CREATING NEW STORIES, NEW SONGS, FOR A NEW WORLD
“While we may not be able to bring audiences into our theaters, we can certainly support our playwrights, our composers and our lyricists. The current reality will drastically reshape our thinking, our behavior and our relationships with each other and the planet. It will also reshape the stories we tell. We need our creative voices to help navigate, articulate and find meaning inside this new world.”
Click below to read the
MSP/ST. PAUL MAGAZINE story below:
Theater Latté Da launches NEXT UP, an intensive laboratory investing in the future of new musical theater. New work has always been a part of our DNA. Over the past eight years the we have further prioritized the support of new musicals and plays with music through the NEXT program including commissions, workshops, the NEXT Festival, and of course world premieres. NEXT UP is a promise to our artists and patrons that we will be here through this challenging time, spending the coming months supporting playwrights, composers and lyricists.
The NEXT UP laboratory will include Terrence McNally’s last play IMMORTAL LONGINGS and an exciting lineup of projects by playwright Harrison David Rivers, composer Ted Shen, musicians Kate Kilbane and Dan Moses of The Kilbanes, Jessie Austrian and Noah Brody of Fiasco Theater, Mexican playwright Joserra Zúñiga, scenic designer Kate Sutton-Johnson, local writer-performers Bradley Greenwald and Steven Epp, actress Sally Wingert, and hip hop theater artists The Q Brothers.
WORLD PREMIERE MUSICALS FROM THEATER LATTÉ DA
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THE CREATIVE VOICES of NEXT UP
NEXT UP | NEW WORKS IN DEVELOPMENT
IMMORTAL LONGINGS
Terrence McNally’s last play was IMMORTAL LONGINGS about ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev and his love affair with dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. Peter Rothstein had been collaborating with Mr. McNally on the play for a year and a half before his death, and will continue to develop the play under directives set forth by Mr. McNally. Rothstein states, “It is a play about a passionate man confronting his mortality, about an artist grappling with legacy when his craft is temporal, about a gay man choosing love when the world was advising him against it.” Twin Cities-based choreographer Kelli Foster Warder has and will continue to create dance for the play. On March 24, 2020, Mr. McNally died of complications from COVID-19.
Development Sponsors: Kent Allin & Tom Knabel
THE MISSISSIPPI PROJECT
Twin Cities based playwright Harrison David Rivers is exploring a new piece about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 alongside the 1927 premiere of the Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein and Edna Ferber's musical, SHOWBOAT. SHOWBOAT is widely considered the first great American Musical, and featured the popular song “Old Man River”. The song was made famous by African American baritone, Paul Robeson, who initially declined to perform in the show. His refusal caused the show’s creators to rethink their representation of African American characters and led to significant rewrites.
Development Sponsors: Kathy and Allen Lenzmeier
JOHNNY SCHICCHI
Twin Cities-based writer-performers Bradley Greenwald and Steven Epp are working on an English language adaptation of Giacomo Puccini's comic opera, GIANNI SCHICCHI. GIANNI SCHICCHI is a one-act opera, the third and final part of Puccini’s Il Trittico, based on an incident mentioned in Dante’s DIVINE COMEDY. The original Italian libretto by Giovacchino Forzano is a farce about greed and hypocrisy set in Florence in 1299. Greenwald and Epp are resetting the opera in modern day Miami.
Development Sponsors: Jane and Ogden Confer in honor of Jim and Kris Matejcek
FRIDA Y FRIDA
Mexico City-based playwright Joserra Zúñiga, along with Peter Rothstein and Twin-Cities-based designer, Kate Sutton-Johnson, are collaborating on a musical and visual theatricalization of the life and work of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Due to a traffic accident as a teenager, Frida was permanently impaired and spent much of her life constrained to her family home and often restricted to her bed. Her art was in direct response to her distanced reality. This project marks the company’s first international collaboration.
Development Sponsors: Kent Allin & Tom Knabel
BROADBEND, ARKANSAS
In BROADBEND, ARKANSAS, an African-American family grapples with decades of inequality, violence, and suppression in the South. In musical solos, Benny, an orderly at a nursing home, struggles to care for his own family as the fight for equality grips the nation in the midst of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Thirty years later, his daughter, Ruby, struggles to understand an incident of police brutality against Ben, her 15-year-old son. This powerful musical by Ellen Fitzhugh, Harrison David Rivers and Ted Shen, spans nearly half a century and three generations. Rivers and Shen will create a third solo piece giving voice to Ben.
Development Sponsor: John Sullivan and Frances Wilkinson
ON GOD
Fusing traditional Black gospel hymns and punk rock, ON GOD, a play with music by JuCoby Johnson with original songs by Meghan Kreidler and Michael Anderson of Kiss the Tiger takes place in the world of a small storefront church in a rapidly changing neighborhood facing the threat of demolishment after their beloved Pastor/Patriarch dies suddenly. After being away for many years, Mahalia (the Preacher’s daughter) returns to check in on the situation. Old wounds are reopened, and a timeless question is asked: “Can you ever really escape your past?”
IN PAPER BOATS
Peter Rothstein and actress Sally Wingert will be working on IN PAPER BOATS, a play about Frances Cabrini, Patron Saint of Immigrants. Born two months premature in Sant'Angelo Lodigiano, Italy, in 1850, Cabrini tried to join a religious order at age 20, but was told she was too frail. She subsequently formed her own religious community and relocated to the United States in order to minister to the rapidly growing number of Italian immigrants. She crossed the Atlantic 23 times, and went on to found 67 hospitals, schools and orphanages.
Development Sponsor: Pat Zalaznik
THE RAP PACK
THE RAP PACK is an experimental hip hop cabaret developed by the four members of Q Brothers Collective. It is an anachronistic smash-up of the old variety show, Vegas-style showbiz, and contemporary experimental hip hop -- blending singing, rapping, dancing, sketch comedy, and theater. The Rap Pack has thoughts of subscribers on YouTube where they make digital sketches and music videos as well as their Tuesday night series where they collaborate with uniquely talented artists from all over the country and across musical spectrum, creating an original song in 90 minutes.
NEXT GENERATION COMMISSION
Singer/songwriters Kate Kilbane and Dan Moses, who together form the musical duo, The Kilbanes, and actor/directors Jessie Austrian and Noah Brody, Co-artistic Directors of New York-based Fiasco Theater come together for the first time to create a new musical. The four artists are the recipients of Theater Latté Da’s NEXT Generation Commission, funded in part by the NEA.
Development Sponsors: Jennifer Melin Miller and David Miller
SUPPORT FOR NEXT UP PROVIDED BY
THE NARA FUND
This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.
