Thom Dunn is a Boston-based writer, musician, and utterly terrible dancer. He is the singer/guitarist for the indie rock/power-pop the Roland High Life, as well as a staff writer for the New York Times’ Wirecutter and a regular contributor at BoingBoing.net. Thom enjoys Oxford commas, metaphysics, and romantic clichés (especially when they involve whiskey), and he firmly believes that Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" is the single greatest atrocity committed against mankind. He is a graduate of Clarion Writer's Workshop at UCSD ('13) & Emerson College ('08).
Here's a little video I put together for the upcoming world premiere of Lydia R. Diamond's Smart People at the Huntington, which starts previews this Friday and runs through June 29. Check it out!
We've also got one of those fancy 35 Below parties planned for it, after the Friday night performance on May 30. $25 gets you tickets + access to the party, including free drinks and live music. So it's basically a pretty sweet deal. Woohoo!
We've got one week left of The Jungle Book (now officially our highest-grossing show of all time), and previews began tonight for The Power of Duff, a new play by Stephen Belber (and featuring, among others, Jennifer Westfeldt, writer of Kissing Jessica Stein and wife of Jon Hamm). Here's a little video I put together about it:
Here's another brief video I made for our Annual Fund ask, which hopefully gives a glimpse of the size and scope of our productions (and makes clear that even when shows are selling well, we still need money because, well, theatre this good don't come cheap, y'know?)
I'm also trying to up my blogging quotient for the company -- because hey, I enjoy writing sometimes, believe it or not -- and here's one of my latest posts, about our new young donor program "The Hunt."
Maria Aitken is one of our favorite directors at the Huntington, and we're excited to welcome her back to Boston this fall to bring her expertise to AR Gurney's American comedy of manners The Cocktail Hour. Here's a little video I did with Artistic Director Peter DuBois about the production:
One of our other new plays in the Huntington's upcoming season is The Power of Duff, which had its world premiere last summer but is undergoing some extensive re-writes for this fall. I spoke with director Peter DuBois about the production in the video below, and I talk more extensively about the story and script over on the Huntington blog:
The opening show of our 2013-2014 season at the Huntington is a brand new stage adaptation of Disney's The Jungle Book, which we're all pretty excited about. I talk about it more extensively over on the Huntington's blog, and here's a video interview I put together with our Artistic Director Peter DuBois about the production:
Performances of The Jungle Book begin September 7 at the Avenue of the Arts / BU Theatre.
For the past 20 years, Ryan Landry has been making these crazy queer-mash-up-parody plays full of puppets, drag queens, and all kinds of offensive brilliance, and he's established quite a reputation for himself in doing this, consistently selling out 4 or more shows a year which he typically performs in the basement of a gay bar in the Fenway. We're finally teaming up with him at the Huntington to bring his irreverent theatrical style to a larger stage, and give him the opportunity to collaborate with different artists (and hopefully help him to continue to grow as an artist, you know). I spoke with our Artistic Director, Peter DuBois, about the wild works of Ryan Landry, in anticipation of his upcoming adaptation of Fritz Lang's German child murder film noir M, which plays March 29 through April 27 at the Huntington. Check it out:
(...that's how the song goes, right?) Coming up next at the Huntington, Liesl Tommy is returning to direct the classic A Raisin In The Sun, a play which I probably don't need to tell you anything about because you've already read it. But here's a video I made of our Artistic Director Peter DuBois talking about what makes this production special (including a mention of Bevin's next project, the Boston premiere of last year's Tony Award winner Clybourne Park for SpeakEasy Stage).
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERERCo1dI1o]
A Raisin In The Sun plays March 8 - April 7, 2013 at the Avenue of the Arts / BU Theatre, and Clybourne Park runs March 1 - 30, 2013 at the South End / Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA.
First of all, I'd like to take a quick moment to wish myself a Happy Birthday. So, Happy Birthday, Me! Thanks, Me! Fun fact: Our Town playwright Thornton Wilder spent most of his life and is buried in my home town of Hamden, CT. Other fun fact: I never actually knew anything about Our Town or Thornton Wilder when I still lived in Hamden, but I did play lots of shitty punk rock shows in the Thornton Wilder Auditorium, so, ya know, there's that.
