Featuring Melissa Castillo Planas, Bret Maney and Magdalena Sagardia: This workshop will explore the ways in which to diversify the study of literature via the incorporation of Latinx authors. 

A totally amazing totally online production of WONDERFUL FLIGHT TO THE MUSHROOM PLANET, the great story of two children and their chicken who fly to the Mushroom Planet to save it from destruction. This original musical, composed by Prof. Penny Prince of the Music Program, with a script written by the cast, is based on a play by Jeffrey Beer and the much loved science fiction book of the same name by Eleanor Cameron. There are 10 songs, dances, laughter, and love.

Suitable for ages 2 to 120. 

The cast and crew are current Lehman students, alumni, and community members. 

Technical Director: Eduardo Resendiz-Gomez (alum);
Recording Engineer: Steven Buonanotte (Lehman Multimedia Center);
Animator: Brandon Marcano (alum)
Choreographer: Colette Ambo (alum)

Premiering Tuesday, September 22, 2020 at 6:30 p.m. as a livestream on YouTube, and thereafter available on YouTube.

Length: Approximately one hour.

Link to Premier on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/IbwgYh2b_KA_

The Trouble with My Name examines the issues of language, race, and social justice in an eye-opening performance where Ávila engages the audience as he tells the story of his life and reads poetry that illustrates what it means to be the American of the future. Ávila’s show breaks barriers and embraces the diversity of a nation whose history is rich and colorful. The message transcends boundaries of race, ethnicity, and geography.

Andrés Gómez is a Colombian American poet, speaker, actor, and author of Fractures, winner of the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry, Hijito, winner of the Broken River Prize and a #1 SPD bestseller, and the memoir Man Up: Reimagining Modern Manhood, released by Penguin Random House. A star of HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, TV One’s Verses and Flow, and Spike Lee’s #1 box office movie Inside Man with Denzel Washington, Carlos is widely known for his viral poems, “Where are you really from?” and “What Latino Looks Like,” which have garnered millions of views online. Winner of the Atlanta Review International Poetry Prize and the Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry, he partnered with John Legend on Senior Orientation, a program to counteract bullying and champion inclusive masculinity among high school students. Carlos is a proud Latinx and father. 

“What fools these mortals be!” 

Lehman's Theatre and Dance Program will stage a production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night's Dream, an iconic comedy of love both sought and unsought, where the mortal and supernatural collide, combine, and connect for amorous adventures.

This multimedia production features a cast of nine performers in over 20 different roles. The production focuses on the notion of dreams and transformation of characters as they move from the worlds of working class craftspeople, a Duke and Duchess's court that is rooted in Greek and Amazonian mythology, and the world of the “Fairies” whose very existence is both magical and fantastical.

The audience will get to see what usually takes place behind the scenes. The actors, who have been preparing for the past three months, take on multiple roles and have been working in the physical performance training style of Jacques Lecoq. Through movement and voice transformations, audiences will see the “translation” of one character to the next in real time. In the Elizabethan vein our actors not only transform characters, but gender roles and examine the very nature of what we call “male” and “female,” as we see that love truly is in the eye (and imagination) of the beholder.

This production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream welcomes the audience into a theatrical dreamscape that embraces the magic of what live theatre does best: letting us enter a world that has its own rules and realities like dreams; like love itself.