Special Events and News

2024

• Salesman in China 3 Aug.-26 Oct. with opening on 23 Aug. at Stratford Festival, in the Avon Theatre, 99 Downie Street, Stratford, ON. A world premier written by Leanna Brodie and Jovanni Sy (Suggested by the Memoirs of Arthur Miller and Ying Ruocheng). Chinese Translations by Fang Zhang. Directed by Jovanni Sy, with Tom McCamus (as Miller), and Jo Chim (as Wu Shiliang). Call 1 800 567 1600 or 519.273.1600 or check the website for more information.
  
• Abigail by Sarah Tuft. On April 10th at Centenary Stage as part of their Women Playwrights Series. In the Kutz Theatre at the Lackland Performing Arts Center, 715 Grand Ave., Hackettstown, NJ. What happens when at out-of-town tryout of The Crucible – helmed by a once legendary director making his comeback and funded by his renowned actress wife – casts an arrogant veteran theatre actor opposite a beauty influencer with absolutely no experience! A lot!! In 2024, the search for truth in the role of Abigail Williams puts Arthur Miller’s classic on trial. Call 908-979-0900 or check the website for more information.
• Witches Can’t Be Burned 26-27 March by Silva Semerciyan. Presented by County Limerick Youth Theatre (COLYT) at Lime Tree Theatre,  Belltable Arts Hub, Limerick County, Ireland. Directed by Elliemae Barrie & Jassmine Walsh. Call 061953400 or check the website for more information. Another play inspired by The Crucible! Plot: St. Paul’s has won the Playfest competition three years in a row by selecting recognized classics and producing them just as the masters intended. It’s a tried and trusted formula. With straight-A student and drama nerd Anuka cast as Abigail Williams in The Crucible, the school seems on course for a record-breaking triumph. What could possibly go wrong? But as rehearsals gain momentum, Anuka has an epiphany and starts to question the text. The scene is set for a confrontation of epic proportions as Anuka seeks to break with tradition before tradition breaks her, and all young women like her, and reality begins to take on the ominous hue of Arthur Miller’s fictionalized Salem.
  
• The Good John Proctor by 10-27 January by Talene Monahon at Jermyn Street Theatre in London (UK). Directed by Anna Ryder with Anna Fordham, Sabrina Wu, Amber Sylvia Edwards, and Lydia Larson. Set design by Natalie Johnson. Check here for info and tickets.

2023

• Bungalow 21 by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt (based on an idea by Benjamin Castaldi)  14 Sept.-17 Dec. at the Théâtre de la Madeleine, 19 Rue de Surène, 75008 Paris, France. The play reenacts the famous meeting of the Monroe-Miller and Signoret-Montand couples, in LA in the 1960s, when the couples were staying in adjacent bungalows at Beverly Hills Hotel during the filming of The Billionaire. Directed by Jérémie Lippmann, assisted by Sarah Gellé, with real-life sisters Mathilde Seignier (Simone Signoret) and Emmanuelle Seignier (Marilyn Monroe), brought together for the first time in the theater, as well as Michael Cohen (Yves Montand), Vincent Winterhalter (Miller), Clément Moreau, and Benjamin Jaouen. Set design by Emmanuelle Favre et Anais Favre. Call +33 1 86 47 23 71 or check the website for more information.
• The Miller Society is sponsoring an Arthur Miller Birthday Celebration on Saturday, October 14 at 2 pm in the Minor Memorial Library in Roxbury, Connecticut. The program will focus on “False Confession and Wrongful Conviction” as it relates to Miller’s involvement in the Peter Reilly case. This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of his arrest, and there is great interest today in the issue of wrongful conviction. Hopefully, there will be a discussion panel that includes some of the principals in the case. This event shows how our society focusses on not only Miller’s dramatic work, but also his political and social engagement. We will release more details soon. This will be the first official program related to the eventual full programming when Miller’s writing studio is placed on the library site. For those of you unable to attend this Saturday’s Miller event, here is the link for the livestream which was recorded if you still want to watch: https://www.youtube.com/live/5rWhYD-xCrk?si=LTZzTS54W1K5j41Y
  

• Note one of the new exhibits at the Harry Ransom Center at University of Texas at Austin is Words into Worlds: Creating Place in the Theater. The success of a live theater production relies heavily on the communication between the playwright and their scenic designer, a concept demonstrated by various set models at the Harry Ransom Center. The “Words into Worlds” exhibit showcases the figurative worlds of playwrights such as Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller brought to life by artists such as Jo Mielziner and Boris Aronson. The free exhibition came to campus on Aug. 26 and will remain on display until Feb. 4 of next year, revealing the importance of thoughtful collaboration.

