Long Wharf Theatre, 2024-25

“We’re still here,” is the declaration announcing Long Wharf Theatre's 25-26 season. It's a good lede for my review of Long Wharf's last season, too. Long Wharf Theatre is still here, but “here” is not fixed; it moves. Long Wharf's performances and events were held at venues throughout New Haven and as far away as Middletown, Connecticut. All the shows and events supported Long Wharf's goal to be a nexus “where bold storytelling and vibrant communities come together to shape the future of American theatre.” The shifting event locations also got audience members into communities and venues they'd perhaps never visited before. 

The season started with a three-day “Artistic Congress,” 15 consecutive sessions each scheduled for 1 1/2 to 2 hours that were talks, panel discussions, audience workshops, and short scenes at venues in New Haven, culminating with a staged reading of Anna Deavere Smith's work-in-progress, This Ghost of Slavery, in the Crowell Concert Hall at Wesleyan University in Middletown. The New Haven events were held at Gateway Community College, BAR (a nightclub), the New Haven Public Library, Yale's Schwartzman Center, and the Yale University Art Gallery. Long Wharf's signage—often sandwich boards on the sidewalk—was excellent for guiding attendees to the venues, and there always were smiling greeters to tell us we'd arrived at the right place. 

Long Wharf's publications often talk about how storytelling is essential for understanding ourselves, each other, and the world around us. The Congress touched on those ideas but also suggested that collaborative work (what theatre makers do) can be a way for our communities to address our common problems. One of the sessions, “Civic Scores #2: 'Who has the pen to shift the housing crisis,'” had audience members in teams using Lego blocks to design ideal communities. What's ideal and for whom? There were interesting discussions among participants about the complexities of zoning and building codes. We didn't solve the housing crisis, but we got far beyond, “Somebody should do something.” 

Anna Deavere Smith's This Ghost of Slavery is an extension of her work in documentary theatre. Previous verbatim theatre works of hers have featured a solo performer (often herself) portraying a multitude of people with a script based on interviews she had with those people. This Ghost of Slavery is a bit different, being based on archival material as well as recent interviews. The 39 characters of the play, originally published in The Atlantic magazine's December 2023 issue, were portrayed by 17 performers, including two musicians, in a staged reading, arrayed across the platform at Crowell Concert Hall. The play, directed by Aneesha Kurdtarkar, is set in Baltimore and Annapolis, moves between the 1860s and the present, and explores the school-to-prison pipeline as part of the legacy of American slavery. Although published, the script was a work in progress, a bit long in performance, but an important exploration of how the past affects how we treat each other now.  

She Loves Me, with music and lyrics by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick and book by Joe Masteroff, was a wonderful holiday celebration, performed at the Lab at Conncorp in Hamden. Based on a play by Miklós László and set in Budapest in 1937, the plot revolves around the employees of Maraczek’s Parfumerie. Clerks Georg and Amalia loathe each other in the shop, while unaware that each is the other’s secret pen pal who met through lonely-hearts ads. A lovely final scene had the lovers together under falling snow.  

Director Jacob G. Padrón, assembled an excellent singing company of actors of different races and ethnicities, different body types. The only nod to conventional American musical casting expectations was that the lead couple were thin people, young and lively.  

The performance space at the Lab at Conncorp was formerly a middle school gym. The staging, designed by Emmie Finckel, was tennis court style, with the audience on two facing sides, the main playing space in the middle, and the larger scenic elements at the ends. One end was the parfumerie shop. The other end, a comfortable 1930s living room, held the four-piece orchestra. Scenes outside the parfumerie, such as the restaurant, were played in the middle space with a few props quickly brought into place by the actors playing the minor characters. Changes of season were indicated by simple devices such as the delivery boy taking leaves from his pocket, tossing them into the air, and announcing “Autumn.” Later he took snow from his pocket and tossed it and announced “Winter.” The lighting, designed by Jiyoun Chang, shifted color to match. The show ran smoothly and the singing was beautiful. I found it enchanting. 

El Coquí Espectacular and the Bottle of Doom had us visiting Southern Connecticut State University’s John Lyman Auditorium in New Haven for a show in the stage left wing. The Lyman stage is so big that the stage wing provided enough room for five rows of audience seating facing an end-stage. The setting, designed by Gerardo Diaz Sanchez, was a city block in Brooklyn: three brick building facades, a fire escape, a roll-up steel door, and a billboard facing a sidewalk, forming a wide but shallow playing space. The door rolled up and a wagon rolled out for interior scenes. The brick walls and the billboard were surfaces for projections by John Horzen. 

The play, written by Matt Barbot and directed by Kinan Valdez, is a mash-up of comic book superhero fantasy and Puerto Rican real-life in American capitalist economy. Alex, the main character, a young Nuyorican comic book artist, creates a comic book superhero, El Coquí Espectacular, a crime-fighter based on Puerto Rican folklore about a tree frog. Alex takes his invention further by creating an El Coquí costume and wearing it as a real-life protector in his neighborhood. His older brother Joe, a marketing exec for a major soda company, sees an opportunity to use Alex's help marketing to Puerto Ricans a spicy, sugary soft drink Voltage—so sugary it's unhealthy. The play at SCSU worked with the tensions between identity, responsibility to community, and making a living—and went off into fantasy with the appearance of the blood-sucking El Chupacabra and battles between it and El Coquí, punctuated with POW! and BAM! as seen in the Batman 1960s TV series projected on the setting. 

El Coquí Espectacular and the Bottle of Doom was an interesting piece, but many scenes were played with the volume turned up to eleven. That intensity was amusing for the 25-minute Batman TV shows but wearying for a full-length play. However, it spoke to the audience. One person during the talkback said, “I am in a comic book,” and he seemed to like that. Another audience member said he appreciated seeing Puerto Rican folklore being taken seriously. Why can't there be Puerto Rican super-heroes?  

Unbecoming Tragedy: A Ritual Journey Toward Destiny was a one-person show written and performed by Terrence Riggins. It was presented at the Off Broadway Theater, behind the Shops at Yale—literally off Broadway, accessed via a footpath through the middle of the block. Unbecoming Tragedy was his own story of addiction and incarceration. The setting was the corner of a jail cell. The blank cell walls served as projection surfaces for fantastic images by designer Hannah Tran. 

In the playwright's notes in the program, Riggins calls his show a ritual, a confession, a rite of passage, a cleansing, a way through. I saw an exorcism. Riggins portrayed a tortured soul, trying to tear the shame of stealing his dying mother's opal necklace to support his drug habit out of his life. The director, Cheyenne Barboza, in her program note invited the audience members to “become more aware of the systems in our society that isolate and marginalize. And in that awareness, I hope we choose compassion.” An insert in the program listed thirteen local resources offering help for people and their families dealing with addiction, hopelessness, and problems with mental health, incarceration, and reintegration into society.  

“More than a theme, We’re Still Here is a statement of resilience,” said Long Wharf Theatre's 2025-26 season announcement. In early May, Long Wharf Theatre was notified that the National Endowment for the Arts had terminated four grants, totaling more than $170,000. Besides terminating these grants, the NEA issued new guidelines for grant applications prohibiting programs promoting “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” in accordance with Executive Order No. 14173, or promoting “gender ideology,” in keeping with Executive Order No. 14168. "Gender ideology" has no accepted definition but is used by opponents of gender equality and LGBTQ+ rights. 

Unlike some major entertainment corporations, Long Wharf Theatre has not canceled shows to align with Executive Orders; DEI is integral to its vision. The season webpage promises the next chapter in this vision: “co-productions that reach beyond state lines, programming that uplifts historically marginalized voices, and performances that blur the boundary between art and civic action.”