THE NEW NORMAL by Donnetta Lavinia Grays directed by Isaac Byrne October 13th-23rd, 2010 (Limited Two Week Run) Starring Nell Mooney*, Michael Mason, Andrea Caban* and Emily Rossell*
Dates and Times: October 13th-15th 8pm (Previews) October 16th 8pm (Opening Night) October 17th 2pm and 8pm *October 18th 8pm October 20th-23rd 8pm
Tickets $18 Available online at Brown Paper Tickets (*Special Monday Night Performance)
About the Show: Meet Anna, a 30 something funny and frank southern warrior living and thriving in Seattle with her rocker husband and 3 year old kid. As a mom, a wife and a survivor she's handled more than her fair share of drama, but nothing could have prepared her for this. The New Normal: Sometimes survivors need a survival guide.
--- The New Normal is a groundbreaking original full-length play developed by Coyote REP Theatre Company and written by Donnetta Lavinia Grays. Inspired by the life of 2009 Puget Sound Survivor of the Year Anna Warren Schumacher, it is a hard hitting play that tells the unique story of how a young woman finds humor and grace in the unexpected challenges of survival.
Starring Nell Mooney*, Michael Mason, Andrea Caban* and Emily Rossell*
*Actors Appear Courtesy of Actors Equity Association
THIS PROGRAM IS SUPPORTED, IN PART, BY PUBLIC FUNDS FROM THE NEW YORK CITY DEPARTMENT OF CULTURAL AFFAIRS IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE CITY COUNCIL.
Sound SFX system provided by a generous donation from Stage Research
Artistic Director and Playwright Donnetta Lavinia Grays sat down with CBS 2 News Reporter Cindy Hsu to talk about Coyote REP's upcoming production of THE NEW NORMAL which premieres October 13th-23rd at Wings Theatre.
Ms. Hsu also spoke to the woman who served as inspiration for the piece, 2009 Puget Sound Susan G. Komen Survivor of the Year Anna Warren Schumaucher, via satellite from Seattle. Please tune in to meet Anna and hear tell her story in her own words.
The segment traces the friendship between the playwright and her muse and details what moved CR to develop and produce this groundbreaking new work about a young woman's unique story of survival.
Stay tuned this blog and our website for more information about THE NEW NORMAL!!
Things are in full swing for our 4th Annual Rising Moon Gala and Fundraiser. We have some exceptional auction items and stellar Broadway entertainment lined up and we want you to join the party!!
Join us Wednesday Sept 22nd 7pm at The Players Club for food fun and a fantastic evening to help support our 2011-2012 Season!!
Go to www.coyoterep.org for more information and to get your tickets today!
The New Normal
By Donnetta Lavinia Grays
Directed by Isaac Byrne
Monday May 24th 7pm
ART/NY Bruce Mitchell Room
520 8th Avenue, 3rd Floor
(between 36th and 37th Streets)
New York, NY 10018
($5 suggested donation)
So, back in 2007 I am on the receiving end of a mass email from my mentor Joy Vandervort-Cobb at The College of Charleston in South Carolina. She writes that a former student and friend, Anna Dorcas Warren (Schumacher), is participating in the Susan G. Komen 3 Day Walk for the Cure and that we should support her by sending in what we can. I see the words diagnosed in 2006, battle, fight, baby…and I don’t quite get what I am reading. I mean, Anna is around my age. So, even with those specific words on my computer screen I think to myself, “I wonder who Anna’s walking for?” Seriously, I could not make the connection from “diagnosed with breast cancer” to Anna herself.I think, instead “Dude, Anna got married?? Anna’s got a baby?? Hot dog! I really need to get in touch with that chick!" Then my mind wonders to a couple plays we did together while we were in school and…yeah, I think that was that.
For one thing, this says quite a bit about my attention to detail, but moreover, in my mind Breast Cancer had always been this sort of disease of age. I mean, I knew my neurosis would have me spending the better part of my 40th birthday cooped up in some doctor’s office demanding another look-see at my mammogram results. There were commercials, morning talk shows and Oprah at 4pm all telling me that there was a threshold. I knew my facts. But, I also knew that Anna was maybe a couple seconds older than me (she was 32) so, there was no room whatsoever for her to fit into that medical community and media driven equation. No room. So, I couldn’t really see the words in that email as the truth. I guess I was shocked and shockingly ignorant.
And then there was Facebook.
I had lost touch with Anna for a while. And then, through the magic of Facebook in early 2008 we found each other again. We chatted. We exchanged inappropriate jokes as is our nature. We laughed “LOL” style. And then I clicked on a link attached to her profile page which led me to her personal blog.
