Melissa Crespo News

This free festival, running May 16–22, explores and celebrates new voices in American Theater. With workshops, a panel discussion, and talk-backs—both in-person and online—the New Work Festival strengthens TheaterWorks Hartford’s commitment to the development of important new plays.

TheaterWorks Hartford is thrilled to present the 2022 edition of its New Work Festival. This free festival, running May 16–22, explores and celebrates new voices in American Theater. With workshops, a panel discussion, and talk-backs—both in-person and online—the New Work Festival strengthens TheaterWorks Hartford’s commitment to the development of important new plays. Participants include playwrights Brooke Berman, Melissa Crespo & Sarah Saltwick, Terry Guest, and James Anthony Tyler who are joined by directors Shariffa Ali, Michael Barakiva, Mikael Burke, and Caitlin Sullivan. Reservations are required and can be made at www.twhartford.org.

Hartford Stage announced today the lineup for the Tony Award-winning theater's 2022/2023 season. Three classics, Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, and Alice Childress' Trouble in Mind, will join two new plays.

World premieres, musicals, cutting edge contemporary drama, a beloved American classic and a mystery/comedy make 2022/2023 a season to reconnect with great theater at Syracuse Stage. It is a season filled with enjoyment and opportunities to experience an intriguing variety of live theater.

Arizona Theatre Company's latest production captures an intimate snapshot of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O'Connor at the height of their power in an exciting world premiere.

Playwrights Dipika Guha (“Yoga Play” at Syracuse Stage through Feb. 6), Hilary Bettis and Joy Meads join Syracuse Stage associate artistic director Melissa Crespo and moderator and arts journalist Kelundra Smith for a panel discussion “Inside the Kilroys List” on Jan. 26 at 7 p.m.

Syracuse Stage starts the New Year with an invitation to laugh with the East Coast premiere of Dipika Guha's delightfully satirical comedy “Yoga Play.”

New York Theatre Workshop has announced that Safe Harbors NYC, Dominican Artists Collective and JAG Productions will join Noor Theatre as Companies-In-Residence at NYTW.

The world-premiere script from playwrights Melissa Crespo and Sarah Saltwick follows an architecture professor trying desperately to find a way out of her fears as she tries to start a new life.

Childsplay, one of the nation's leading theatre companies for young audiences, presents its new play, SELENA MARIA SINGS, October 3 through 31 at Herberger Theater Center, Stage West, 222 E. Monroe.

Arizona audiences will be the first to see Justice, a musical written by Lauren Gunderson specifically to premiere at ATC. The epic three-person musical explores the relationship between Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and already, theaters nationwide are lining up to produce it.

Theatre Aspen will present its second annual one-person show festival, Solo Flights, as the third act of this year’s 38th summer season, launching next Wednesday, August 25 and running through Tuesday, August 31, 2021 at the Hurst Theatre in Aspen, Colorado. 

SLAC's 50th Season, dedicated to its patrons and supporters with the theme, 'Community Over Everything,' opens with the long-awaited world premiere of Elaine Jarvik's Four Women Talking About the Man Under the Sheet. A 2020 Kilroys Honoree, the meta, semi-historical piece was originally set to open March 13, 2020, but instead shut down on March 12th due to the pandemic.

Syracuse Stage Artistic Director Robert Hupp today announced an expansion of the senior artistic staff. As of September 1, veteran New York based director Melissa Crespo becomes the theater's associate artistic director. Kyle Bass, who currently holds that position, will transition to a new role as the theater's first resident playwright and will remain a member of the theater's senior artistic staff.

Magik Theatre has announced the 2021-2022 season, featuring six inspiring and courageous productions: Maddi’s Fridge, Snow White, Ella Enchanted: The Musical, The Snowy Day & Other Stories by Ezra Jack Keats, as well as the world premiere productions of Selena Maria Sings and Junie B. Jones: Toothless Wonder at its downtown theatre at Hemisfair. 

Ahead of the start of the 38th Season, Theatre Aspen announced today that after a successful first flight, the organization will present its second annual one-person show festival, Solo Flights, as the third act of this year’s summer season, August 25 – 31, 2021 at the Hurst Theatre in Aspen, Colorado.

Syracuse Stage today announced plans to resume live and in person performance in the 2021/2022 season.

INTAR THEATER announced today INTAR’S MicroTEATRO Festival performed on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen starting on June 17, 2021. MicroTEATRO refers to a collection of small format plays surrounding the same themes (or not) presented at the same time for a rotating audience.

There is an astonishing turn of events toward the end of I and You, but let’s not talk about that. Let’s talk about Walt Whitman instead. Whitman was a revolutionary who overthrew poetry. He trashed the self-conscious, hyperstylized European tropes which had dominated the art and substituted something purely American: a rough, colloquial, muscular free verse which tumbles over itself like the streams and brooks of his Long Island home.

Written by Lauren Gunderson and directed by Melissa Crespo, “I and You” marks a return of artists and actors to performance on stage at Syracuse Stage. The approximately 90 minute play will be performed in the Arthur Storch Theatre on a fully realized set and captured on video by Black Cub Productions.