  

• The Arthur Miller Studio Project is entering an exciting new phase with a public awareness campaign that includes active fundraising. On Wednesday April 26, the reporter Robert Moses ran a lengthy feature about the studio on Good Day, New York, which aired on Fox’s New York affiliate (click here to watch). It tells us about the studio, its importance in Miller’s life, and the efforts to locate it on the property of the Roxbury Library. Check out more details and information at this Arthur Miller Studio website. You can also access donation information on the GoFundMe page, and other information.
• Trinity Rep at 21 Washington Street in Providence, RI are running Talene Monohan’s The Good John Proctor September 7 – 15 / September 28 – November 12 and Sarah Ruhl’s Becky Nurse of Salem September 21 – November 10 in rotating rep this coming season. Call (401) 351-4242 or check their website for more information.
  
• At the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this year, you can checkout Bad Play a mash-up of classics such as Death of a Salesman, Our Town, and A Streetcar Named Desire being performed there by the LA sketch comedy group Big Tobacco (Brad Beideman, Brian Fitzgerald, Lyndsey Kempf, and Eli Lutsky). Pulling all the best tricks of the trade from Arthur Miller, Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, Thornton Wilder and William Inge, and throwing them in a Vitamix with a healthy dose of irreverence, they created Bad Play, an off-the-wall hour of high tragedy and low parody. It’s a loving tribute to the great playwrights of the mid-20th century, taking their groundbreaking work and taking the absolute piss out of it. Playing August 3 – 28 at 19.05 (for 55 mins) in THE SPACE @ SURGEONS HALL.

  

• Quarantine 19 Aug. (by Kaberi Basu, based on A View from the Bridge) for Prachyo Theatre, at Academy of Fine Arts, 2 Cathedral Road, Kolkata, West Bengal, India. [Other possible performances in Oct.]. Directed by Buddhadeb Das, with Debesh Roychowdhury, Biplab Bandyopadhyay, Chaiti Ghoshal, Suparna Das, Somdutta Ghosh, Karna and Subrata. Lighting design by Soumen Chakraborty. Call +91 98755 60868 or check the website for more information.
  
• Salesman 之死  (Zhī sǐ/Death) by Yangtze Repertory Theater, in association with Gung Ho Projects, is a bilingual new play inspired by the true story of Arthur Miller directing Death of a Salesman in China. Having begun in 2018 as a workshop production, written by Jeremy Tiang and directed and developed by Michael Leibenluft, the play was originally scheduled for March/April 2020 by Target Margin theatre but had to be cancelled due to COVID. Featuring Sandia Ang, Sonnie Brown, Claire Hsu, Julia Gu, Lydia Jialu Li, and Jo Mei, with set design by Chika Shimizu. Now, the play will run 10-28 October at the Connelly Theater (220 E 4th St, Manhattan) with the official opening set for Monday, October 16. Salesman 之死  centers on Shen Huihui, a young university professor, who is summoned to the Beijing People’s Art Theatre for a special task: to interpret for Arthur Miller, who will soon arrive to direct his play Death of a Salesman – in Mandarin. Meanwhile, the Chinese ensemble, newly out of the Cultural Revolution, have never met “a salesman.” Will they be able to find common ground? Mostly based on true events, Salesman 之死  is a multilingual tale of cultural confusion, impossible translation, and unexpected encounters amid the chaos of theater making. Call (646) 343-1584 or check the website for more information.
  
