The National New Play Network, the country’s alliance of nonprofit theaters that collaborate in innovative ways to develop, produce, and extend the life of new plays, announces its 90th Rolling World Premiere (RWP): My Lord, What a Night by Deborah Brevoort. The Roll will begin in Shepherdstown, WV at the Contemporary American Theater Festival (July 5-28, 2019). The show will then head to Florida where it will be produced by Orlando Shakes (March 18 – April 26, 2020) and then by Florida Studio Theatre later in the spring.
An NNPN Rolling World Premiere (RWP) models a process for developing and producing new plays that results in stronger work overall and the momentum needed for a play to join the repertoire of frequently produced new American works. Each Rolling World Premiere connects three or more NNPN Member Theaters that choose to mount the same new play within a 12-month period, allowing the playwright to develop the work with a new creative team in each theater’s community. To date, NNPN has championed RWPs with over one million dollars in financial support. Alumni plays have received hundreds of subsequent productions, recognition in markets across the world, been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, won Steinberg/ATCA, Stavis, PEN and Blackburn awards, and been adapted into feature films.
In 1937, legendary singer Marian Anderson gave a concert in Princeton, NJ and was refused a room at the Nassau Inn because she was black. Albert Einstein invited her to stay at his home beginning a friendship between the two that would last a lifetime. Two years later, Anderson was denied the right to sing at Constitution Hall in Washington DC, which led to her historic concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and the beginning of the civil rights movement. Inspired by actual events, My Lord, What a Night explores the struggles faced by two icons of the 20th?century who dealt with the injustices of Jim Crow and the rise of anti-Semitism during a highly divided era in American history.
