This. So The Lucky Ones is wounded autobiography veiled in fiction. They have received the Jonathan Larson and Richard Rogers Award and nominations for the Drama Desk, Drama League, and Lucile Lortel awards. sleeknoteScriptTag.type = 'text/javascript'; Sonya Tayeh, currently Tony-nominated for Moulin Rouge!, serves as movement director. And the sound of Ms. Bengson wailing like a banshee as she considers the mangling trap that is love will echo in your ears for days to come. May 25, 2022, By Eliots work. | The one possible relevance that the period has (besides possible medical advances since then) is how easy it is for Sarah and Will to seclude themselves in their home and remove themselves from any indication of what day or decade it really is. "So letting love win in the battle between love and fear, something we all experience every day. By By The musical, starring Caroline Bowman and Caroline Innerbichler, plays Sheas Buffalo Theatre through September 24. April 19, 2022, By The musical, based on the blockbuster film of the same name, reopens at a different venue: the Savoy Theatre. Which turns out to be all thats needed for a show that celebrates and laments the elusive radiance of a shared life. Our website is made possible bydisplaying online advertisements to our visitors. March 3, 2022, By Ms. Bengson, 35, has a tale to tell about the autumn she was 15, when her family shattered and the seemingly safe Eden she grew up in was lost forever. A young couple meets, falls in love and gets married right away, only to find out that one of them has a terminal illness and not long left to live. They also star in the show, with a full band and chorus who . La Jolla Playhouse has announced the presentation of Sovereignty Hymns, a commissioned work that features a video series of original songs exploring questions about reproductive liberty. Raven Brunner The incredible Molly Smith [Arena Stage artistic director] reached out to us and said we could create whatever we wanted, Abigail said. Talaura Harms I wouldn't want to forget a moment of it. Hundred Days runs through April 6, 2014 at Z Space in San Francisco. Part of it was a wish to examine how to go about making a family thoughtfully, unconventionally, as their own parents did even while aware of the unintended harm that parents can cause children in the process. January 18, 2022, By What Are Theatremakers Doing to Present Safe Productions? By Were interested in seeing if we can look at that loss as an opportunity to see the divinity in one another.. It was from Robert Fleming, a gay Black man who is executive artistic director of Actors Theatre in . By For the first time since the pandemic shutdown, Actors' Theatre in Grand Rapids, Michigan is returning to its home stage at Spectrum Theater on the Grand Rapids Community College campus. Ms. Bengson is sure of her right to tell such a story onstage because it is a fundamental trauma of her past, overlapping though it does with other peoples pain and struggles. The Joaquina Kalukango-led production has been on hiatus since April 7. Manhattan Theatre Club is presenting the New York premiere of Where the Mountain Meets the Sea, written by AUDELCO Award nominee Jeff Augustin (The New Englanders, The Morning Show) and directed by Princess Grace Award winner Joshua Kahan Brody, with music by The Bengsons (Hundred Days, The Lucky Ones). Id be like, Hey, its Friday, talking about nothing, and then Id sing this heavy piece of music, talking about everything, she said, and she realized thats not so different from what shes doing with the show itself. Shaun's contributions include a deft melodic touch, technological prowess and musical ear that allows the inclusion of drums, guitar, accordion, and all manner of other instruments as well as. They have received the Jonathan Larson and Richard Rodgers Awards and nominations for the Drama Desk, Drama League, and Lucille. Like Hundred Days, The Lucky Ones is directed by Anne Kauffman and has a book co-written by the playwright Sarah Gancher, who is the Bengsons neighbor across the hall in Ridgewood, Queens. Because of past trauma in her life, Abigail said, getting close to anyone in a short period of time brought on an enormous amount of PTSD. Their video for The Keep Going Song has been viewed over 4 million times. The family saga, starring Adrian Lester, Simon Russell Beale, and Adam Godley, plays the Nederlander Theatre. But I cant stop. (Unlike many other such narratives, it's the guy who's wasting away before his time.) | The Great Performances broadcast includes interviews with Adrienne Warren, Norm Lewis, Sara Bareilles, Aaron Tveit, Chita Rivera, and more. | You have entered an incorrect email address! Three weeks later, the couple got married. | | The first two months of performances take place with social distancing. Here, it's no role at all, but real life and determinations with her husband and son, who makes a couple of key appearances. Shaun's fast and folky acoustic-guitar strumming and Abigail's delightful alt-rock vocals establish a beautifully resonant intimacy and then swell into a magnificent full-ensemble sound with the drums thundering and the ensemble singing in transcendent unison. Most of the cast will return to the roles they were playing when previews began prior to the pandemic. styleElement.styleSheet.cssText = cssRule; He ha (read more about this author). Their music has been featured several times on So You Think You Can Dance (FOX). Logan Culwell-Block By Then I got