Big thanks to everyone who came out to our Summer Picnic earlier this month! Lots of laughs, snacks and fun were had and it was a great way to kick off the season. Keep an eye on these emails and our socials for more fun gatherings in the coming months!

A Cold Reading of
The Importance of Being Earnest
by Oscar Wilde
Discussion Facilitated by Paul Bedard
Wednesday, July 20, 2022
Location TBA
RSVP Here

Join us to read one of the theater's great farces! Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, subtitled “A Trivial Comedy for Serious People,” is filled with wit, Victorian manners, and shade for days. This iconic satire aims at marriage, love, and being yourself (or someone else). As the play tells us, "The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!"
This reading will be in person at a Brooklyn location to be announced. Mark your calendars and RSVP here to join!

Theater in Asylum Honors Juneteenth
Sunday, June 19th is Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating the emancipation of enslaved Black Americans. On June 19, 1865, the Emancipation Proclamation was finally announced in Texas, the last state in the Confederacy with institutionalized slavery, over two years after President Abraham Lincoln first issued the decree. Since then, Juneteenth has been a celebration of African American communities, culture and history.

At Theater in Asylum, we celebrate Black history by celebrating Black theater all year long. One great way to honor Juneteenth is by reading some of the plays from the Golden Collection, which we’ve featured in our Cold Readings over the last few months. Curated by Jeremy O. Harris, this collection of 15 plays by prominent Black playwrights includes such amazing works as Sweat by Lynn Nottage, An Octoroon by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Les Blancs by Lorraine Hansberry and more. And, if you purchase the full collection from Drama Book Shop, one copy of a play from a Golden Collection playwright will be donated to public libraries in all 50 states. Help bring Black theater to communities across the country while growing your own play library!

Dear Friends,
Happy February and happy Black History Month! We are continuing our research into The Federal Theatre Project, and this month discussed the Negro Theatre Unit's production of "Voodoo Macbeth". If you're unfamiliar, the Federal Theatre Project supported 17 "Negro Theatre Units" around the country to put Black performers back to work during the Great Depression. The Orson-Welles-directed production of Macbeth in 1936 was a sensation. Check out a short clip of the piece here.

Our Cold Readings are also still going strong. We recently finished enjoying our way through the Jeremy O. Harris-curated Golden Collection. This play collection aimed to put important plays by prominent Black writers into libraries and schools and homes across the country.

The Golden Collection includes:

• Slave Play by Jeremy O. Harris
• Les Blancs by Lorraine Hansberry
• The Colored Museum by George Costello Wolfe
• An Octoroon by Branden Jacobs Jenkins
• Sweat by Lynn Nottage
• A Collection of Plays (Wedding Band and Trouble in Mind) by Alice Childress
• Fucking A by Suzan-Lori Parks
• We Are Proud to Present a Presentation by Jackie Sibblies Drury
• The Mountaintop by Katori Hall
• Is God Is by Aleshea Harris
• Fires in the Mirror by Anna Deavere Smith
• Funnyhouse of a Negro by Adrienne Kennedy
• For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf by Ntozake Shange
• Bootycandy by Robert O’Hara
• Dream on Monkey Mountain by Derek Walcott

With each play we explored, we also encouraged attendees to donate to The National Black Theatre, an organization dedicated to “theatre that enhances African American cultural identity by telling authentic, autonomous, multifaceted stories of the Black experience.”

However you celebrate Black history this month and every month, we hope you'll include the incredible theater by Black artists present and past.

Ps. The FTP Book Club is in Full Swing! Our Federal Theatre Project book club is about halfway through Susan Quinn’s Furious Improvisation and enjoying the great conversations our readings have inspired! Though we are coming to the end of this particular book, we have plenty of more readings and discussions planned for the rest of 2022. Want to get involved? Email [email protected] to learn more!

One year ago today, George Floyd was murdered. He is one of many Black people who have been brutalized as a result of a vicious white supremacist system. We commit to rooting out white supremacy in ourselves, in our theater, and in our communities. We assert unequivocally Black Lives Matter.

Hello friends,

Katie here, with an attempt to gather up some favorite moments from 2020, following up on our lists of favorite books and music from the year.

I can think so clearly back to 365 days ago, when I was looking forward to all the things I thought 2020 was going to be, blissfully ignorant of all the things it would become. I had great plans: a few terrific trips, a 100+ person family reunion, school spring musicals I was ushering into existence.

It took many months, but I have let go of that alternative universe, and now live fully in the present. It has been a year of much smaller moments for me: a deep appreciation for the way the sunlight changes in my apartment; an extended visit with my sister in the summer; humbly expanding my participation in the march towards racial justice; a phone conversation on Election Day helping a woman in Michigan get to the polls; the sadness, memory, and catharsis that comes at a funeral; weekly gatherings to read and discuss plays and their themes.

This world is a mess. I take a bit of comfort in the knowledge that this world has always been a mess, and this year continued to expose more and more of that mess. But I truly believe 2020 can help us put the world back together again. Through the heartbreak and the chaos, we all have a few moments worth remembering: some big and profound, some small and delicate. Some fiery, some upsetting, some passionate, some subtle. Memories that become core to our sense of self, and memories that emerge without warning.

Take a look at some favorite 2020 memories crowd-sourced from the TIA community. I am so grateful to have gone through this year with all of you. I would have been lost without Theater in Asylum to keep me focused, committed, and processing. Thank you all for giving me—and each other—moments from 2020 that we’ll want to hold on to. 

All my love,
Katie