• In its seventh season, Riverdale (on CW) is airing its latest episode (#13) on June 28^th 2023 titled The Crucible, loosely based on Miller’s play, as one of the gang’s favorite HS teachers gets accused of being a communist and the town hysteria that follows as they try to defend her!
• “Muses & Self: Photographs by Allen Ginsberg” at Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles 10 Aug.-23 Sept. is of Allen Ginsberg’s Photographs alongside poems generated by an A.I. trained on those same images, one of which includes Miller from 1985 taken in a Copenhagen elevator! Check the website for more information.
  

• Who Killed Marilyn? by Sharleen Cooper Cohen, will have two more industry readings sponsored by KGM on March 10^th at 11am and 2.30. Directed by Dick Scanlan with Rebecca Faulkenberry (replacing Elizabeth Stanley as Marilyn), and the rest of the cast all doubling roles, includes Victor Almanzar, Erich Bergen, Joe Carroll, Edward James Hyland, Dale Soules, Matthew James Thomas, and Charlie Hofheimer as Arthur Miller/Sam “Moomey” Giancanna. Check here for tickets.
• Death of a Salesman: A New Play on 21 and 28 Feb., and 4 March at Under St Marks, on St. Marks Place, East Village, NYC. A play about death, sales, men, but most importantly, it is 100 percent brand new baby (Sunglasses Emoji). Watch in awe as the nation’s two brightest entrepreneurs hustle, grind, backstab, and sacrifice everything they have to bring their vision to life (the vision is eco-friendly tennis balls). This is one of 25 plays and pieces in the seventeenth annual FRIGID Fringe Festival that are also being simulcast – performed in person (on stage at either Under St. Marks or Kraine’s Theater) and simultaneously streamed online. Check here for more information, how to stream, and tickets for streaming or in person.
• The 73rd Berlin International Film Festival opened on 16 February, 2023 with a screening of She Came to Me, the latest from Rebecca Miller. Billed as a romantic comedy of a different sort, Miller both wrote and directed. It stars Peter Dinklage, Marisa Tomei, Joanna Kulig, Brian d’Arcy James, and Anne Hathaway. Set in New York City, it focuses on a composer named Steven Lauddem, played by Dinklage, who finds himself creatively stuck and incapable of writing the score for what is supposed to be his comeback opera. When his wife, Patricia, played by Hathaway, suggests that he set off in search of inspiration, Steven will find much more than he had hoped or imagined.
• The Good John Proctor 11 March-1 April by Talene Monahon by Bedlam, in The Connelly Theater, 220 East 4^th Street, New York, NY. Directed by Caitlin Sullivan, with Tavi Gevinson, Brittany K. Allen, and Susannah Perkins. Set design by Cate McCrea. Gevinson previously starred in the 2016 Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible about the same event as Mary Warren, this time round she’ll play Abigail Williams. The play offers a new look at the lead up to the Salem Witch Trials focusing on the inner lives of the girls involved. Call 1-833-4BEDLAM or check the website for more information. World premier.
  
• “Arthur Miller: American Witness” a Book Talk with John Lahr and John Guare took place on Tues., 21 Feb., 2023 at 12:30 PM at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in the Edmond J. Safra Plaza, at 36 Battery Place, New York, NY. In his new book distinguished theater critic John Lahr brings a unique perspective to the life of Arthur Miller, the playwright who almost singlehandedly brought twentieth-century American theater to a new level of cultural sophistication. Organized around the fault lines of Miller’s life and concentrating largely on his most prolific decades of the 1940s through the 1960s, Lahr provides an original interpretation of Miller’s work, personality, and legacy. Lahr will be in conversation with award-winning playwright John Guare. This was a virtual event, and you can watch the recording, here.
• An online Yiddish theater workshop, as well as Yiddish courses on all levels, is starting on the week of January 15, sponsored by the venerable Toronto UJA Committee for Yiddish. Each course is $160. In the workshop, which will run on Tuesday evenings from 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm EST, students will act out the roles of the Yiddish translation (by Joseph Bulov and Luba Kadison) of Death of a Salesman. The same version New Yiddish Rep performed in New York City in 2015 to high acclaim, with Avi Hoffman playing the lead (pictures below). Scripts in the workshop will be available in both transliteration and in Yiddish, and no previous Yiddish or performance experience is required. The workshop will be facilitated by performer, director, and playwright, David Gale. Go here for more information or to sign up.
  
