Playbill
Among the slew of offerings are: a world premiere from Taylor Mac at The Flea, the U.S. debut of Alice Birch’s critically acclaimed Anatomy of a Suicide, a chamber opera version of Lynn Nottage's Intimate Apparel, a Ruth Negga-led Hamlet at St. Ann's Warehouse, Celine Song’s Endlings, a play about elderly "sea women" in Korea complete with onstage dunk tanks, and a return of Young Jean lee’s concert-play We’re Gonna Die.
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New York's Cherry Lane Theatre has partnered with Vermont's JAG Productions to present the World Premiere of Nathan Yungerberg's Esai's Table, directed by Obie Award Winner Stevie Walker-Webb (Jordan Cooper's Ain't No Mo' at the Public) which will begin performances on March 19 before its opening night on April 1 running through April 25, 2020 at Cherry Lane Theatre
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New York's Cherry Lane Theatre has partnered with Vermont's JAG Productions to present the World Premiere of Nathan Yungerberg's Esai's Table, directed by Obie Award Winner Stevie Walker-Webb (Jordan Cooper's Ain't No Mo' at the Public) which will begin performances on March 19 before its opening night on March 31 running through April 25, 2020 at Cherry Lane Theatre (38 Commerce Street).
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Lately in my work here at The Lark, a lot of my projects have been straddling the “pre-COVID” and “present-COVID” situations. Everything I do seems to be prefaced with “Well, before all this happened I had planned to do ‘X’ but now--” So here it is again: Well, before all this happened, I had planned to shoot an interview between Nathan Yungerberg, whose play Esai’s Table was to make its New York debut at the Cherry Lane Theatre, and Jarvis Green, whose company JAG Productions was co-producing. The play was developed through The Lark's Roundtable program, and we couldn't have been more eager to see it.
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Play Bill
Nathan Yungerberg is a storyteller and playwright. He was one of seven black playwrights commissioned by The New Black Fest for HANDS UP: 7 Playwrights, 7 Testaments. He was a semifinalist for the 2016 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, winner of the Ken Davenport 10-Minute Play Festival, finalist for the 11th Annual Inspirator Festival, and a semifinalist for the Blue Ink Playwriting Award. Nathan Yungerberg is a storyteller and playwright.
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Atlanta's Alliance Theatre has announced the productions of the Alliance's 52nd season. This season, the Alliance is reimagining how to gather, where to take the stage, and how a story comes to life. From drive-in movie style productions to socially-distanced shows on the Coca-Cola Stage and even a brand-new streaming platform, the Alliance is making meaningful, fun, and creative changes to serve its audiences.
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FAMU
In response to the 2014 fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri by a white police officer, The New Black Fest commissioned seven emerging Black playwrights to explore the institutional profiling and stereotyping of African Americans. The protest drama that materialized consist of a series of monologues that recount the experience of real and imagined people who seek to reclaim voices silenced and violated by a system that historically sees BLACK as sub-human. In light of the national movement for justice and equity, Hands up is not just HISTORY— it’s TRUTH…it’s NOW!
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Playbill
The National Black Theatre’s SOUL Series LAB (Liberating Artistic Bravery) has selected five artists for its 2020–2021 residency program. This year’s participants are playwrights Fedna Jacque, Kristen Adele Calhoun, and Nathan Yungerberg, director Josiah Davis, and producer Lauren Marissa Smith. The program takes place over an 18-month span (10 months for the producing residency), as residents receive a commission fee, professional development opportunities, administrative and dramaturgical support, and more
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This week, The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture (18 Bleecker Street, at the corner of Elizabeth Street, NYC) launches its third annual Sheen Center Theater Festival. Taking place June 20 - 23, participating Broadway and Award-winning stage veterans include Tony Award nominee Brenda Braxton (Smokey Joe's Café, Chicago), Tina Fabrique (Ragtime, Noise/Funk),Drama Desk Award winner Ken Jennings (Urinetown, Side Show, Sweeney Todd),Matthew Sims, Jr.
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Vermont's JAG Productions has partnered with New York's Cherry Lane Theatre to present the World Premiere of Nathan Yungerberg's Esai's Table, directed by Obie Award Winner Stevie Walker-Webb (Jordan Cooper's Ain't No Mo' at the Public).
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Rutland Herald
A few years ago, director Stevie Walker-Webb was in the audience during a talkback at the end of a new play he’d just seen. It was called “Esai’s Table,” and its effect on the audience was audibly evident by the pitch of conversation. But Walker-Webb felt that playwright Nathan Yungerberg’s work had been misunderstood.
