Alec Duffy News

The Tank (Meghan Finn and Rosalind Grush, Artistic Directors) will present the New York Premiere of LEISURE, LABOR, LUST, written and directed by Sara Farrington at The Tank (312 West 36th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues), March 28-April 22. 

Playwright/performer Stacey Karen Robinson shares her new solo exploration mixing song, movement and her distinctive storytelling style. A seeker at the crossroads wrestles to be free; she shape shifts through the body, through the memory of many selves in a dynamic sojourn of heart & spirit.

Playwright/performer Karma Mayet shares stories of America's tortured relationship to race both personal and historical set within the frame of a game of Bid Whist with the audience. With a winning card guiding the choice of story, on any given night she may summon her own experiences moving from Chicago to an all-white town in Illinois, widening to passed-down tales of the Great Migration and the Pullman Porters, smack up against her own current experiences navigating New York microagressions. In this participatory piece, Mayet creates a wonderland of playful intellect, inhabited by humor that bites and characters that speak in twisted tongues. Race Card unpacks the musty traveling papers stuffed into the 21st century's history bags, and rifles through the audience's very own drawers as well, calling on them to join the fray of stage play with both cued and improvised live-ness at every turn.

JACK presents 690 wishes in concert by Justin Hicks and The HawtPlates with Charlotte Brathwaite, running November 1 - 3, 2017.

Part of JACK's year-long series, Reparations365 The performance collective RAKIA!, led by choreographer and dancer Rakia Seaborn, inverts playground routines into the language with which a trio of dancers communicates with the black women who died too soon. This highly-stylized immortality ritual hearkens back to a care-free time of middle school talent shows, Blue Magic hair grease & 'CrazySexyCool.' Part of JACK's Reparations365 series, myeyesdontcrynomore positions reparations as freedom from a never-ending fear of another black death. What if there were something else? Endless life, endless joy.

JACK presents 690 wishes in concert by Justin Hicks and The HawtPlates with Charlotte Brathwaite, running November 1 - 3, 2017.

JACK presents 'Your Healing is Killing Me: A Performance Manifesto' by Virginia Grise, running October 5 - 7, 2017.

Rarely has the lowly and much-maligned post-show talkback received as much attention as it has since it was revealed that David Mamet was prohibiting them during productions of his plays. Inspired by Mr. Mamet's decision while honoring his prohibition, in this series of public discussions critic and journalist Jeremy M. Barker and director Patrice Miller bring together diverse practitioners to explore issues raised by Mr. Mamet's long career through their own experiences. The guests for this second session in the series, on Sunday, Oct. 15, are writer Leonard Jacobs (The Clyde Fitch Report), writer Colleen Werthman and playwright Amina Henry. Each will explore artists' powers, limitations, and challenges in defining the experience of their works.

Black Girl Magic Show! is an absurdist dance theatre lecture by playwright/performer nicHi douglas on Black female identity. Utilizing African Diasporan histories, Black feminist theory, and a lot of stuff douglas made up, she attempts to unpack, re-pack, and de-pack the Black female experience in America as witnessed by one Black woman - The Professor. As the audience follows The Professor, they discover what might happen if the one Black girl without 'Black Girl Magic' takes matters into her own hands. Before the show ends, the audience experiences a TED-type talk, modern dance, a magic routine, and a concert, often simultaneously. And they probably see at least 20 wigs.

FOUR NIGHTS OF DREAM, composer/librettist Moto Osada's opera performed in its US premiere last week at the Japan Society, is based on a cornerstone of 20th century Japanese literature, 'Ten Nights of Dream' by Natsume Soseki. While the four stories Osada has chosen may seem stylized and foreign to the Western sensibility, there is no such difficulty in being drawn in by his interesting, dynamic score--by turns lyric and harshly modern--and the staging by Alec Duffy.

The dynamic classical trio Riot with Three Alison Davy, soprano, Javier Oviedo, saxophone, and Gene Rohrer, piano make a triumphant return to Catskill's intimate Bridge Street Theatre on Saturday September 30 at 7:30 pm with an eclectic evening of contemporary and classical chamber works entitled 'The Nature of Music'. In this exquisite and wide-ranging program, which includes works by Handel, Hoiby, Assad, Laitman, Arnold, and Borgia, the ensemble celebrates everything from the grandeur of the great outdoors to sugar addiction with a vibrant combination of unbridled joy and dazzling technical expertise.

JACK presents 'Your Healing is Killing Me: A Performance Manifesto' by Virginia Grise, running October 5 - 7, 2017.

Part of JACK's year-long series, Reparations365 through song, spontaneous art, projection, and essay, BLACK STREET explores the historical eradication and systematic destruction of an African American economy, education, and progressive labour force.

Japan Society is proud to present the North American premiere of Moto Osada's chamber opera Four Nights of Dream today, September 13, repeated on September 15 + 16 (7:30 pm). Conducted by Ken-David Masur, this striking new production inaugurates Japan Society's freshly renovated theater, marking the opening of the organization's 110th Anniversary season. Following its New York run, Four Nights of Dream will be presented by the prestigious Tokyo Bunka Kaikan performing arts center, which co-commissioned the production. In both cities, a diverse cast of New York-based singers will be accompanied by twelve musicians of the Tokyo Bunka Kaikan Chamber Orchestra. A cast list appears below.

In celebration of Japan Society's 110th anniversary, the Society's Performing Arts Program presents the NOH-NOW Series featuring four extraordinary events in dance and theater: Luca Veggetti's Left-Right-Left, Hiroshi Sugimoto's Rikyu-Enoura, SITI Company's Hanjo and Satoshi Miyagi's Mugen Noh Othello; and the North American Premiere of Moto Osada's opera, Four Nights of Dream, which launches the Fall 2017 Season in September. These events bring together celebrated artists from the U.S. and Japan, delivering world class cultural offerings while continuing Japan Society's mission to deepen mutual understanding between the two nations into the Society's twelfth decade.

Tokyo and New York City are the two home cities of composer Moto Osada, whose new chamber opera, FOUR NIGHTS OF DREAM will have its North American premiere at the Japan Society in Manhattan on September 13, directed by Alec Duffy.

JACK will present 'Mamet Talkbacks,' moderated by Jeremy M. Barker, on September 17, October 15 and November 17, 2017.

Part of JACK's year-long series, Reparations365 The multi-disciplinary performance collective Oye Group (formerly Brooklyn Gypsies) returns to JACK with OYE! Avant-Garde Night.

Asshole is a bracing new play by Justin Kuritzkes about a doctor who works for the government and is obsessed with the smell of his own asshole. He has a patient whom he can't seem to get out of his mind. In fact, he finds her continued presence to be a little...disturbing. Directed and designed by Knud Adams, this world premiere features Polly Lee and Ikechukwu Ufomadu. 

Japan Society is proud to present the North American premiere of Moto Osada's chamber opera Four Nights of Dream on Wednesday, September 13, repeated on September 15 + 16 (7:30 pm). Conducted by Ken-David Masur, this striking new production inaugurates Japan Society's freshly renovated theater, marking the opening of the organization's 110th Anniversary season. Following its New York run, Four Nights of Dream will be presented by the prestigious Tokyo Bunka Kaikan performing arts center, which co-commissioned the production. In both cities, a diverse cast of New York-based singers will be accompanied by twelve musicians of the Tokyo Bunka Kaikan Chamber Orchestra. A cast list appears below.