• A new (2023) listserv for scholars interested in sharing news, announcements, and materials is being created. It is called INADR: International Network of American Drama Research and is hosted by the University of Erfurt, Germany, and they are inviting scholarly subscribers. You can subscribe and unsubscribe at any time without additional confirmation from the admin. Sign up here: https://www2.uni-erfurt.de/mailman/listinfo/inadr. If you want to share information or send out queries of a scholarly nature, send it to inadr@list.uni-erfurt.de and it will automatically be distributed to all subscribers. The list represents an effort to connect and expand the community of scholars that has emerged from various international American drama and theater conferences in Spain and France over the past two decades, so feel free to share the invitation with interested students and colleagues. The digital network aims to provide subscribers from around the world with a platform for sharing relevant information concerning their scholarly work in the field of North American drama and theater, such as announcements of upcoming conferences, digital lectures, publication opportunities, job openings, or fellowship competitions. You may also use the list to post inquiries concerning your research or teaching in the field of North American drama and theater. This list is unmoderated, meaning individual subscribers can share information directly with the entire list. We ask that you use this list for scholarly purposes only and refrain from personal and/or political statements, or any kind of spam.  
• In celebration of Inge Morath’s upcoming centennial in May, 2023 — Versicherungskammer Kulturstiftung’s Kunstfoyer, CLAIRByKahn and the Inge Morath Estate present a retrospective exhibition of Magnum Photos photographer, Inge Morath (1923-2002). Inge Morath – Hommage, 21 Dec, 2022 – 01 May, 2023. Kunstfoyer, Maximilianstr. 53, 80530 München, Germany. It will showcase close to 200 images from Inge’s prolific career featuring her iconic images, as well as portraits of celebrities, artists, and literary figures. Accompanying this retrospective exhibition is a book published by Schirmer/Mosel, edited by Isabel Siben and Anna-Patricia Kahn with text by Inge Morath. Also included in this book for the very first time, a special foreword by Morath’s daughter, Rebecca Miller. “No words can unravel Inge Morath’s complex, mysterious conundrum of a persona. Yet we have her photographs, which speak of her empathy, her lack of narcissism, her curiosity about other human beings and cultures, and her deep hope that art could be a candle against the darker elements of human nature.” — Rebecca Miller. For further inquiries, please contact: Isabel Siben | isabel.siben@vkb.de | Kunstfoyer; Anna-Patricia Kahn | apkahn@clairbykahn.com | CLAIRByKahn; or Sana Manzoor | sana@ingemorath.org | Inge Morath Estate.

  

• 2022
• Sasha Hutchings and Nik Walker to Host Arthur Miller Foundation Honors. Celebrating the power of public school theatre education, the annual event will be held November 14, 2022 in NYC. This year’s ceremony will feature songs written by the late Stephen Sondheim, with Broadway favorites joining the stage alongside NYC public school students. This year’s event will highlight three generations of student/teacher playwrights who will receive the Arthur Miller Foundation Legacy Award, celebrating extraordinary women who have carved out a legacy in American theater. The award goes to Pulitzer Prize Winner Paula Vogel, her former student and fellow Pulitzer Prize Winner Lynn Nottage, and their former student and Tony nominee Christina Anderson. The Arthur Miller Foundation will also honor leading international publisher Penguin Random House with the Arthur Miller Foundation Arts & Culture Award. Linda Ames Key, an exemplary NYC public school theater teacher, will be given the Arthur Miller Foundation Excellence in Arts Education Award.
  
• 21 Sept. 2022 The Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival and the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College presented Claire Gleitman at an international book launch for her new book: Anxious Masculinity in the Drama of Arthur Miller and Beyond: Salesmen, Sluggers, and Big Daddies at 7 pm. The event was run on Zoom, and can be viewed here. Gleitman reads from her book and then is interviewed by Professor Sue Abbotson of Rhode Island College.
• German power metal band Blind Guardian’s new album, The God Machine, released in 2022 contains a track apparently inspired by The Crucible titled ‘Deliver Us From Evil.’ All the other tracks are based on a variety of sci-fantasy novels and TV shows that include homages to Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, Patrick Rothfuss’ The Kingkiller Chronicle, Brandon Sanderson’s The Stormlight Archives, Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Witcher, Hans Christian Anderson’s The Ice-Maiden, Battlestar Galactica, and The Leftovers! Strange company.
• Australian composer Kate Moore’s “Crucible” for viola and marimba by Totemic released in 2022– the title inspired by Arthur Miller’s play, available through Bandcamp.
  
