San Diego State University’s critically acclaimed production of Dear Harvey chosen to participate in the Kennedy Center’s American College Theatre Festival

December 16, 2009 - The San Diego State University School of Theatre, Television, and Film’s September production of Dear Harvey has been selected to participate in the Southwest Regional Finals for the Kennedy Center’s American College Theatre Festival being held in St. George, Utah in early February.  If the show does well in Utah, the production will move to the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. in April!

 

Originally commissioned by Diversionary Theatre, Patricia Loughrey’s original play Dear Harvey had its world premiere at Diversionary in April 2009.  Diversionary Theatre is the nation’s 3rd oldest continuously producing lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender theatre.  The commission for the play was underwritten in part by The James Irvine Foundation New Connections Fund and community member Carlos Malamud.  Dear Harvey has original music by Thomas Hodges, uses historical photos of Harvey Milk by Daniel Nicoletta, and was first directed by Diversionary’s Executive & Artistic Director, Dan Kirsch.

 

Drawn from over thirty interviews conducted by the Patricia Loughrey, Dear Harvey recounts the achievements and vision of the first openly gay man elected to a major public office in the United States. A drag queen, a State Senator, an international gay rights activist, a nineteen-year-old composer… the play weaves these voices and more with the personal and political writings of Harvey Milk to paint a portrait of a leader, and a vision for equality. Supported by photos from Milk’s friends and family, Dear Harvey celebrates the stories not found in history books: stories of a love that reached beyond fear.

 

The SDSU production was directed by Peter Cirino and featured John Alspaugh, Shane Blackburn, Crystal Brandan, Emily Davenport, Ken Hodges, Courtney Howard, Diahann McCrary, Kristin McReddie, Bailey Neill, Anthony Simone, Derek Smith, Jon Wat, Berlyn Wieland and Jacqui Yawn.  The show played to sold- out, standing ovation crowds during its run at SDSU.

 

The Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF) is a national theater program involving 18,000 students from colleges and universities nationwide which has served as a catalyst in improving the quality of college theater in the United States. The KCACTF has grown into a network of more than 600 academic institutions throughout the country, where theater departments and student artists showcase their work and receive outside assessment by KCACTF respondents.  Through state, regional, and national festivals, KCACTF participants celebrate the creative process, see one another's work, and share experiences and insights within the community of theater artists. The KCACTF honors excellence of overall production and offers student artists individual recognition through awards and scholarships in playwriting, acting, criticism, directing, and design. You can find more information about KCACTF at http://www.kcactf-8.org/index.html and more information about the regional festival in Utah at http://www.kennedy-center.org/education/actf/

 

Patricia Loughrey’s script for Dear Harvey is entered in the Michael Kanin Playwriting Awards Program and is under consideration for the David Mark Cohen Award, the Rosa Parks Playwriting Award, the Paula Vogel Award and the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival National Student Playwriting Award.

 

Three SDSU students are up for Irene Ryan acting awards for their roles in Dear Harvey: Anthony Simone for his portrayal of Nicole Murray-Ramirez; Derek Smith for his portrayal of Cleve Jones; and Diahann McCrary for her portrayal of Dottie Wine.  Three members of the production have received Meritorious Achievement Awards: Thomas Hodges for Musical Score; Lauren Beck for Dramaturgy; and Lila “Lace” Flores for Lighting Design.

 

SDSU is now fundraising to get the production to Utah.  A tax-deductible donation of $457 will completely underwrite one actor’s expense for the entire week of the regional festival, including hotel, registration fees, acting workshops, transportation, and a few meals.  There are 14 actors and two stage managers traveling to Utah.  If you would like to help send this production to Utah, please call Jay Sheehan at SDSU at 619-594-4990 or email him at JSheehan@mail.sdsu.edu.

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Links:

Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival: www.kcactf-8.org/index.html

KCACTF Regional Festival in St. George, Utah: www.kennedy-center.org/education/actf/

San Diego State University School of Theatre, Television and Film: http://theatre.sdsu.edu/streaming/

Patricia Loughrey: www.patricialoughrey.com

Jay Sheehan at SDSU: email Jay at JSheehan@mail.sdsu.edu

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News & Theatre Updates

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 1, 2009

 

CONTACT: Dan Kirsch, Executive/Artistic Director – 619.220.6830

or Travis Guss, Patron Services Manager – 619.220.0097

 

Diversionary Theatre announces 2009-2010 season
Season of two musicals, four plays includes two West Coast Premieres

 

Diversionary Theatre’s 2009-2010 season of two gender-bending musicals and four provocative plays includes two West Coast Premieres, dynamic local actors and directors, and a reading of a new queer opera.  The six-show mainstage season includes: the new musical Twist by Gila Sand and Paul Leschen, based on Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, directed by James Vasquez; Bent, the seminal play by Martin Sherman, in a co-production with ion theatre company; Paul Rudnick’s big gay comedy The New Century, directed by Igor Goldin; same-sex marriage gets a comic nod with The Marriage Bed by Nona Shepphard, directed by Rosina Reynolds; laugh out loud with teenage angst in Speech and Debate by Steven Karam, directed by Jason Southerland; and filled with melancholy and lust, the musical play Moscow, by Nick Salamone and Maury R. McIntyre, rounds out the season.