pregnant, so we started to feel our way into that being part of the piece. Shaun's contributions include a deft melodic touch, technological prowess and musical ear that allows the inclusion of drums, guitar, accordion, and all manner of other instruments as well as harmony vocals often on backing tapes to give the duo an added grandeur. Shaun has struggled with other health issues over the years, including non-cancerous cysts in his testicles, which he first noticed during lockdown, meaning he was unable to have them operated on. Often, they jump and dance in their own kitchen, an intimacy that can't quite be replicated on stage. Staged with resonant economy by the talented Anne Kauffman, with sharp and subtle movement direction by Sonya Tayeh, Hundred Days is cabaret as cri de coeur, and it is advisable to watch it with a handkerchief at the ready. At first, the Bengsons thought it would just turn out to be a concert or a collection of songs. This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Its become a language we speak together.. Abigail Bengson, Shaun Bengson, Chris Myers, Billy Eugene Jones, Billy Eugene Jones, Chris Myers, Shaun Bengson, Abigail Bengson, Billy Eugene Jones, Joshua Kahan Brody, Jeff Augustin, Chris Myers, Abigail Bengson, Shaun Bengson, Shaun Bengson, Abigail Bengson, Jeff Augustin, Joshua Kahan Brody, Billy Eugene Jones, Chris Myers, Billy Eugene Jones (center); Abigail Bengson and Shaun Bengson (background), Chris Myers (foreground); background: Abigail Bengson, Shaun Bengson, and Billy Eugene Jones. Is it possible to tell the truth kindly? Ms. Bengson said. And I do mean overwhelming. October 8, 2020. By The Harold Pinter classic opens October 21 as part of the theatre companys Welcome Back season. We never hear about any war going on, and Christine Crook's costumes aren't noticeably informed by that period. The production, directed by Anne Kauffman, premieres December 4 after beginning previews November 15. By The Bengsons A La Jolla Playhouse Commission. Their first rehearsal turned into their first date, and three weeks later, they were married! Some have come to see it. January 2, 2022. raises the possibility of continued commissioned filmed projects from theater companies long after theaters reopen. | May 10, 2021. They also star in the show, with a full band and chorus who take on roles in the story as needed, and they deliver the songs with such quirky exuberance that it's impossible to resist following wherever they want to take the narrative (with a smart book by Kate E. Ryan). March 15, 2022, By // Append the CSS rule to the style element Then, they dreamed bigger: a Broadway musical! The Bengsons. The physical production is austere, with little in the way of scenery beyond a constellation of light bulbs. March 4, 2022, By A Childhood Eden Seared by Violence. Andrew Gans includes seven songs, with each functioning in a different way. // Get the
element with the my-paragraph class By | Recent notable theatre interviews include legendary actor Ben Vereen, Broadway make-up artist Angelina Avallone and the extraordinary Idina Menzel. by The Bengsons arenastage1 2.96K subscribers Subscribe 1.2K 50K views 1 year ago Arena Stage is excited to present a newly commissioned filmed music series, Arena Riffs, featuring. is streaming free on YouTube. The musical, starring Katrina Lenk and Patti LuPone, was originally slated to open March 22, 2020composer Stephen Sondheims 90th birthday. First he attended college at Indiana University (studied Ethnomusicology & Traditional Indiana Fiddling), then after graduation Shaun moved to New York City as a part of the city's teaching fellows program. Ill eat those eggs. July 29, 2021. | Their remarkable submission - just 27 minutes, streaming free through the Arena website - shows the couple sharing their lives through the cruel winter of our pandemic, but also willing and very able to sing about it in real time. BroadwayWorld was there for the special night and you can check out photos from the red carpet here! By But accompanied by a wonderfully droll quartet of singing musicians Colette Alexander, Jo Lampert, Dani Markham and Reggie D. White the Bengsons are stirring, and surprisingly witty, company. Tickets are now on sale forManhattan Theatre Clubs New York premiere ofWhere the Mountain Meets the Sea, written by AUDELCO Award nomineeJeff Augustin(The New Englanders, The Morning Show) and directed by Princess Grace Award winnerJoshua Kahan Brody,with music byThe Bengsons(Hundred Days,The Lucky Ones). (La Jolla Playhouse, New York Theatre Workshop, US Tour). By | Abigail Bengson has appeared on HBO's High Maintenance and also toured as a member of tUnE-yArDs, including an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.instagram: @thebengsonswww.bengsons.com Thank you, Ms. Bengson said from the kitchen. The front-line team has provided COVID compliance safety for 1.8 million audience members seeing more than 30 shows on Broadway and beyond. The personable and talented married singer-songwriter couple, Shaun and Abigail Bengson explore their lives in this uneven concert musical. | So Will and Sarah decide to shut themselves away from the world and live their last 100 days together as if they were 60 years, celebrating all the birthdays and anniversaries and other cherished memories they would have if they grew old together. | The premise of Hundred Days, the new indie-rock musical at Z Space, sounds like it would be a huge downer. For tickets and information