Daily Rehearsal: breaking down Abbiefest

Daily Rehearsal: breaking down Abbiefest
Daily Rehearsal: breaking down Abbiefest

Daily Rehearsal: breaking down Abbiefest

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So Daily Rehearsal is back! Good thing nothing happened in theater for the past week. No, some stuff happened.

1. The Abbie Hoffman Died For Our Sins Theatre Festival was this weekend, also known as Abbie-fest. Mary-Arrchie Theatre’s festival celebrates protest and theater in one combined swoop every year on the anniversary of the 1969 Woodstock, but reports on the street indicate that this year’s festival was a little subpar. The change in quality might be related to the popularity of Cherrywood, which was running at the theatre around the same time last year, and whose very good reviews may have brought in a higher-caliber set of performances.

2. The Lyric Opera announced the terms of its new contract negotiations, in which singers will receive a five percent pay cut. Ouch.

3. Tuesday, Ben Fuchsen, Lily Emerson, Charles Malave and Jackson King of Oracle and Lucid Street left for Minsk, Belarusto start rehearsals on their work Finding Bialowieza Forest. The play will be staged in Minsk, and tour to the Vysehratky Theatre Festival in Prague, Czech Republic, and the International Theatre Festival “Belaya Vezha” in Brest, Belarus. You can help them fund the endeavor, because they hope the work “will promote cross-cultural understanding through commonalities found in storytelling.” A performance at the Oracle will be mounted by the end of the year.

4. Word on the street is that Broads on Boards at the Annoyance is very very good — or so say all three of our critics. I just like their retro poster.

5. Second City has named its new location at Piper’s Alley, and it’s called “Up.” They’ve also been embroiled in recent drama concerning the cancellation of their show The Late Live Show. The A.V. Club reported that “According to the show’s co-creator and host Joe Kwaczala, the reason given for the cancellation was that the show’s producers were ‘using the Second City name to further the show.‘” The last show was Saturday night.

Questions? Tips? Email kdries@wbez.org.