Diversionary’s Queer Theatre program continues with a second Dance/Theatre event, and readings of a new queer opera by Nicolas Reveles and plays by David Zellnik and Madeleine George.

“We are very excited to welcome back Tom Zohar, David McBean, Rosina Reynolds and other favorite performers and directors back to Diversionary,” said Dan Kirsch, Executive & Artistic Director of Diversionary Theatre, as he announced the 2009-2010 season.  “We’re thrilled to partner with ion theatre company.  We love to encourage new work from local artists.  We’re very proud of our unique mission – to tell lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) stories.”

 

Mainstage Season
TWIST!  July 9-August 9, 2009.

Book, lyrics and additional music by Gila Sand.  Music by Paul Leschen.  Additional music by Garret Guadan.  James Vasquez will direct; musical direction by Tim McKnight.  Diversionary’s cast will feature Jacob Caltrider as Twist, Tom Zohar as The Artful Dodger and David McBean as Fagin, with Jackie Cuccaro, Andy Collins, Tony Houck, Jimmy Latimer Jr., Benjamin Lopez and Amy Northcutt.  An official event of San Diego LGBT Pride.          

Music.  Dickens.  Bondage.   Dickens' famous tale re-imagines Oliver as an attractive young man searching for love.  A gender-bending dark comedy with Victorian erotica!  By turns outrageous and provocative, this unique retelling entertains with exquisite drag, arch wit, a bit of kink and a catchy set of new contemporary songs.  Yet the show remains surprisingly true to Oliver Twist, a coming-of-age tale of loneliness, craving, adventure, and finally, redemption. 

Twist was created by Gila Sand and composer Paul Leschen.  For the Diversionary production, Gila and Paul are excited to premiere new songs to Twist’s award nominated score.  Twist’s Drama Desk nomination came after nine performances off-off Broadway, in company with Broadway nominees Spring Awakening and Legally Blonde. The following workshop of Twist, at New York’s Midtown International Theatre Festival, garnered awards for Best Book, Lyrics & Music.  Visit www.themusicaltwist.com for more background and history of the show.    

 

BENT.  A co-production with ion theatre company.  October 29-November 22, 2009.

This co-production commemorates the 30th anniversary of the seminal play by Martin Sherman.  Directed by Glenn Paris.

Yellow stars.  Pink triangles.  Dignity.  Courage.  Comfort.  Survival.  A riveting story of love in the midst of the Holocaust.  This 1979 play about gays under persecution by the Nazis took the world stage by storm.  Profoundly universal and provocatively theatrical.  “An explosive, overpowering experience.” – WWD
Ion’s mission (www.iontheatre.com) is to ignite community change through the staging of bold, re-imagined classics, and part of Diversionary’s mission is share the complexity of our LGBT history.
Prior to Bent, there had been virtually no inclusion of gays in discussions about the Holocaust.  It had a groundbreaking impact when it was first staged off-Broadway in 1978; an impact that continued when the play was performed in London the next year and then finally brought to Broadway.  The uniqueness of the story line and the strength of its message about tolerance, love, and human dignity made the play successful.  It was nominated for both a Pulitzer and a Tony in 1980.

 

THE NEW CENTURY.  West Coast Premiere!  December 3, 2009-January 2, 2010.

A big gay comedy from Paul Rudnick.  Directed by Igor Goldin. 
Gratuitous nudity and snappy one-liners!  A Jewish matron, a flamboyant aging homosexual and a Midwestern craftswoman collide in this outrageous and poignant comedy.  "The one-liners fly like rockets in The New Century, the rollicking bill of short plays…Building on time-honored traditions within gay and Jewish humor, Mr. Rudnick turns stereotypes into bullet-deflecting armor and jokes into an inexhaustible supply of ammunition…." – NY Times.  Rudnick is the playwright of Jeffrey, Valhalla and The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told.  Goldin directed last summer’s smash hit Yank!  For the first time, the show will run over both the Christmas and New Year weekends.

 

THE MARRIAGE BED.  West Coast Premiere!  February 11-28, 2010.

By Nona Shepphard.  Directed by Rosina Reynolds. 

Jeni loves Val and Val loves Jeni.  But is that enough reason to get married, especially when you’re not sure your girlfriend is over her ex, and one of you is not out to your family.  Once the United Kingdom approved civil partnerships in 2005, same-sex couples had to ask themselves: “Do I want to make a commitment?  Do we want to make a big splash?  If so, what sort of splash? Shall it be the pink limousines, or shall we walk?  Shall we invite my mother?  (If she says no, it will make me feel really awful and spoil the day.)  Do I want to be formally tied to another person?”  All this and a fourposter bed!  Reynolds has directed The Twilight of the Golds, Beautiful Thing and Wrinkles, among others for Diversionary. Funny, touching, timely and ingenious.  Underwritten by Joann Clark.  Reynolds has directed eight productions for Diversionary, including The Twilight of the Golds, Beautiful Thing and Lot’s Daughters.

