All Stars Project INC.

"I Know How to Love"

Read the Season Statement here. 

 

The Proverbial Loons
Musical Comedy Improv at Castillo
Saturdays, September 15 and 22, 2012
(and selected Saturdays throughout the year)  8:00 PM

Meet the Proverbial Loons, Castillo's new comedy improv troupe. Veterans of New York's and Castillo's stages, come together with some new faces to create new material each night. Audience members can volunteer, and watch your life transformed into a zany musical! Or just watch and enjoy the show. It's gonna be ridiculous - and wonderfully entertaining.

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Carmen's Place

April 19 - June 16, 2013 (No performance Memorial Day weekend)

With a book by Fred Newman and music by Newman, Annie Roboff and Georges Bizet, Carmen’s Place (A Fantasy) is a sweet New York tale. In a rehearsal for Bizet’s classic opera, Carmen we meet three young opera singers. They meet a coffee shop waitress, whose name (coincidentally) is also Carmen. Through the friendships that develop, Carmen shows them how to love in ways that differ dramatically from the possessive, violent, fate-driven love of the opera. Featuring some of the opera’s best-loved music as well as six original songs, Carmen’s Place (A Fantasy) is directed by Gabrielle L. Kurlander, whose production of Sally and Tom (The American Way) was a runaway hit last season at Castillo.

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Otto Rene Castillo Awards for Political Theatre

The fourteenth annual Otto Awards will be held on Sunday, May 19, 2013 at 2:00 p.m.

The Otto René Castillo Awards for Political Theatre were established in 1998 to recognize and support theatre companies and artists the world over engaged in creating political theatre, using their stages and talents to make positive and humane social, political, moral, philosophical and aesthetic statements.

For more information, please contact Diane Stiles at 212 - 356 - 8412.

 

Performing Fred Newman
A marathon play reading tribute
Saturday, June 29, 2013
More Info

Join a 12-hour performance celebration of the life and theatre work of Fred Newman. Newman, who passed away in July 2011, was the Castillo Theatre's artistic director for 16 years. Professional actors and directors will share the stage with community members, as many of Newman's 44 politically-engaged plays will be read. Potluck snacks will keep the actors and audience well-fed.

The marathon is FREE, seating is on a first-come, first-served basis.

Back to School with the All Stars Talent Show

Selected Saturdays throughout the year

Act 1: Get on the bus! Join fellow adventurers as we travel to the longest-running performance in New York City. Young people of the All Stars Talent Show Network are building positive Hip Hop theatre in their neighborhoods. Join them as they grow and develop themselves and their communities. Act 2: Come see the talent in all of us – and help give the All Stars Project Award for Community Spirit to our wonderful young performers! A unique NY experience.

Contact Brigid Mitchell at 212-356-8424 for details of the next Back to School trip.

 

Mario Fratti - Fred Newman Political Play Contest

Mondays in August, 2013

Castillo Theatre sponsors the Mario Fratti-Fred Newman Political Play Contest annually. Now entering its seventh year, the contest encourages the writing of scripts for the stage that engage the political, social, cultural questions affecting the world today and/or historical events and issues that impact on our political/cultural heritage. While in the broadest sense Castillo recognizes all theatre to be political, the contest seeks politically progressive plays that examine social and/or economic problems and challenges; explore possibilities of social transformation; reflect the concerns and interests of communities; and/or explore the importance of community itself.

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Hip-Hop Explosion

August 17, 18, 24, 25, 2013

The Hip-Hop Explosion workshop brings together two vital aspects of Castillo Theatre tradition — hip-hop and Heiner Müller. Using the German avant-garde playwright’s text Description of a Picture/Explosion of a Memory as a spark, this workshop production explodes into playful song, dance, and rap, directed by Madelyn Chapman and Antoine “RL” Joyce. For those who love hip-hop or avant-garde theatre — or anyone who likes being entertained while being engaged — the Hip-Hop Explosion is a must-see.

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Children of Killers
Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 PM, Sundays at 2 PM, September 21 - October 28, 2012

Fifteen years after the genocide in Rwanda, many of the mass murderers are being released from prison and are returning to their villages. Their teenage children, who grew up without them, now must come to terms with the legacy that their fathers embody. Will they carry on the heritage of hate? Will they resist it, and if so, how can they stand up to the weight of history? Based on the playwright's research in Rwanda, Children of Killers was commissioned by the National Theatre in London and has been performed by youth theaters throughout the United Kingdom and Portugal. This is its first production in the United States. Katori Hall's play The Mountaintop won an Olivier Award for best new play in 2010 and is currently being produced on Broadway with Samuel Jackson and Angela Bassett. This is Hall's first play at the Castillo Theatre.

 

Sowa's Red Gravy
October 18 through November 18, 2012
By Diane Richards  Directed by Woodie King, Jr.

Sowa's Red Gravy is a play of southern "mulebone" folklore, with unforgettable characters like Windy Willow, Sapphire and Luwanna. It is narrated by Sowa, a 110-year old wise woman, who resides in Harlem in quantum time. Sowa recounts her life before the emancipation and claims to have lived many lives as varied as a white Hollywood film star, an African Warrior and a Louisiana Voodoo Queen.

 

 

All Stars Talent Show: Harlem Show
Saturday, October 20, 2012
A. Philip Randolph School, 443 135th Street (on the corner of Convent Ave.)

Admittance: $8 per person

Long before Castillo was performing the world it was performing the city, and the All Stars Talent Show Network is the name of that performance. For over two decades Director of Youth Programs Pam Lewis and her All Stars have been a source of young talent, and those vibrant performances continue this year—across the five boroughs and in cities around the country. Sponsored by the nonprofit All Stars Project, the All Stars Talent Show Network (ASTSN) is an after-school, performance-based enrichment program for inner city youth. Each year, thousands of children and young adults, ages 5-25, participate in several dozen All Stars events. These include auditions, rehearsals, talent shows and performance workshops that take place in local school auditoriums and at the All Stars Project headquarters on 42nd Street.

 

Demonstration 2013

February 1 through February 23, 2013

Written by artistic director Dan Friedman, Demonstration 2013 is the next in line in Castillo’s decades-long series of plays inspired by the demonstrations of the 1960s. With a large cast made up of both of amateur and professional actors and directed by David Nackman, this grassroots epic uses montages of scenes, new and old protest songs, and historical video sequences to portray a new movement of social transformation, built and sustained by ordinary people, growing out of the successes and failures of the movements of the ’60s.