Posts Tagged Pillsbury House Theatre

Park Square recognized in “20 who met the challenges of 2020!”

Park Square’s Engine is not in “Park” but “Drive!”

So wrote Chris Hewitt in a December 17, 2020 Star Tribune article recognizing artists and groups who met the challenges of 2020. The list included many notable artists and including a few that will be recognizable to Park Square audiences for work they’ve done on at the theatre: Shá Cage (The Liar), Signe Harriday (Cardboard Piano), and Zorongo Flamenco, who has performed on Park Square’s Boss Stage. Park Square was humbled to be included alongside the wonderful work of other theatre companies including Mixed Blood Theatre, Pillsbury House + Theatre, Barebones and Penumbra Theatre.

Here is what Chris Hewitt wrote about Park Square:

A silver laptop with a screen showing seven actors in a Zoom screen. Each holds a different weapon.

When theaters had to close in March, Park Square made a shift to the virtual realm at warp speed. Within a month, its acclaimed “The Diary of Anne Frank” was Zooming from the homes of its actors. And within four months, Jeffrey Hatcher’s “Riddle Puzzle Plot,” especially written for Zoom, was delighting viewers with its comic twists and turns, enacted by a top-notch cast that included Sun Mee Chomet and Shanan Custer.

Several radio-style dramas and a version of “A Christmas Carol” have continued to demonstrate that the St. Paul venue’s engine is not in “Park” but “Drive.”

View the full article at: 20 Ways Minnesotans met the Challenges of 2020

Introducing the first members of new Artistic Associates cohort!

Park Square Theatre announces the first members of its new cohort of Artistic Associates, who will help shape programming in 2022. Park Square first developed its Artistic Associates model in 2014-2018 as an intentional way to expand the range of its storytelling. An open call for additional associates will be announced this spring.

Artistic Associates confirmed to date are:

Ellen Fenster, a professional theater director and arts educator in Minneapolis. Ellen has directed at Pillsbury House Theatre, The Illusion Theater, Yellow Tree Theater, Theatre Mu, Artistry, Gremlin Theatre, U of MN/Guthrie Theater Actor Training Program and Park Square Theater. She is an associate artist at Pillsbury House Theatre where she ran the Chicago Avenue Project from 2008 to 2016.  She is also an artistic associate at Illusion Theatre where she helps connect the theater with young and emerging artists. She is currently the Artistic and Executive Director of Twin Cities Theater Camp, a summer theater intensive for children.

Rick Shiomi, a founding member and the Co-Artistic Director of Full Circle Theater. He has been a playwright, director and artistic director in the Asian American theater movement since the 1980s and was a co-founder of Theater Mu and Artistic Director for twenty years. His twenty plays include Mask Dance, Rosie’s Café and Yellow Fever. His directing credits include: Flower Drum Song (David Hwang version), Into The Woods, The New Mikado and Caught by Christopher Chen. He has received The McKnight Distinguished Artist Award, The Ivey Award for Lifetime Achievement and the Sally Ordway Irvine Award for Vision.

Kim Vasquez, a Saint Paul native specializing in the development of new plays and musicals. She is currently a producer on Be More Chill (Chicago, London, Broadway and Off-Broadway) and Austen’s Pride. Kim is a proud Founding Producer for the currently defunct New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF), which survived for a glorious 16 years. Her most recent directing credit was for the New York Times bestselling Author and Poet, Rupi Kaur, in a live theatrical production of The Sun And Her Flowers at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center.

“Park Square’s Artistic Associates are working professionals who direct, write, teach, produce and perform,” says Pease. “They come to us with rich careers, distinct histories, personal networks and perspectives that will keep expanding Park Square’s circle of artistic relationships. We live among many different histories, cultures and people; the community is always enriched whenever new voices are added to the conversation.”

Park Square’s NINA SIMONE: FOUR WOMEN takes to Stages Around the Country

Local star Regina Williams heads to Atlanta for a new production.

Nina Simone: Four Women at Park Square Theatre, 2017

Regina Marie Williams in NINA SIMONE: FOUR WOMEN at Park Square Theatre. PC: Petronella J. Ytsma.

MEDIA CONTACT

Connie Shaver, shaver@parksquaretheatre.org

Following the success of its world premiere commission at Park Square Theatre in 2016, NINA SIMONE: FOUR WOMEN went on to a second production at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., one of the nation’s top regional theatres last year. This month, Regina Marie Williams, who originated the title role at Park Square, and in fact inspired the commission of the play, heads to Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre in Atlanta to star in a new production that will play September 25-Oct 21, 2018. While True Colors is a natural home for this dynamic play, which broke box office records for Park Square’s Andy Boss Stage, there is also a strong link between the theatres through Jamil Jude, who was Park Square’s Artistic Programming Associate during both Saint Paul runs of the play, and he is now Kenny Leon’s Associate Artistic Director.

Williams shared her excitement for the role, “Sometimes Nina’s voice would be warm and soothing, other times angry and harsh, and then light and sweet. Her voice, her music, made me feel.” She added, “Over the years I have performed in musicals and plays, comedy and tragedy, Shakespeare and Wilson. The variety has been a gift and will be an asset when working to access the brilliance, the vulnerability, the self-righteousness, the humanity, and the Goddess in Nina.”

Playwright Christina Ham

The play is gaining speed around the country with upcoming productions at Northlight Theatre outside of Chicago, Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte, NC and The Black Rep in St. Louis. Its writer, local artist Christina Ham, is enjoying a banner year. She is a Core Writer at the Playwrights’ Center, and the Mellon Foundation Playwright in Residence at Pillsbury House Theatre and a writer on the Netflix horror series The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.

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