Man…there were pictures. I saw my friend’s beautiful bald head. I saw my friend’s beautiful baby boy, Silas. Her husband, Kevin. I saw her being a Southern girl dealing with Seattle. Yeah. But, I also saw her…drinkin’, partyin’ and cussin’ with other beautiful bald ladies, putting ketchup on anything that moved, cracking jokes and being the firecracker I remembered from school. I saw Anna living. I saw Anna’s babyface making this incredible turn into adulthood and around that corner comes this disease to meet her full on. And I broke. I did. I broke out into tears. I broke into laughter reading about her son’s potty training stories and I broke open with so much love for her and a clearer understanding of why her diagnosis didn’t really sink in for me. The public dialogue about women under 40 being diagnosed with and treated for breast cancer had not reached me and so, it wasn't a part of a reality that I could digest in reference to her.
That dialogue hasn’t reached a lot of people. And that’s what both Anna and I want to change with this play.
The New Normal is based on Anna’s blog which she maintains to this day. It details not only her struggle with breast cancer, but also the joys and pains of being a mother, wife, daughter and a member of a community of young women facing there lives as survivors.
The characters’ development in the play (of Anna and of those in her family and community)have been dramatized and fictionalized, of course, in order to ground the argument that young survivors are invisible to a certain extent and that this specific illness affects relationships and families not only the women who are diagnosed. Their portrayals are amplified to reveal truths.
The New Normal received an initial workshop with Coyote REP in June 2009. Invited guest artists during that workshop were a collection of individuals who either knew Anna while she was a theater student at The College of Charleston, Coyote REP members or artists who where familiar with creating documentary theater: Emily Ackerman (The Civilians), Blaire Brooks, Safiya Fredericks, Chad Goodridge, Carla Musgrove, Laura Rikard and Jeanne LaSala. These artists were invaluable in helping to sculpt a time frame and context for over 300 pages of blog entries.
Ultimately, I want to illuminate a major point that I learned
from reading Anna’s blog and knowing her as a human
being. The humor in her blog is directed at the illness the majority of the time. This is not by coincidence. I think she says through her humor, “look, it’s the people in my life who are sacred NOT this disease. I have it, but I get to define it. Not the other way around.”I hope that this sentiment is reflected in the work Coyote REP has started to create.
Donnetta Lavinia Grays is the Artistic Director and is a Founding Member of Coyote REP Theatre Company. She worked with Director Bill Rauch as an AltvaterFellowship Recipient at Cornerstone Theatre Company and served as Stage Manager and assistant to Fredrick Bailey on the original production of Beth Henley’s Sister’s of the Winter Madrigal at Moving Arts Theatre in Los Angeles. Donnetta also served as an assistant to Woodie King Jr. on various projects for New Federal Theater including BLACKBEAUTIES: Celebrating 100 Years of African-AmericanWomen on Broadway. Donnetta has written the cowboy is dying, her first solo play effort, which she performed with Coyote REP in 2008. Her play THE B FACTOR received a reading at Henry Street Settlement’s AbronsArtsCenter as a part of the 2002 Women of Color Arts and Film Festival and a reading with TOSOS Theater Company in 2009 as part of their Robert Chesley / Jane Chambers Playwrights Project. She has also presented her written work at Pride Goes East and with Kathleen Warnock’s Drunken Careening Writers series at KGB Bar. Other works-in-progress include ABSENCE OF FAITH, and THE REVIEW (working title). Poetry featured on shortpoem.org.
Acting Credits; with Coyote REP, the cowboy is dying, DECPETION, PATRIOT ACT (AN OCCURRENCE AT YANKEE STADIUM Broadway: IN THE NEXT ROOM OR THE VIBRATOR PLAY (Cover), WELL (Cover). Off- Broadway: SHIPWRECKED! AN ENTERTAINMENT (Primary Stages) Regional Theatre: NO CHILD…(2 Connecticut Critics Circle Awards) JOE TURNER’S COME AND GONE (Baltimore’s Center Stage) WELL (Huntington Theatre, Arena Stage), A RAISIN IN THE SUN, THE ROYAL FAMILY (Oregon Shakespeare Festival). TWELFTH NIGHT (Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Co.), MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING (Charleston Shakespeare Co.),Television: RUBICON, MERCY and LAW & ORDER: SVU (all recurring), THE SOPRANOS , LAW & ORDER and LAW & ORDER: CI. Film: THE WRESTLER (Darren Aronosfsky dir.) SHOOK and the Emmy Award winning documentary WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? Proud member of AEA, SAG and AFTRA. Also a member of TOSOS Theater Company. BA: College of Charleston. MFA: University of California, Irvine. www.donnettagrays.com
The New Play Development Program is our commitment to nurturing the original work of our company's playwrights. This intensive, ten-month program provides a structured series of workshops culminating in our May Works-in-Development Series, a public presentation of readings.
