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Quintessence Theatre
Congrats are in order for Quintessence Theatre’s founding artistic director Alexander Burns, for having purchased the historic Sedgwick Theater in Philly’s Mount Airy section. This now-not-for-profit company’s recent acquisition is right on time for Quintessence’s 15th anniversary, starting this autumn, and Burns’ impending nuptials.
“Thinking how Quintessence began, we were always a “classics”-driven theater company, but run by the next generation of American theater artists,” said Burns. “When we started, Shakespeare-driven theater companies, and their like, were run by septuagenarians; had older, traditional takes on classic stories. What was important was how the classics could be moved forward.”
Not long after Burns’ Quintessence start, he realized that the neighboring Sedgwick was empty and unused. “The vaulted (arched) domes of the lobby space became our home, and needed love,” said Burns of renovating the nearly-100-year-old Sedgwick. “We want to make it a great place for us and something that’ll survive the next 100 for this community… It is our goal to fortify this ornate relic.”
As the Sedgwick undergoes renovations — look for its historic marquee to get new lighting systems, soon — Burns is free to focus on Quintessence’s 15th season with the subheading ‘Dangerous Passions,’ and their first-time theatrical adaptation of James Baldwin’s ‘Giovanni’s Room’.
“This is a season of plays based on people living their own truth, even if that truth is problematic,” said Burns.
In regard to his personal life, Burns married his longtime paramour-partner-and-fellow performer Daniel Miller this weekend. “I always thought that marriage was not for me, despite fighting for it as part of the gay community, but I had this wonderful moment – and we decided to have some fun, and get married.”
Pig Iron Theatre
When University of the Arts announced its sudden close on May 31, its’ loss came at the expense of Philly’s Pig Iron Theatre, and its valued School for Devised Performance, which existed at the UArts as an accrediting body since 2015. Along with not being able to reopen Pig Iron School this fall and pausing their graduate program for at least a semester, UArts has still not repaid $300,000 owed to the Pig-Theater’s teaching/training staff.
“It’s hard to be a Philadelphia artist, and not have connection to UArts,” said Pig Iron co-founder/artistic director Quinn Bauriedel, a UArts associate professor. “It was a hub of vibrant activity. Nobody saw its demise coming in such a shocking way with only seven-days-notice. That put our students in precarious situations, especially those with one semester from finishing and out-of-towners waiting to move to Philly to start Pig Iron studies.”
Without knowing, still, why UArts crashed, Bauriedel wants to get Pig Iron School back on its feet by re-starting the program in January 2025, welcoming robust incoming classes, along with second and third year students for an invigorating spring semester.
“We’d like our students to finish with Pig Iron’s faculty, and the friends and cohorts they made,” said Bauriedel. “We’d like to build this out of our home space in Kensington, but can’t do that this fall, so we’re looking to do something accredited January.”
Bauriedel recalls Pig Iron being around 29 years making “compelling, unconventional art”, and adds that the nonprofit is very resilient. “If we can get the school rolling by January, we could be running-in-full within 2-3 years.”
To that resilience, there have been donations to Pig Iron’s Emergency Bridge Fund, and its upcoming new show at the Wilma as part of the Fringe Festival, ‘Poor Judge’. Starting Sept. 11, ‘Poor Judge’ features the music of Aimee Mann with her permission, as conceived by Pig Iron Co-Founder Dito van Reigersberg, and directed by Artistic Producer Eva Steinmetz.
“After the pandemic and Dito’s long-standing health event, ‘Poor Judge’ is the very best news – a luscious, moody cabaret that takes Mann’s notions into a bracing visual landscape.”
Academy of Music
When ‘Mamma Mia!‘ hits the Academy of Music (now through Aug. 11), it won’t be the first time that the beloved music of ABBA and the work of Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus and Catherine Johnson has wowed Philadelphia audiences. It will be, however, the first time that Philly’s gotten a look and listen to its lead character, the free-spirited Donna, as portrayed by singer-actor Christine Sherrill.
A Midwest-native teacher-turned-actor, Sherrill first auditioned for ‘Mamma Mia!’ in Chicago, touring as Tanya in 2006, until she became Donna in time for the ABBA musical’s long residency in Las Vegas.
Living by the dictum, “It’s not funny unless it’s true,” Sherrill says that what’s true about Donna is that, “It would be easy to dislike her, or at least judge her… she does have three potential fathers for her daughter,” Sherrill said with a laugh. “Unless you see the love for life that she has, and her sense of independence, you miss out on how incredibly intelligent she is. Consider that we’re telling a story of a woman with three former partners who all could be the father of her daughter – and she’s kept that a secret – it’s easy to sit back and judge. But she can laugh at it all. That’s an important message in ‘Mamma Mia!’ – that you can make mistakes and still laugh at it all.”
