Home » fest 13

fest 13

Blog

NAMT News

Festival Show Update: The Boy Who Danced on Air

This month we chatted with Charlie Sohne and Tim Rosser, the writers of 2013 Festival Show The Boy Who Danced on Air. The show is about to have its New York premiere with Abingdon Theatre Company.
Winner of The 2016 San Diego Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Original Score, The Boy Who Danced on Air is a modern-day love story set in rural Afghanistan. Paiman and Feda have spent their young lives as dancers in the world of bacha bazi, where wealthy men take in boys from poor families, train them to dance at parties, and often abuse them. The two boys’ chance meeting changes the course of their lives and sets them on a journey to find their independence in this musical fable about love, tradition, morality and the strength of the human spirit.
The last time we checked in with you both, you were preparing for your world premiere at Diversionary Theatre in San Diego—what was the response to the show in California?
Charlie: It went well!  It’s a terrifying thing to put something you’ve been working on for years in front of a paying audience for the first time—particularly for us, given the sensitivity of the subject matter in our show.  So it was really wonderful that both audiences and critics responded well to it and seemed to get what we were doing.  And the show received the San Diego Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Original Score, which was a wonderful bonus.

Read More

Blog

NAMT News

Festival Show Update: Come From Away

In honor of Come From Away‘s upcoming Broadway opening, this month we checked in with Irene Sankoff and David Hein to see how the piece has changed since we last spoke to them after the 2013 Festival, and what’s different about preparing for a Broadway opening. We also took a look back at the show’s beginnings in a interview with Michael Rubinoff.
The last time we checked in with you both, you were preparing for Come From Away’s world premiere at La Jolla Playhouse. The show has had a whirlwind journey since then! What have been some of your favorite moments along the way?
David: La Jolla was incredible! It was our first production, our first reviews, and our first time working with most of our team.
Irene: We went from being this unknown show to people lining up for 3 hours in the hopes of getting tickets. I was walking around in a daze. Then at Seattle Rep, the theatre was much bigger and I remember the look on the cast’s faces after the blackout when the audience responded. They said after it was like being hit by a wall of sound.
David: The phone lines crashed there because of people looking for tickets. And they flew the Mayor of Gander, Newfoundland out—they declared it “Gander Day” and gave him a key to the city. Seattle was very good to us.
Irene: Ford’s Theatre in DC was surreal because there were so many politicians in the audience, from both sides of the aisle.  And they reacted the same way to this story of kindness—with laughter and tears. We also had a lot of repeat visitors—some who were survivors of the attack in D.C. and some who had lost loved ones.

Read More

Festival Shows in the News

NAMT News

9/11-Themed ‘Come From Away’ Takes a Seattle Layover

American Theatre recently checked in with the writers and director of Fest ’13 show Come From Away, currently in its second production at Seattle Repertory Theatre. James Hebert writes:

By the time Come From Away debuted in La Jolla in June, it was a streamlined, propulsive show that did admirable justice to the full saga in not much more than that same 90-minute time span. The musical’s cast gets a major workout, playing the visitors as well as the townspeople and numerous other characters […]
The show also moves briskly to Kelly Devine’s quick-shifting choreography, driven by one of the most distinctive musical theatre scores in memory. Sankoff and Hein’s score draws deeply from the music of Newfoundland, for a blend of Celtic, folk, and country-rock, played on such non-standard pit instruments as bodhrans, Irish bouzoukis, and uilleann pipes.
It’s a sound that feels very rooted in the place it sprang from, which adds to the sense of a strange new world these displaced passengers are encountering as they venture into the town and interact with the locals. Director Christopher Ashley, also the Playhouse’s artistic director, said that enhancing the feeling of both wonder and apprehension has been a chief goal as Come From Away has made its latest journey from La Jolla to Seattle. (The two theatres are coproducers .)

Read the whole story at americantheatre.com.

Read More