RHODYLIFE

The Gamm announces 2021-22 season, launches fellowship for emerging artists

Posted 6/11/21

The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre (The Gamm) has announced its plans to reopen for Season 37 (2021-22) with a five-play lineup beginning at the end of September 2021. The season includes an Obie award-winner, a premiere of a late 19th-century classic

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RHODYLIFE

The Gamm announces 2021-22 season, launches fellowship for emerging artists

Posted

The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre (The Gamm) has announced its plans to reopen for Season 37 (2021-22) with a five-play lineup beginning at the end of September 2021.

The season includes an Obie award-winner, a premiere of a late 19th-century classic reinvented for our pandemic year, the regional premiere of a contemporary critically acclaimed look at working class America, and the first Shakespeare production in The Gamm’s Warwick home.

“We’ve got four distinctly American stories that do a deep dive into our history and bring us right up to the present day, along with a return to Shakespeare with his most beloved and buoyant comedy, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ as we wake up from this revolutionary pandemic year,” says Gamm Artistic Director Tony Estrella.

He continues: “We open Season 37 with ‘A Lie Agreed Upon,’ a brand-new version of Ibsen’s classic ‘An Enemy of the People.’ It was started last summer and has been through several revisions as life continued to imitate art throughout these past 12 months. We’re offering a sneak-peek on June 11 with a digital, staged reading as we ready the script for our big re-opening. It’s at once a political thriller, an environmental exposé and a meditation on the nature and purpose of representative democracy. Sound familiar? And we’ll follow that up with an equally powerful look at American civic life with a return to Bedford Falls and the imperishable ‘It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play.’”

Estrella is also delighted to get Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s “An Octoroon” in front of audiences in the new year.

“An Octoroon has been a couple of years in the offing with us, so we are very excited to finally get it on stage where it belongs. It’s a powder keg of a play and a contemporary American masterpiece by one of our finest young writers. It examines the darkest chapters of our country’s past and present and asks fundamental questions about storytelling itself,” Estrella said.

The company will follow “An Octoroon” with Martyna Majok’s incisive, timely drama “Ironbound” about working-class immigrant life in contemporary America.

Season 37 will also mark the company’s first production of Shakespeare in its new Warwick space.

“I almost can’t believe that it has been over three years since our last Shakespeare,” Estrella says. “And we’ve never done ‘Midsummer,’ his most popular play. Waking up from this crazy dream/nightmare pandemic year, now seems like it is exactly the right time for his most popular, and transformative comedy. We cannot wait to share all these stories with you, live!”

As well as readying for the return to the stage, The Gamm has been working over the past year on the development of an exciting new initiative – The Gamm Fellowship Program, a partnership with the state’s public colleges and universities (Community College of Rhode Island, Rhode Island College, and the University of Rhode Island).

Designed to provide access and opportunity to emerging artists of color, The Gamm will welcome three Gamm Fellows in its pilot year; one graduate from each institution will participate in an immersive experience aimed at establishing long-standing, meaningful relationships between early career theatre artists and a professional theatre.

Gamm Managing Director Amy Gravell shared, “The Gamm recognizes the challenging landscape facing many artists in their quest to transition from the academic environment to the professional world. Artists of color navigate a narrower and more exclusive path to accessing a career in an industry that often does not offer an equitable path to professional status. We are thrilled to enrich and expand our community of artists and creators here in Rhode Island.”

Over the course of the upcoming season, the Gamm Fellows will be paired with advanced career mentors and provided access to all aspects of the organization – creative, administrative, and educational.

In the coming weeks, more details about The Gamm Fellowship Program and the inaugural class of Gamm Fellows will be announced.

Plays and dates are subject to change.

If you have already purchased a subscription for Season 36, your subscription will automatically be honored for this year’s five-play series. New subscriptions are on sale now and single tickets will be ready for purchase beginning Aug. 30. Information and sales at (401) 723-4266 or ww.gammtheatre.org.

Gamm, theater

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