HUNTINGTON AVENUE THEATRE P. 2 THE NICETIES P. 4 SHERLOCK’S LAST CASE P. 8 MAN IN THE RING P. 12 EDUCATION P. 16 IN DEVELOPMENT P. 18 UPCOMING EVENTS & NEWS P. 20 PERFORMANCE CALENDARS P. 22 WHAT DOES THE HUNTINGTON MEAN TO YOU? P. 23 FALL 2018-2019 SPOTLIGHT JUST ANNOUNCED: The hilarious musical spoof Spamilton: An American Parody joins the 2018-2019 season Kyle Vincent Terry and John Douglas Thompson will appear in the incredible true story of world champion boxer Emile Griffith, Man in the Ring HAWVER NILE IT’S OFFICIAL: STANTEC THE THEATRE IS OURS! ARCHITECTURE Draft rendering of the Huntington Avenue redevelopment project The Huntington Theatre Company Ownership of the theatre is an astounding milestone on our remarkable journey. We are now embarking on a process to create a is now officially the sole owner of the magnificently restored and expanded Huntington Avenue Theatre in order to greatly enhance our services to our audiences, artists, and Huntington Avenue Theatre! In May 2018, the community. Notable milestones of the past year paved the way our commercial development partner QMG for our future: full separation from Boston University, the opening of our new state-of-the-art Huntington Production Center in Everett, Huntington LLC gave us a remarkable gift — and receiving the city of Boston’s approval on plans to renovate our the deed to the theatre — donating our theatre complex that includes our beautiful proscenium auditorium and support wing, as well as a new 14,000 square foot welcome home to us on a permanent basis and center in the adjacent QMG Huntington LLC residential building, fulfilling a long-held aspiration to which will provide a new fully accessible entrance and lobby, modern audience amenities, a new performance venue and first- control our own theatre space. class event space for patrons and community members. July, 1986 2004 Huntington creates Huntington 2013 an independent builds & opens Huntington Board of Trustees the Stanford receives the & Council of Calderwood Tony Award for 1982 Overseers, separate Pavilion at the Outstanding Huntington Theatre from, but in Boston Center Regional Company founded residence at BU for the Arts Theatre by Boston University; Managing Director Michael Maso joins Producing Director Fall, 1986 2000 2008 Peter Altman to lead The Huntington’s Nicholas Martin Peter DuBois the company longstanding becomes our second becomes our third relationship with Artistic Director Artistic Director August Wilson begins with a production of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone 2 BOX OFFICE 617 266 0800 TRANSFORMATIONAL SPACES Our new theatre complex will beckon visitors through a soaring entrance that will be activated throughout the day welcoming the entire community to participate in programs, enjoy a café, and avail themselves of our new box office along with other visitor amenities. The expansive second floor will create flexible spaces for audiences to gather, for students and the community to engage in education programs and multi-disciplinary activities, and to invite visitors and artists to converse together, realizing our vision to be “Boston’s BRUNER Living Room” with an open configuration that includes an intimate / performance venue, lobby, and veranda overlooking Huntington COTT & Avenue. And, of course, both floors will have plenty of restrooms! ASSOCIATES Known for their award-winning designs that celebrate the heritage and craftmanship of the past while also creating vibrant, new social spaces, Bruner/Cott & Associates, the Huntington’s architects for the project, have begun the design schematics for the theatre renovation and lobby space build-out. Draft rendering of the proposed “Boston’s Living Room” second floor lobby of the Huntington Avenue Theatre COMPREHENSIVE CAMPAIGN Another important milestone was last year’s kickoff of our comprehensive fundraising campaign, Empowering Passion, a five-year initiative designed to fund the renovation and expansion of our Huntington Avenue theatre complex, grow and diversify our program and offerings, increase the Annual Fund, and enhance our reserve and endowment funds. We are currently in the leadership phase of the Campaign. At the conclusion of the Campaign in 2022, generous donors to this effort will have provided the Huntington with the strongest possible foundation BRUNER with which to serve and thrive as a vital part of the cultural fabric / of Boston and beyond for generations to come. COTT & You are an important part of the Huntington’s new future! Planning ASSOCIATES is underway and we invite you to learn about the transformation by visiting our website, attending upcoming events, and by contributing to the Huntington in the coming years. For the latest news and information about the Huntington Avenue Theatre, please