Double your impact
thru your company!
A DC-BASED COMPANY, and at our core:
DEVELOPING AND PRODUCING ORIGINAL WORKS OF MUSIC-THEATRE,
FOSTERING THE GROWTH OF ARTISTS,
AND ENGAGING WITH THE COMMUNITY IN PARTNERSHIP
Changing the Conversation Through the Arts
OUR Monthly NewsLetter - August 2023
What’s Ahead for Alliance for New Music-Theatre in our 2023-24 Season?
Alliance for New Music-Theatre steps up its activities this season in anticipation of celebrating in 2024 our 30-Year Anniversary of our humble beginnings as a workshop for local artists to advance their collaborative capacities in permutations and experimentations in the hyphenated art forms of music-theatre.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
News about our Board of Directors
We welcome two Board Members .
Returning Board Member Kathy Dwyer Southern rejoins to head up our Strategic Planning Committee. As a world-renowned leader of Museum-building and Not-for-Profit leadership, Kathy has demonstrated her savvy and her passion for the arts, turning well-crafted niche vision into significant financial support. We enthusiastically welcome her back into our family as one of our greatest champions.
For more than 40 years, Kathy has provided leadership in museums, cultural and philanthropic institutions and government in the mid-Atlantic region. She currently serves as faculty for the Museum Studies Graduate Program at GWU, where she teaches fundraising, and board governance.
Shona Bramble joins our Board with a striking record in the field of marketing and social media, a love of all the arts as she herself is an artist, and a vital commitment to building community. She especially loves our company’s work with young people and wants to help build our community programs and get more young people hooked on the arts.
Shona is a multi-faceted, multi-talented renaissance woman and a leader in many areas of her life. In addition to her professional capacity as a marketing specialist with major pharmaceutical companies, she is a certified life & career coach, public speaker and mentor, poet, photographer, budding thespian and the host of her own podcast - “Growing up Caribbean.” She is also a published author; her first book being Letters to Girls who Dream of Flying. Originally from the island of St Vincent, that special warm smile and lilt in her voice promises to be most persuasive in expanding our community reach.
Shona believes that her creative side helps to find her balance in the other areas of her life and allows her to connect with her true spirit. She has found her purpose in life which she describes as working and supporting others in “finding their voice”.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Live & About
We announce our upcoming 14th Season of our Live & About Series in support of all that’s exciting and entertaining in this liveliest of art forms in our nation’s capital. Other companies peddle their own seasons. We tout the strength and diversity of our whole producing community, making a unique subscription series and introducing participating subscribers to new works and often unfamiliar companies. We celebrate our DMV all!
Our carefully curated series always includes fare from larger institutions to the smallest hang-by-the-thread but emboldened-with-heart ensembles – and forms that sometimes defy neat siloing. We dare participants to hear, see and taste many kinds of works. This year will include a world premiere by Washington National Opera to an original musical revisiting the legacy of Eva Peron from the Helen Hayes 2023 winner and premier bi-lingual company of DC – GALA Hispanic Theatre.
We like to mix things up and always try to offer you a surprise. This year, our company’s own contribution will be an exclusive showcase of small works from some of the area’s most exciting artists, featuring assignments from our first annual hosting of our Composer-Librettist Studio in June.
To kick off this Live & About season, on September 13, we shall reassemble our composers, librettists , and singer-actors from the June Studio along with Music Director and Accompanist Sonja Thompson to present a one-evening-only curated selection of new works hosted by the University of D.C. (UDC) The event will be held in the Recital Hall of the Music Department on UDC’s Campus.
You will not want to miss the magic of Music-Theatre in the making!
For the full roster of our subscription events and how to sign up, go to our LIVE & About page
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ukrainian Plays Readings
Alliance for New Music-Theatre
Joins The Worldwide Ukrainian Play Readings Project
Featuring Music by Ken Burns’ collaborator Pianist Jacqueline Schwab
Directed by Susan Galbraith and Matty Griffiths
The Ukrainian Play Reading Project Lives On - To Support Our Ukrainian Friends!
We continue our ‘pop up” readings across the city to maximize our company’s ongoing commitment to let Ukrainian playwrights speak from their own experiences of the early days of this war. We have selected six of the playwrights commissioned by the Center for International Theatre Development (CITD) and let their short works, mostly monologues, be woven together as if, rather than penned in isolation, they become one seamless evening of shared story-telling where we join them in a “bunker.”
We held one reading at Dumbarton United Methodist Church in May and in July gave a special performance as part of DC Fringe Festival. Thanks to Julianne and staff for letting us be “Fringers,” and the place really did feel as if we were in a shared concrete bunker.
We have two readings in September.
Wednesday, September 20 at 7:30 p.m.
at The Lyceum in Old Town, Alexandria
&
Thursday, September 21 at 7 p.m.
At the Kay Spiritual Center on the Campus of American University
Preceded by an Art Exhibit of Photographs of rural Ukraine before the war by Czech Photographers
In Partnership with the Embassy of the Czech Republic.
We urge you to come to one or both of these exceptional and haunting events on your calendar.
To register for either reading and to DONATE, go to our Ukrainian Plays Reading webpage.
We will be joined once again by pianist Jacqueline Schwab and on accordion our composer and Alliance member Andrew Earl Simpson. Featured actors “Ginger” Bognar, Lise Bruneau, Michael Kevin Darnell, Matty Griffiths, and Karina Hilleard return as our inspired ensemble.
In this project, Alliance for New Music-Theatre joins in solidarity with Phil Arnoult’s Center for International Theatre Development (CITD), which commissioned a host of plays since Putin’s army invaded Ukraine for their Ukrainian Hope Initiative, and John Freedman, a translator and friend of so many of the country’s leading theatre artists. We applaud their efforts to support playwrights in war-torn Ukrain
Donations are strongly encouraged, and all proceeds will go through CITD to support Ukrainian theatre artists directly.
All readings will include a post-show conversation to raise awareness of the ongoing struggle more than a year into this war of Russian aggression and keep our Ukrainian friends and allies in our hearts.
To learn more about the project, including how you can support Ukrainian artists and to host an additional Ukrainian Play Readings event, go to Ukrainian Plays Reading (newmusictheatre.org)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our Coro returns for Another Year of Choir under Maestro Leo Herrera
We are now accepting new students Grades 4 and above, our youth chorus is expanding its numbers and singing opportunities.
Weekly afterschool classes are conducted mostly in Spanish from 5-6:30 p.m. on Mondays in the heart of Columbia Heights. Classes begin Monday, September 11.
In addition to recitals and special impromptu community sing-alongs, our High School Students and recent grads are forming a special ongoing workshop called “The Fairy Tale Project,” combining singing, improvisation, storytelling, writing and self-producing.
If you love to sing, want to make new friends, and share in telling stories that matter, come join us.
To register, go to our web page HERE, and registration materials are in Spanish and English.
If you need more information in Spanish, contact us at PR@newmusictheatre.org and we will get back to you.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
COMING UP
- Wednesday, Sept 20 @ 7:30 pm at The Lyceum in Alexandria, VA
- Thursday, September 21 at 7 pm at the Kay Spiritual Life Center at American U