 

SPEECH and DEBATE.  March 25-April 11, 2010.

By Steven Karam.  Directed by Jason Southerland. 

Sex.  Secrets.  Performance-art blogs and blackmail.  A typical day when you're a teenager in Salem, Oregon.  Three teenage misfits discover they are linked by a sex scandal that’s rocked their town.  When one of them sets out to expose the truth, secrets become currency, the stakes get higher, and the trio’s connection grows deeper in this searching, fiercely funny dark comedy with music.  "…savvy comedy…bristling with vitality, wicked humor, terrific dialogue and a direct pipeline into the zeitgeist of contemporary youth…Karam has a keen ear for how teens talk, move and think, how they view each other and the adult world…and uses both the advantages and perils of cyberspace to make amusing, original points…" —Variety.

Written by Karam when he was 25 (he’s 28 now), he took the transcript of an online chat between the former mayor of Spokane, Washington and a gay teenager as the basis for this fiercely funny and edgy new play.  The play received a GLAAD Media nomination upon its premiere.  Jason Southerland, now Artistic Director of Next Theatre in Chicago, co-directed the MOXIE/Diversionary musical play Pulp!

 

MOSCOW.  May 6-30, 2010.

Book and lyrics by Nick Salamone.  Music by Maury R. McIntyre.  Director to be announced.
Trapped in limbo, three gay men stage a musical production of Chekhov's The Three Sisters.  A compelling fusion of music, emotion, melancholy and lust. “…a timely tribute to the redemptive powers of art, a reminder that even the most apparently hopeless lives can be transformed through the unifying fellowship of the theater. – The L.A. Times

Moscow was first produced in Los Angeles in 1998 and went on to win the top honor at that year's Edinburgh Festival.  The men are: Jon, a scholarly playwright who has lost many loved ones to AIDS and has retreated into cerebral celibacy; Luke, a sexually needy male hustler who lives solely for the next fleshly encounter; and Matt, a shy virgin, who struggles to balance the conflicting urges of love and lust.  Trapped, uncertain if they are alive or dead, the men soon become emotionally embroiled.  Naturally, romance is rocky in this limbo.  Unlike the tormented trio in No Exit, the characters in Moscow rally, recoup and bond.

 

Queer Theatre Program

Diversionary’s Queer Theatre program gives voice to the stories of LGBT people, and is supported by a grant from The James Irvine Foundation New Connections Fund.  The program honors the ideas, the energy and commitment people have made to write LGBT stories.  More than 70 new plays with LGBT themes get submitted to the program each year.

DANCE/THEATRE.  April 22-25, 2010.  Inspired by Theatre/Created through Dance.  Peter G. Kalivas, project artistic director, engages local choreographers to bring past Diversionary productions to life through new dance pieces.  Underwritten by California Institute for Contemporary Arts.

SEXTET.   Date TBA.  A Queer Opera in Six Scenes.  Composed by Nicolas Reveles.  Directed by J. Sherwood Montgomery.  What do Walt Whitman, the rapture, and a gay bath house all have in common?  Those are among the unusual subjects explored in Sextet, shedding light on various aspects of gay desire: for community, for power, for acceptance, for family, for sex and for love.  Reveles is The Geisel Director of Education and Outreach for the San Diego Opera.

LET A HUNDRED FLOWERS BLOOM.  By David Zellnik.  Date TBA.  Set in New York in 1996, this comedy is about (variously): disability, gay porn, the pharmaceutical revolutions of the 90s, Chairman Mao, and the rise and fall of post-AIDS euphoria.  At turns funny and serious, part comic fantasy, part love story, the play explores how to construct a life, a sex life, and a friendship after ten years of believing you would die very soon.

THE ZERO HOUR by Madeleine George.  Date TBA.  O and Rebecca want love to be all they need, but the fact that Rebecca has not yet come out to her mother is threatening their happiness.  Meanwhile, Rebecca’s classroom teachings of the Holocaust are seeping into her evening subway rides, in this tour-de-force with two actresses playing all the roles.  Developed at PlayLabs, New Dramatists, New York Theatre Workshop and O’Neill Playwrights Conference.

 

The Year Ahead

 

Mainstage productions will have three to five week runs, with 16 or more performances per run.  Each show will preview on Thursday and Friday night, with openings on Saturday nights.  Performance schedule for the year is Thursday at 7:30pm, Friday and Saturday at 8:00pm, Sunday at 2:00 and 7:00pm, and selected Monday’s and Wednesday’s at 7:30pm.

Discounted six-show subscription packages ranging from $98 to $216 are now available through May 31 (prices go up on June 1).  The early bird discounts include a package with a 45% discount.  There are no handling/service charges for tickets purchased through Diversionary’s box office.

Single tickets go on sale six weeks before the opening date of each show.  Group sales for any show during the season can be arranged now by calling the box office. More information about all the shows and season subscriptions are available through the Box Office at 619.220.0097 or at www.diversionary.org.

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Diversionary’s mission is to produce plays with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender themes that portray characters in their complexity and diversity both historically and contemporarily.

Financial support for Diversionary Theatre is provided in part by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture.