At a time when conventional arts protection is shrinking and theaters throughout the nation are navigating an more and more difficult panorama, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Firm is creating a brand new area for artists, concepts, and deeper conversations about how groundbreaking theater will get made.
Launching Monday, August 31, Mammoth within the Room is a brand new podcast from Woolly Mammoth Theatre Firm hosted by acclaimed theater critic and journalist Naveen Kumar. Filmed on the Eaton Lodge in Washington, DC, the sequence will convey Kumar into dialog with playwrights and different theatermakers creating work at Woolly Mammoth or with ties to the acclaimed DC theater, with new episodes rolling out all through Woolly Mammoth’s Season 47.
The podcast grew from Woolly Mammoth Inventive Director Reggie D. White’s need to broaden how audiences have interaction with theater and supply larger perception into the artistic course of behind growing new work. An evolution of Woolly Mammoth’s Play Membership mannequin, Mammoth within the Room creates a brand new platform for bringing audiences, artists, and stakeholders collectively to rejoice new voices and new tales, whereas providing listeners a deeper have a look at the concepts, conversations, and inventive course of that form a manufacturing lengthy earlier than it reaches the stage.
With podcasts persevering with to introduce audiences to new voices and concepts, White noticed a chance to mix Kumar’s deep data of theater and dramaturgical experience with Woolly Mammoth’s longstanding dedication to producing provocative new work that pushes creative boundaries.
“We’re all the time fascinated about new methods to convey individuals into the theater dialog, particularly audiences who might not already be aware of how new work will get made,” stated White. “Naveen brings such a deep understanding of theater and the artistic course of, and a podcast felt like a pure method to take listeners behind the scenes and assist them higher perceive the journey a brand new play takes earlier than it reaches the stage.”
“I’m honored to companion on this podcast with Woolly Mammoth, a theater I take into account on the vanguard for what’s potential onstage and within the trade transferring ahead,” stated Naveen Kumar. “The panorama for regional arts protection is continuous to shift, and it’s important to provide you with artistic fashions for the way to generate dialog across the work being finished and why it issues each to audiences’ on a regular basis lives and to the tradition at massive. Reggie understands that, and I hope my conversations with this season’s playwrights may be insightful, shocking, and enjoyable.”
WHY NOW
Mammoth within the Room arrives amid important shifts within the American arts and media landscapes. Conventional arts journalism has contracted, venues proceed to face financial pressures, and far of the broader leisure trade more and more depends on present mental property, diversifications, sequels, and acquainted franchises.
In opposition to that backdrop, Woolly Mammoth continues to supply artists with a house for brand new, unique, and boundary-pushing work. The podcast extends that mission past the stage by giving audiences entry to conversations about not solely the completed manufacturing, but in addition the concepts, selections, challenges, and inventive processes that convey new work to life.
Moderately than focusing solely on what audiences finally see onstage, Mammoth within the Room will discover the usually unseen life cycle of making new theater, providing listeners a larger understanding of how playwrights and theatermakers develop work from idea to manufacturing.
FIRST EPISODE: PLAYWRIGHT STEVE YOCKEY
The inaugural episode options playwright Steve Yockey discussing Venus, his groundbreaking new play being produced at Woolly Mammoth.
All through the season, Kumar will sit down with playwrights behind Woolly Mammoth’s mainstage productions, whereas additionally making room for conversations with distinguished theatermakers and artists linked to Woolly. Mammoth within the Room is recorded at Eaton DC, whose help in offering area for the sequence helps convey these conversations past the stage and to new audiences. Listeners can obtain, hear, and share episodes by way of Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts, with new conversations debuting all through Woolly Mammoth’s Season 47.
ABOUT NAVEEN KUMAR
Naveen Kumar is a New York-based critic and tradition journalist whose work focuses on theater and the performing arts. He has written for nationwide publications together with The New York Occasions and Selection and beforehand contributed theater criticism to The Washington Submit. His expertise masking artists, productions, and the broader theater trade brings a journalist’s perspective and deep data of the artwork type to Mammoth within the Room.
ABOUT WOOLLY MAMMOTH THEATRE COMPANY
The Tony Award-winning Woolly Mammoth Theatre Firm creates badass theater that highlights the gorgeous, difficult, and super complexity of our world. For over 40 years, Woolly has maintained a excessive commonplace of creative rigor whereas concurrently daring to take dangers, innovate, and push past perceived boundaries. One of many few remaining theaters within the nation to keep up an organization of artists, Woolly serves an important analysis and improvement position inside the American theater. Performs premiered right here have gone on to productions at tons of of theatres everywhere in the world and have had lasting impacts on the sphere.
Woolly Mammoth Theatre Firm is led by Inventive Director Reggie D. White and Managing Director Kimberly E. Douglas. Woolly Mammoth Theatre Firm is positioned in Washington, DC, equidistant from the Capitol and the White Home. This distinctive location influences Woolly’s funding in actively working towards an equitable, participatory, and inventive democracy. Woolly Mammoth stands upon occupied, unceded territory: the ancestral homeland of the Nacotchtank whose descendants belong to the Piscataway peoples. Moreover, the muse of this metropolis, and a lot of the unique buildings in Washington, DC, have been funded by the sale of enslaved individuals of African descent and constructed by their arms.