“There were some people pontificating about what the play was about,” Walker-Webb said by phone Monday. “I had this deep conviction in my gut that we as an audience had misunderstood what it was that Nathan was attempting with the play…
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Literary North
Those of you who attended JAGFest 2.0 back in February 2018 might remember a riveting staged reading of Nathan Yungerberg’s play Esai’s Table, where destiny meets eternity for three young black men atop an ancient magical table in a mythic tale of black lives, friendship, family, and love. Back then, we volunteered at JAGFest and were able to do a brief interview with this remarkable, thoughtful playwright.
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Burlington Free Press
WHITE RIVER JUNCTION – The founder of JAG Productions describes the theater company’s newest play, "Esai's Table," as a story of three young men on a mystical journey. They are guided by another mysterious man who gives the play its title.
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Times Argus
WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — “Esai’s Table” is a beautiful and powerful cautionary tale reflecting the tragedy of the young African-American male experience in today’s America. Nathan Yungerberg’s surreal drama is receiving its world premiere production by JAG Productions at the Briggs Opera House Oct. 10-27, and Thursday’s performance was at times entertaining, at times breathtaking, at times disturbing, always riveting and, finally, deeply moving
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Theatre artists from around the city and across the globe come together to uplift stories of climate heroes and climate warriors. Join us at the historic and cultural landmark Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute to celebrate local and global climate action through performance! The afternoon will feature short plays in English and Spanish from Climate Change Theatre Action and conversation with local climate justice organizers.
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JAG Productions announces the second annual JAGfest, a weekend performing arts festival of new works all celebrating the talents of African-American Playwrights and performing artists.
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Harlem9 has now published their 2nd Anthology, "48Hours in...™ Harlem Vol. 2", an inspired collection of 12 short plays, written by established and emerging playwrights and commissioned by the collaborative for their annual "48Hours in... ™Harlem" play festival.
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Black Praxis
WHITE RIVER JUNCTION, VT
FEBRUARY 9TH, 2018
Above our stage in Briggs Opera House, there is an exposed lattice of dark metal bars, spotted with spotlights. Those lights collect into a locus onstage, where the actors will soon stand and sit asynchronously. Five chairs are in a row, non-identical but made of the same deep-dark wood with goldish undercarriages. Note-stands from which actors will take direction are adjacent but unaligned, tailored to each person.
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La Crosse Tribune
Nathan Yungerberg, a nationally recognized playwright who grew up in La Crosse, feels as though the late Sister Thea Bowman is speaking to him as he contemplates writing a play about her life.
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Broadway World
FRIGID New York @ Horse Trade will present the January installment of New York Madness on Sunday, January 29 at 8pm as part of The Fire This Time Festival with Featured Guest Playwright Julienne L.
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As part of our ongoing efforts to advocate for the brilliant and diverse voices of immigrant artists, IASNY will be having its annual showcase NEW YORK WITH AN ACCENT at the storied Nuyorican Poets Café in the East Village. Featuring performances by outstanding IASNY members and NYC artists committed to multicultural dialogue, this event embodies the vision of IASNY as a forum for the exchange of ideas, the fostering of an immigrant voice, and a showcase of the breadth of talents in New York City's (immigrant) community. NEW YORK WITH AN ACCENT will be held Wednesday, January 18, 6-9 pm at Nuyorican Poets Café, located at 236 East 3rd Street between Avenues B and C.
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T. Schreiber Theatre proudly presents "The Fourth Annual Schreiber Shorts: An Evening of One Acts" January 25th through February 11th at the Gloria Maddox Theatre. The 10-minute play series features works by 10 playwrights, selected from nearly 1000 submissions in a nationwide playwriting competition. Curated and produced by Halle Morse and Megan Grace, "The Schreiber Shorts" marks the second production of T. Schreiber's 2016-17 season. Performances are Wednesdays-Sundays at 8:00pm at the Gloria Maddox Theatre (151 West 26th Street, 7th Floor). Tickets $15: tschreiber.org/shorts
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Nathan Yungerberg's ESAI'S TABLE, will be presented at Cherry Lane (38 Commerce St.) from March 22 - April 1, 2017, it has been announced by Seri Lawrence and Janio Marrero, MENTOR PROJECT's Producing Artistic Directors. Angelina Fiordellisi is Cherry Lane's Founding Artistic Director.
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Nathan Yungerberg's ESAI'S TABLE, will be presented at Cherry Lane (38 Commerce St.) from March 22 - April 1, 2017, it has been announced by Seri Lawrence and Janio Marrero, MENTOR PROJECT's Producing Artistic Directors. Angelina Fiordellisi is Cherry Lane's Founding Artistic Director.
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Amsterdam News
For the year 2017, you will not see a better play than “Esai’s Table,” which will end its astonishing two-week engagement at the Cherry Lane Theatre (38 Commerce St. in the West Village), Saturday, April 1, with two shows that night, at 5 p.m. and 9 p.m.
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New York Times
Esai's Table was mentioned in a New York Times article about the examination of gun violence onstage. The Pen and the Trigger Finger: Examining Gun Violence Onstage. Live performance is a most direct way to make the fear and heartbreak palpable. nytimes.com
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Amazon
In light of the police shootings of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and John Crawford III in Beavercreek, Ohio, among others, The New Black Fest commissioned seven emerging black playwrights to write 10-15 minute monologues that explore their feelings about the well-being of black in a culture of institutional profiling.
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Broadway World
Crowded Fire Theater (CFT) announces the featured playwrights and plays for the 2017 Matchbox Readings Series, an annual program presenting four public staged readings of plays in development. Playwrights include Idris Goodwin, Lisa Marie Rollins, Jonathan Spector, and Nathan Yungerberg. The readings will be presented November 15-18 at Brava! for Women in the Arts.
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The Registry Bay Area
Nathan Yungerberg is a Brooklyn-based storyteller whose work has been developed or featured by The Cherry Lane Theatre (2017 Mentor Project with Stephen Adly Guirgis), Roundabout Theatre Company, The Playwrights’ Center, American Blues Theater, JAG Productions, Crowded Fire Theater, Lorraine Hansberry Theater, The Lark, The Fire This Time Festival, 48 Hours in Harlem, Climate Change Theatre Action, The National Black Theatre, The Sheen Center, The August Wilson Red Door Project, The Bushwick Starr, and BBC Radio Afternoon Drama. He is one of seven black playwrights commissioned by The New Black Fest for HANDS UP: 7 Playwrights, 7 Testaments, which was published by Samuel French. Nathan is also the founder and producing artistic director of www.mercurii.nyc. Awards and honors: The 2016 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference (Semifinalist), Ken Davenport 10-Minute Play Festival (Winner), 2019 Djerassi Resident Artist.
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Black Theatre Matters
Nathan Yungerberg’s new play ESAI’S TABLE announces the cast for it’s upcoming reading as part of Cherry Lane Theatre’s Mentor Project 2017. This is the second production of the award-winning initiative, now in its 19th season.
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Broadway World
Cherry Lane (Angelina Fiordellisi, Founding Artistic Director; Seri Lawrence, Janio Marrero, Producing Artistic Directors) is proud to announce this year's playwrights and mentors for their Obie Award-winning Mentor Project, culminating with fully-staged productions presented at Cherry Lane (38 Commerce St. in NYC) from February 22 to May 6, 2017.
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American Theatre
Despite the recent national headlines about race and violence, love seems to be a recurring theme in this year’s festival offerings. Yungerberg’s Pousada, Azul, directed by Russell G. Jones, is billed as a story of rebirth, transformation and love among African-American expats in Salvador, Brazil.
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In preparation for Hands Up: 6 Playwrights, 6 Testaments, which is being presented by ArtsCenter Stage and Common Ground Theatre with the support of MOJOAA Perfoming Arts Company and in conjunction with the Ladies of the Triangle Theatre (LoTT), I had a chance to speak with playwright Nathan Yungerberg, author of “Holes in My Identity”, about his writing process, inspiration for the play, and the power of theatre to serve as a tool for social change. Please enjoy this wonderful interview!
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Brooklyn Paper
Time is on his side, yes it is. Each month, the organizers of a project called Brooklyn Generator choose one young playwright and give them the task of writing a complete, stage-ready play in one month. But since this month’s dramatist was otherwise engaged with writing projects, he has taken far fewer than his allotted 30 days to write his play, “Esai’s Table.” It turns out that was all he needed.
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American Theatre
Hands Up: 6 Playwrights: 6 Testaments by Nathan James, Nathan Yungerberg, Idris Goodwin, Glenn Gordon, Dennis Allen II, Eric Holmes
Why these plays now? Kirsten Greenidge, playwright, assistant professor of theatre/playwriting, School of Theatre, Boston University: “Commissioned by the New Black Fest after the shooting of Michael Brown, Hands Up consists of six monologues written by six emerging black male playwrights, exploring their feelings about the well-being of black men in a culture of institutional profiling. We talk a lot about diversity and silenced voices in the theatre, and one set of voices that often gets silenced and overlooked is that of black male playwrights.