Our production of Our Town at the Huntington opens next week, and I'm incredibly about finally having the chance to see this show in this way. David Cromer, the director, won a MacArthur "Genius" Award, largely for his work on this show, and everyone who's seen it so far (it's been performed in several different incarnations across the country before this, but this is the same design and approach, with a new, all-Boston cast) has raved about how incredibly how much, how much the show affected them and blew their minds away.
But don't take my word for it. Here's a new video I made about it:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl_Z1uqkwQk]
(Did I mention that my good friend Jeff Marcus AKA "Calvin Elder" AKA Avenger from True Believers is in the show as well? Sorry, no spandex this time)
We just started rehearsals today (well, rehearsals in Boston; there were a few preliminary days of tablework in NYC) for our upcoming production of Harold Pinter's Betrayal, one of his most highly regarded plays. The show runs November 9 - December 9 at the Avenue of the Arts / BU Theatre, under the direction of Maria Aitken aka the mom of the director on SMASH aka the lady from A Fish Called Wanda aka fucking Maria Aitken. Anyway, here's a video I made of our Artistic Director Peter DuBois talking about the production:[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOhQBRYb-So&w=485&h=273]
Here's my first video featurette on the Huntington's upcoming American premiere of Now Or Later, an edgy political thriller by Christopher Shinn that's set on election night, in which some inappropriate Facebook party photos of the soon-to-be-President's son get leaked to the public. The show runs October 12 - November 10 at the South End / Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA, and features my good friend Grant MacDermott as John, Jr. Here's Artistic Director Peter DuBois discussing the play. (More to come, obvi) [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUKuJiwdiS8&w=480&h=270]
So when I'm not in rehearsals for / plowing through re-writes on TRUE BELIEVERS, I still, of course, have my day job to deal with (which has been incredibly supportive and helpful through this entire process, so hooray for gainful employment!). While our 30th anniversary season at the Huntington is now over (and what a successful season it was!), we're now busy gearing up for the fall and the start of our next season, which means lots of work (because it always does) but less immediate hard deadlines (which I guess is now...for now, until it's not). ANYWAY, here's a video I made of our Artistic Director, Peter DuBois, discussing the first show in our 2012-2013 Season, David Lindsay-Abaire's recent Broadway hit GOOD PEOPLE (conveniently set in good ol' South Boston). Check it out:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odPjupNifbM]
The second video feature that I produced based on Evan M. Wiener's Captors, which is currently having its world premiere at the Huntington (before a highly-likely Broadway production). This one focuses on the personal history of Adolf Eichmann, "the architect of the Holocaust," and his relationship with Peter Malkin, the Israeli Mossad agent who captured him in Argentina. It's kind of like a frenemy-bromance, between a Nazi and an Israel. Don't believe me? Check out the video below. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhGgFWUrNG4&w=500&h=284]
The first in a series of short behind-the-scenes videos I made, focusing on the world premiere of Captors by Evan M. Wiener. Captors tells the true(-ish) story of the capture of Nazi mastermind Adolf Eichmann by a group of Israeli secret agents in Buenos Aires in 1960. And, well, everything else you need to know, you can probably find out by watching the video! [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZACW2FH1Qyk&w=500&h=284]
Captors plays November 11 — December 11 at the BU Theatre on Huntington Avenue, with plans to move to Broadway sometime later. Check it out!
Yeah, yeah, I realize that I just posted about the opening of Before I Leave You at the Huntington, but we're also gearing up for another world premiere — Captors, about the capture of Nazi mastermind Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires in 1960. Based on the memoirs of Peter Z. Malkin, one of the Israeli Mossad agents who held Eichmann in captivity in Buenos Aires until they were able to get him out of the country, the play is written by Evan M. Wiener and directed by my good friend (slash boss) Peter DuBois. The video below was originally filmed in May; it's a conversation with Peter about the play, which opens here in Boston on November 13 before (probably) moving to Broadway (details are still in the works, but that's the plan right now anyway). [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQg00msX9EM&w=500&h=284]
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VrMlpoRyzY&w=560&h=345]
Read MoreCheck out this brand new teaser trailer that I created for Stephen Karam's Sons of the Prophet, which is having it's world premiere at the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston before moving to the Roundabout Theatre Company in New York later in the year. Also, featuring Joanna Gleason, who totally won the Tony Award for the Best Actress for the original production of Into the Woods! Ya know, if you're into that kind of thing.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2hLIVECji8&w=500&h=311]
And in case you were wondering, the deer's name is Bruce.