• Another play about Abigail: Abigail 2-7 May 2022 in person, then until 20 May online, written by Stephen Gillard and Laura Turner of Fury Theatre in association with Asylum Theatre at the Space, 269 Westferry Rd, Millwall, on the Isle of Dogs, London, UK. Tells the story of how Abigail and Mercy flee to Boston after the witch trials. Directed by Stephen Gillard with Laura Turner, Lucy Sheree Cooper, Sophie Jane Corner, and Haley Muraleedharan. Check out the trailer on YouTube. Once booked, Abigail can be watched on demand until 11pm on the 20th of May.
• Robert (Bob) Miller, Miller’s eldest son died March 6^th 2022.  Married for 45 years to Jean, whom he had met while exploring on Kesey’s Magic Bus with the Merry Pranksters. The couple had three children (Jessica, Kate and Zach). He had a successful career as a commercial, film and television director/producer (he produced the film versions of The Crucible featuring Daniel Day-Lewis, and Focus, featuring William H. Macy). He also directed for the stage at Pittsburgh Playhouse, and served as Distinguished Master of Arts in Residence at Point Park University for 7 years, where he was awarded an Honorary Doctoral of Arts degree. Please read the sensitive reflection on Bob’s life and career on the following link.
  
• Jagriti Theatre, Whitefield, Bengaluru, India celebrated World Theatre Day on March 27 2022 by bringing to the stage a reading of Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible. Arundhati Raja, the founder-trustee of Jagriti and director of the play says The Crucible was chosen because of its relevance in society today.
• First collection of short stories since Personal Velocity (2001) from Rebecca Miller: Total (2022). Book Browse says: “Each of the seven stories in Total is a full world, painted with vivid strokes, one whose people and questions stay with the reader long after the story has ended and the book has been closed” and gives it five stars, while Kirkus Review asserts: “A beautifully constructed, acutely felt, morally honest collection.” 
  
• Plays featuring Miller or riffing of his work seem to have become very popular these days–on 26 March 2022, as part of the Broadway at The Bank Show And Gala, at the Arts Bank in Fort Plain, New York, was a production of Wildfire Dogs by Sean Lynch, a short play about a chance meeting between Miller, and Joe DiMaggio in a Manhattan hotel bar seven years after the death of their ex-wife, Monroe. Sean Lynch played DiMaggio, Pete Mizzo, Miller and Chelsea LeSage was Enid the bartender.

  

• Eleanor Burgess (who wrote The Niceties), has written a play titled Wife of a Salesman, that riffs off Miller’s Death of a  Salesman. It was first be produced in 2022 by Writers Theatre in association with Milwaukee Repertory Theater, running from 3 March-3 April, with an official opening on 11 March at the Alexandra C. and John D. Nichols Theatre, 325 Tudor Court, Glencoe, IL. Directed by Jo Bonney with Kate Fry, Amanda Drinkall, Rom Barkholder, and Dekyi Rongé. Set design by Heather Gilber. Billed as “A recentering of where ‘attention must be paid.’ What if a 1950s housewife from a particularly well-known American play drove from Brooklyn to Boston to confront her husband’s mistress? Would the encounter be explosive? Or would the two women discover they have more in common than one might assume? Taking inspiration from Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, this world premiere play imagines how a potentially combustible confrontation brings themes of marriage, duty and division to the surface—and the ways in which the world has, and hasn’t, changed across generations.” Sounds intriguing. The play is now getting another run at Milwaukee Repertory Theater. It opens on Tuesday, Sept. 27 and runs through Nov. 6.  2022. Directed by Marti Lyons, with Heidi Armbruster. Check their website for more information.