arts
New Plays,
New Horizons
16
KEANmag
Premiere Stages Expands its New Play
Commissioning Program
PREMIERE TO PRESENT WORLD PREMIERE OF
MY LORD, WHAT A NIGHT
Premiere Stages concluded its highly acclaimed twelfth season as
Kean’s professional theatre in residence with the world premiere of
Deborah Brevoort’s
My Lord, What a Night
. Based on actual events,
My Lord, What a Night
provides an account of the night legendary
African American singer Marian Anderson gave a concert in Princeton
and was later refused a room at the Nassau Inn. Ms. Brevoort’s
thought-provoking new play begins when civil rights supporter
Albert Einstein invites Anderson to stay at his home, an event that
threatens to divide the community but ultimately forges a lifetime
bond between two of New Jersey’s most fascinating people of the
twentieth century.
My Lord, What a Night
is the winner of the 2015/2016 Liberty Live
Commission, a partnership between Premiere Stages and the Liberty
Hall Museum. Every two years, Premiere Stages commissions a New
Jersey playwright to create a new one-act play about an event that
helped to shape history in the Garden State. The project celebrated
New Jersey history with professional theatrical productions, museum
tours, interactive displays, workshops for children, and talk-backs
with local historians.
PREMIERE PARTNERS WITH NJPAC
Premiere Stages, through funding from The New Jersey Performing
Arts Center (NJPAC), in partnership with the New Jersey Theatre
Alliance, has commissioned Jersey playwright Nicole Pandolfo to
create a new play that explores issues relevant to the Garden State as
part of the 2017 NJPAC Stage Exchange. The play will have a staged
reading at NJPAC in the spring of 2017, followed by a full production as
part of the Premiere Stages 2018 season.
In Ms. Pandolfo’s
Brick City
, set at Malcolm X High School in Newark,
the paint is peeling, lead-poisoned water pours from the faucets, Mark
Zuckerburg’s much-publicized funding has gone disastrously wrong,
and racial tensions are at an all-time high. When a white student with
cerebral palsy and a black student-athletewith a big
scholarship on the
line find themselves together in detention during the most important
week of their lives, both teenagers learn that things aren’t always as
easy for others as they may seem.