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Cultural Capitol
The Fire This Time festival, now in its fourth year, features ten minute plays by young and emerging playwrights of color. (Check out my review for the 2010 season.) The founding producer Kelley Nicole Girod’s mission with The Fire This Time (the name of the festival is a play on the title of James Baldwin’s book The Fire Next Time) is to broaden the scope of the Theatre of Color to include not only African-Americans and the conventions of Baldwin’s generation of writers, but to “any play written by a black playwright . . . even if it is a play about two white people in love.”
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HowlRound
Nathan Yungerberg’s Hole In My Identity
I was adopted by white parents and raised in an all white, middle-class community, and outside of my never-ending identity crisis, my early life experience as a black American was extremely safe, extremely protected, and extremely dismissed. When I was as a kid, maybe eight, which was around the time that my racial differences were really starting to fuck with my head, I would try so hard to articulate my feelings to my mom and dad, but they just didn't have the experience or understanding to support me.
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BlackBoard Playwrights Conversations
The inspiration for this play was an African American expat I met my first trip to Salvador Brazil in 2002. She had been living there for around 15 years, long before mass tourism began. She considered herself a gate-keeper of sorts and felt it was her mission to protect the cultural purity of Salvador. She made a lot of judgmental statements about tourists and their reasons for traveling to Bahia. It made me reflect on my own journey there and I was curious and intrigued about what drew her to Salvador and what she was seeking and did she find it?
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Theaterspeak
am sitting here in a coffee shop in Bed Stuy, facing a huge picture window that overlooks the street. I come here almost every day to write for three hours. By the time I am ready to leave, many of the other tables next to me are filled…but most people choose to sit with their backs to the windows. I guess I can see how it could be distracting, watching the morning life of Bed Stuy unfold along Lewis Ave, but I find it a welcoming reprieve when I come up for air after an intense deep sea dive in the made up world of my plays.
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Nubian Drifter
And speaking of sitting and writing about the neighborhood. You have a play, “Pousada Azul,” that takes place in Salvador, which I’m assuming was inspired by time spent in Brazil. How has travel permeated your writing?
NY: I think it’s really made a huge impact. That play in particular is kind of like my ode to Bahia— because I love that place so much. [Pousada Azul] is not even really about my story [in Bahia], other than me extracting all of the memories I had.
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AMAZON
My ten minute play Brush Strokes has been published in a groundbreaking anthology of inspired ten-minute plays by 12 new and emerging black playwrights, presented by the OBIE Award Winning Harlem9, Inc., presenters of the annual "48Hours in Harlem" festival.
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Literary North
In anticipation of JAGFest 2.0, we're delighted to publish interviews with some of the participating playwrights. This week's interview is with Nathan Yungerberg, whose play, Esai's Table, will be presented on Friday, February 9, at 7:30 pm at the Briggs Opera House in White River Junction, Vermont.
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DJERASSI
Nathan Yungerberg’s (’19) work has been developed or featured by The Cherry Lane Theatre, Roundabout, LAByrinth, The Playwrights’ Center, JAG Productions, Crowded Fire Theater, The Lorraine Hansberry Theater, The Lark, The Fire This Time Festival, 48 Hours in Harlem, National Black Theatre, The Sheen Center, American Blues Theater, The Bushwick Starr, Climate Change Theatre in Action, The August Wilson Red Door Project, BBC Radio Afternoon Drama, and The Brooklyn Generator. He is one of seven black playwrights commissioned by The New Black Fest for HANDS UP: 7 Playwrights, 7 Testaments, which was published by Samuel French. Honors: The 2016 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference (Semifinalist), Ken Davenport 10-Minute Play Festival (Winner), 2019 Djerassi Resident Artist
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New York Times
Faith is more prominent in Nathan Yungerberg’s “Thea,” a comic-surrealist meditation that glides on wings of gospel music. Performed at the festival by an A-plus cast (Brenda Braxton, Tina Fabrique, Monroe Kent III, Zonya Love, Matthew Sims Jr. and Mirirai Sithole), it straddles earthly existence and the afterlife in the waning days of Sister Thea Bowman, a Catholic nun and historical figure whose grandparents were enslaved. As she lies ravaged by cancer, a gaggle of ancestors awaits her arrival.
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