visit huntingtontheatre.org or contact Elisabeth Saxe, Chief Development Officer, Draft rendering of the proposed first floor [email protected] or 617 273 1579. lobby of the Huntington Avenue Theatre July, 2017 2019 (Projected) Huntington’s Commercial developers 2015 35 year relationship QMG begin the BU puts the with BU is demolition of Huntington officially ended; 252-254 Huntington Avenue Theatre the Huntington Avenue buildings & the complex up Production Center is construction of new Fall, 2021 for sale created in Everett apartment building (Projected) Huntington will open renovated & expanded HUNTINGTON 2016 2018 2020-2021 Season AVENUE THEATRE With the help of Huntington receives (Projected) COMPLEX Mayor Martin J. Walsh the deed to the Huntington will begin & the city of Boston, Huntington renovation of the Huntington commercial developers Avenue Theatre! Avenue Theatre & produce QMG agree to give shows at the Calderwood the theatre to the and in other venues Huntington for our “travelling year” HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG 3 In this explosive story, a black student and a white professor — both brilliant, both liberal — meet to discuss a paper about slavery’s role in the American Revolution. A polite conversation becomes a powder keg of race, history, and power, and neither woman will ever be the same. An entertaining and provocative nail-biter, written by Boston native Eleanor Burgess and directed by Broadway veteran Kimberly Senior (Disgraced), that everyone will be talking about. NICETIES A POWDER KEGTHE OF RACE, HISTORY & POWER AUG.31-OCT.6 SOUTH END CALDERWOOD PAVILION AT THE BCA BY ELEANOR BURGESS “A BARNBURNER! One of DIRECTED BY the best plays about who gets KIMBERLY SENIOR to tell the story of America.” LISA — THE WASHINGTON POST BANES AND JORDAN BOATMAN BY NILE HAWVER “Eleanor Burgess has created a work that does what the finest, best-written plays do — it demands engagement from an audience and practically compels them to talk about it afterwards. Seeing this in the Wimberly is going to up the stakes for audiences and actors alike; I expect a crackling energy will be built at every single performance.” – ARTISTIC DIRECTOR PETER DUBOIS Playwright Eleanor Burgess Director Kimberly Senior REVEALING AMERICA: ELEANOR BURGESS’ THE NICETIES JANINE: You may be right. You’re probably right. Burgess started the play out of an interest in how a seemingly About feelings that were there. It’s possible you’re right straightforward disagreement can blow up to the proportions of about the effects those feelings had. But that isn’t history. a cultural divide. One example of this phenomenon for Burgess was a 2015 controversy at Yale: child development professor Erika ZOE: Yes, it is history. It’s a part of American history. Christakis objected to a campus advisory that pre-emptively In playwright Eleanor Burgess’ The Niceties, a student sits down discouraged Halloween costumes that borrowed from other with her professor during office hours; their lives are about to cultures. Christakis felt that the function of college was trying out adult responsibilities, and opined in an email that Halloween change. Through their intense conversation, Burgess brings was a time when students could be allowed to be “a little bit intellectual might and refreshing nuance to discussing race, inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive.” The email went viral. history, and power in America. The play has become a breakout The response from students was that her point of view reinforced hit for Burgess, a Brookline native and alumna of the Huntington white supremacist notions that other cultures can be appropriated Playwriting Fellows program. Critic Peter Marks of The Washington freely, and that her comments contributed to a hostile learning Post named a developmental staging as one of his favorite environment; students led protests and called for Christakis’ productions of 2017, describing The Niceties as “a nail-biter of immediate dismissal and disavowal. a play that leaves you wrung out and reassessing your own pieties.” What interested Burgess was that, when discussing the incident with In the play, Zoe is a junior at an “elite university in the Northeast” friends, both sides dismissed any legitimacy to the opposing argument. with a high GPA and a focus on social activism. She is meeting “My friends are really spread across a pretty broad political spectrum, to discuss her research paper with Janine, a published expert in from quite conservative to quite liberal,” Burgess explains. “Both comparative revolutionary history. They geek out about grammar groups believed that the other side was not fighting for anything valid. and style, but soon a disagreement is sparked. “Zoe’s thesis is No one wanted to explore that