God of Rainfall,” a Dante-inspired “contemporary epic” about a half-Greek god named Demi who becomes the biggest star in the N.B.A., is in previews and is scheduled to open July 31. While “Flex” deals with down-to-earth issues, such as teen pregnancy, “The Half-God of Rainfall” transports basketball to a mythical world for immortals to deal with.

At a recent rehearsal, cast members pantomimed slow motion basketball movements at the direction of the choreographer, Orlando Pabotoy. The actors Jason Bowen and Patrice Johnson Chevannes worked on setting up a proper screen, and Bowen later practiced a Michael Jordan impersonation — complete with the tongue wagging. (Jordan is referenced in the play.)

As Ellams and Magar, the show’s director, looked on from desks cluttered with tiny inflatable basketballs, they worked on reallocating lines as the choreography required. Though this version of Ellams’s poem has a cast of seven, he said it can be staged with as many or as few performers as the production desires. (A 2019 production at the Birmingham Repertory Theater in England had only two actors.)

Ellams, a Nigerian poet and playwright, who has played basketball since he was a teenager, said he created the character Demi to “do all the things that I never could” on the court. He mused that basketball has a greater draw to the stage because it is “a far more beautiful sport.”

“There’s something humbling and mortal about basketball in the sense that there’s a simple equation,” Ellams said. “The ball bounces; it comes back up to your palm. You can break that down. This is solitariness, which invites the blues and what it means to play the blues. There’s a longing.”

“There’s a natural melancholy about it,” he added, which makes it “easier to pair with the human spirit.”

Of course there have been other basketball-related plays. In 2012, “Magic/Bird” [Longacre Theatre (Broadway), 11 April-12 May 2012] explored the friendship and rivalry between the 1980s basketball stars Magic Johnson and Larry Bird on Broadway. The 2011 Broadway musical “Lysistrata Jones” [Walter Kerr Theatre (Broadway), 14 December 2011-8 January 2012], inspired by Aristophanes’s “Lysistrata,” followed a group of cheerleaders who withhold sex from their boyfriends on the basketball team because they keep losing games. Lauren Yee’s 2018 Off Broadway play, “The Great Leap” [Atlantic Theater Company (Off-Broadway), 23 May-24 June 2018] also directed by Magar, tells the story of a teenage basketball prodigy who travels to China in 1989 to play in an exhibition game between college teams from Beijing and San Francisco.

Daryl Morey, now an executive with the N.B.A.’s Philadelphia 76ers, commissioned a musical comedy called “Small Ball” [Catastrophic Theatre, 6 April-13 May 2018] that played in Houston in 2018. It depicts a fictional character named Michael Jordan — not the Jordan — as he finds himself playing in an international league with teammates who are six inches tall.

“I think basketball is just the most important of all of the sports among the up-and-coming directors and playwrights, at least the ones I’ve spoken to,” Morey said.

Not that basketball has a lock on the theater. Baseball has long been an object of fascination for playwrights, including classic shows like “Damn Yankees” [46th Street Theatre/Adelphi Theatre (original Broadway première), 5 May 1955-12 October 1957]. Richard Greenberg’s Tony-winning 2003 play, “Take Me Out” [Joseph Papp Public Theater (Off-Broadway), 5 September-24 November 2002; Walter Kerr Theatre (Broadway première), 27 February 2003-4 January 2004], about a baseball player who comes out as gay, had a Tony-winning revival on Broadway last year.  In 2019, “Toni Stone” [Roundabout Theatre Company (Off-Broadway), 20 June-11 August 2019], written by Lydia R. Diamond, depicted the life of Marcenia Lyle Stone [1921-96], who became the first woman to play in a men’s baseball league when she took the field for the Indianapolis Clowns in the Negro Leagues [25 April 1953].

Football and boxing, too: “Lombardi” [Circle in the Square Theatre (Broadway), 21 October 2010-22 May 2011], a biographical play based on the life of the legendary football coach Vince Lombardi [1913-70], ran on Broadway in 2010, and 2014 brought a stage adaptation of “Rocky” [Winter Garden Theatre (Broadway), 13 March-17 August 2014], the famous 1976 underdog boxing film, to Broadway.

But for the moment, it is basketball that is having a renaissance in theater. Or to put it in basketball terms, playwrights who take on the sport currently have the hot hand.

[Sopan Deb is a basketball writer and a contributor to the Culture section of the New York Times. Before joining the Times, he covered Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign for CBS News.]