Coyote REP Presents its inaugural Works-in-Development Series May 9th-May 24th, 2010ART/NY and The Barrow Group Theater
You are invited to support the works of Coyote REP's up and coming playwrights by attending this month long festival of new work!We have always been a company that supports work from within our ranks. But in 2009 we began specifically encouraging our members to write plays for development by the company. The goal is to learn the process of developing a piece of theatre as a company from its beginning ideas all the way through to a full Coyote REP sound or stage production.
We ask that you come out and witness the seeds of this process, offer feedback and lend your own support to these promising writers!
*Talkbacks to follow each reading.
Rated 'M' for Mature By Greg Ayers Directed by Paul Dobie
Sunday May 9th 7pm ART/NY Bruce Mitchell Room 520 8th Avenue, 3rd Floor (between 36th and 37th Streets) New York, NY 10018 ($5 suggested donation)
Eric, a lonely sixteen year old, is addicted to living vicariously through his avatar in an expansive online video game. But when he starts to neglect his real life, his computer is taken away. How far will he and his friends go to get it back? --- Questions My Mother Can't Answer By writer/performer Andrea Caban
Monday May 10th 7pm ART/NY Bruce Mitchell Room 520 8th Avenue, 3rd Floor (between 36th and 37th Streets) New York, NY 10018 ($5 suggested donation)
Questions My Mother Can't Answer by writer/performer Andrea Caban, is a documentary-based collage of the true mythologies of women from her mother's generation and her search to fill in the blanks of her own mythology. Andrea navigates through the stories of 8 women as they reflect on growing up in the 50's, getting pregnant in the 60's, raising children, having sex, finding happiness & becoming characters in a play.
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What She Means By Rebecca Tourino Directed by Michael Lluberes
Sunday, May 16th 7pm The Barrow Group Theater The Garret Studio 312 West 36th Street (at 8th Avenue) New York, NY 10018 ($5 suggested donation)
A writer in the very act of writing a play, five children trying to take over the story, and the mysterious old woman they all love. Battles of will.Games of tag.Existential crises.Inexplicable cabbages. What She Means is about memory, childhood, grief, and the bewildering process of creation.
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a rhyme for the UNDERground by chandrathomas Directed by Tia Hodge
Monday May 17th 7pm The Barrow Group Theater The Studio Theater 312 West 36th Street (at 8th Avenue) New York, NY10018 ($5 suggested donation)
“a rhyme for the UNDERground," in a sentence, is not your mother’s solo show! This new work follows chandra, a social researcher, as she interviews people from all over the world as they travel on the New York City subway. While she thinks her interviewees are there to help her with her book, she quickly discovers they are really there to save her from the precipice. Actor/writer chandrathomas journeys through 17¼ characters in her humorous and moving play infused with poetry, songs, spoken word and dance. ---
The New Normal By Donnetta Lavinia Grays Directed by Isaac Byrne
Monday May 24th 7pm ART/NY Bruce Mitchell Room 520 8th Avenue, 3rd Floor (between 36th and 37th Streets) New York, NY 10018 ($5 suggested donation)
Anna is a spontaneous and fun-loving 32-year-old; a hot mama with a new baby, new family and a new life in Seattle. Just as her new life is kicking into high gear she is handed a diagnosis of Breast Cancer that changes her plans. This is a story of survival. This is a story of humor. This is the story of a family fighting with this disease…and it’s also the story of survivors feeling each others breasts at cocktail parties…This is The New Normal. ---
You are invited to attend the talkbacks following each reading.
To reserve seats, email info@coyoterep.org with the following information: Subject: Reservations Name: Email: Phone Number: Desired Reading(s): Desired Number of Tickets: ($5 Suggested Donation at the Door)
*Seating is limited so make your reservation early!
The New Play Development Program is our commitment to nurturing the original work of our company's playwrights. This intensive, ten-month program provides a structured series of workshops culminating in our May Works-in-Development Series, a public presentation of readings.
tarring Nell Mooney*, Michael Mason, Andrea Caban* and Emily Rossell*
THIS PROGRAM IS SUPPORTED, IN PART, BY PUBLIC FUNDS FROM THE NEW YORK CITY DEPARTMENT OF CULTURAL AFFAIRS IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE CITY COUNCIL.
Sound SFX system provided by a generous donation from Stage Research