 *  *  *  *
“REVIEW: IN FLEX, FRIENDSHIP FOULS CONSUME
A HIGH SCHOOL WOMEN’S BASKETBALL TEAM”
by Hayley Levitt 

[Hayley Levitt’s review of FLEX was posted on the website TheaterMania on 20 July 2023.]

Candrice Jones’s nostalgic play about teenage hope and ambition makes its New York premiere at Lincoln Center Theater.

It’s 1998 in Plainnole, Arkansas, the WNBA has just entered the zeitgeist, and the members of the Lady Train high school basketball team have gone to extreme measures to keep their starting lineup (and hopeful futures) intact: No sex until they bring home the state championship.

It’s a very Lysistrata opening to Candrice Jones’s sports-centric play Flex — now at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater — but the comparisons end there. For one thing, the celibacy pact has been breached before the show even begins (the cycle of senior athletes in provincial Plainnole being sidelined by unwanted pregnancy can’t be so easily broken). And more importantly, the pact has nothing to do with boys. Sure, it’s the boys who get these talented young Black women pregnant, but the players’ loyalties are to one another and their ambitions are their own.

The internal struggle between loyalty and ambition is the central conflict for Starra, played with unshakable confidence and remarkable athleticism by Erica Matthews. She’s the star(ra) of the Lady Train, but her supremacy is threatened by Sidney (an amusingly brash performance by Tamera Tomakili), a California transplant who is presumed glamorous upon arrival— and not entirely unfairly, considering that her Division 1 college scouts have followed her to the boonies of Arkansas.

It’s an opportunity Starra (whose late mother also lost out on recruitment opportunities) would do just about anything to have herself. And she takes anything shockingly far, much to the chagrin of her other teammates — particularly her sweet-natured and extremely religious cousin Cherise (a hilarious Ciara Monique whose performance resists trite archetypes). It’s a move so outrageous, it almost overshadows the other central story line: the collective pursuit of an abortion for their teammate April (an excellent Brittany Bellizeare), which, in between horrific conversations about sexual trauma and the dearth of access to healthcare in the South (Jones’s version of 1998 is looking 2023 dead in the face), turns into a charming road trip comedy (Renita Lewis, as the queer-coded Donna, delivers some of the show’s best deadpan comedy from the driver’s seat of set designer Matt Saunders’s jigsaw puzzle of a car).

Flex trades in the same camaraderie and female friendship that made A League of Their Own a beacon for every female athlete, with doses of teen drama and ’90s nostalgia to lock in the allegiance of every elder millennial (costume designer Mika Eubanks’s vests, baggy button-ups, and bucket hats are spot-on). In stories like these, characters are the key to success, and characters are clearly Jones’s strength as a writer. For each of these girls, the stakes feel high and authentic to this slice of American life — but director Lileana Blain-Cruz maintains a levity throughout that all but ensures a classic happy ending at a championship game where life lessons coalesce into a poetic expression of teamwork. [For the novices in sports-ball vernacular, the Flex offense demands a lot of passing and takes players out of their traditional roles. You can see where this metaphor is headed.]

Flex certainly invites comparison to Sarah DeLappe’s successful ensemble play, The Wolves, which followed the complex politics of a girls’ soccer team. However, where The Wolves buried tension and darkness beneath a shell of inane chatter, Flex wears its drama on its sleeve and cushions it all in the safety of a traditional story arc. There’s also the added buffer of Coach Francine (Christiana Clark, mastering a coach’s cadence of tough love), who, despite her unfair blanket rule against playing pregnant girls, takes on the uncomplicated persona of “stable adult” — the kind of cozy character perhaps better suited for a television miniseries than a play that aims for complexity.

The most tension-generating part of Flex is the actual basketball that Blain-Cruz has her cast play onstage (Saunders turns the Newhouse Theater into a fully functional basketball court). Plot points depend on actors hitting shots — particularly Matthews, who incredibly sinks a three-pointer to button one of her Act 1 monologues (if you were wondering, The Wolves had zero soccer-ing). It’s one of the riskiest moves I’ve ever seen attempted in live theater and the payoff is an entire audience holding its collective breath and celebrating the ecstasy of victory. With that kind of pressure, even an expected ending gets an infusion of suspense.

[Hayley Levitt is a New York-based theater journalist with experience in Broadway and Off-Broadway criticism, interviews and profiles, feature writing, and reporting for both camera and print.]