visit zspace.org. The shift in focus from outside to inside clarifies and intensifies what was already an affecting piece. A look at an Equity-approved musical, an immersive experiment, and an amateur teen show. Shaun and Abigail Bengson met in New York City at a party and after talking, decided to start a band together. A cross-country road trip that occupied the shows center 11 months ago has been jettisoned. Performed from San Francisco to New York to La Jolla to Florida, it got raves, awards and a cast album. Sometimes there are wounds so deep that they never all the way heal, he said. By Dan Meyer By the time of its making, the two and their young son have made their way to her childhood home in snowy Vermont with the likely intent of chronicling their time there in song during an already strange time. The task, I think, of storytelling, she said, is the reintegration of the dark and the light going back and saying, Yes, this darkness is here and its true. And, There was light on us once, and there will be again.. By The Bengsons drove to Dayton, Ohio, to stay with Shauns parents, and they put together an hour-long concert for the Louisville theater. The immersive theatrical experience resumes performances at The McKittrick Hotel. The Bengsonss distinctive stage presence matches the story they tell. The one-day-only event, starring Olivier nominees Rachel Tucker and Rachel John, played the West End October 11 following a digital production earlier this summer. Ryan McPhee It wouldn't affect what would happen one way or another, and it may be healthier in the long run. Those interviews became part of the piece. // Add the style element to the head of the document La Jolla Playhouse announces the cast and creative team for Hundred Days, book by The Bengsons and Sarah Gancher, music and lyrics by The Bengsons, directed by Anne Kauffman, with movement direction by Sonya Tayeh. Abigail once served as a background singer for Tune-Yards, but her expressive warmth is also memorable from her role in HBO's "High Maintenance" a year ago, as Kim, the intimacy coordinator who meets an asexual magician. Both Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker have been fighting cases of COVID, which put the Neil Simon revival on hiatus. Dan Meyer I wonder if she really wanted to give me eggs, or if she just wanted to make sure I was O.K.. July 1, 2021. In Hundred Days, real-life married couple Abigail and Shaun Bengson (the duo behind Ars Nova's The Lucky Ones) detail the story of how they . | The program, championed by the industry as the "Save Our Stages" act, was slated to begin accepting applications April 8. With a full rock band, a choir of singers, dazzling sets, and breathtaking music, Hundred Days is the Bay Area's hottest world premiere of the year. window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);} gtag('js', new Date()); gtag('config', 'AW-10891449219'); This poignant 90-minute show, which opened on Monday night at the New York Theater Workshop, is a response to one ineradicable and devastating fact of life. var sleeknoteScriptTag = document.createElement('script'); A few performances deeper into previews, after they had moved back home to Queens, Ms. Bengson sat at their blond-wood kitchen table, a plastic bag of old cassette tapes in front of her. But as the show picks up momentum, their own music sweeps them into galvanizing eruptions of passion and existential anger. Set to Music? | The story, which is reminiscent of the more fully-realized Broadway musical, "Once," unfolds through short dialogues that are alternately pithy, poignant and playful. styleElement.type = 'text/css'; | Before the pandemic hit, the couple were working on the music for a play at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, and after one performance, the country shut down. | All this is supposedly taking place in the 1940s, but the period setting never becomes important or even discernible, and of course it has no bearing on the musical style. Photo by Paul de Luna. Louie, their blond-ringleted toddler, is a year and a half old, and Ms. Bengson throws up her hands at the challenge of not swearing in front of him. July 27, 2021. const paragraph = document.querySelector('.my-paragraph'); Other "Arena Riffs" are "The Freewheeling Insurgents" by Psalmayene 'Psalm" 24, which begins March 31 at 7 p.m. and "A More Perfect Union" by Rona Siddiqui April 14 at 7 p.m. Information can be found here. Abigail and Shaun Bengson are a married composing and performing duo based in NYC and VT who have performed across the country and around the world. We made the whole piece on our cell phones, filming each other and things that were going on.. One isn't necessary. Do Broadway and Off-Broadway Theatres Still Require Masks? But she thinks of Eden now as a place you have to outgrow, accepting the complexity of life and the presence of darkness without fixating on the darkness. You can buy tickets here. James Monroe Iglehart unveils the list of nominees for a season cut short due to the pandemic. | Colette Alexander, Abigail Bengson, Shaun Bengson, Jo Lampert, Dani Markham, and Reggie D. White, By (ATLs Humana Festival; Manhattan Theatre Club), (New York Live Arts, Jacob's Pillow), and, (piece by piece productions). Dan Meyer The concept of 'Hundred Days,' however, has stayed the same, The Bengsons said. The Bengsons display the pleasures, joys and the emotional tolls of the events of the past year and how they managed to cultivate and hold onto happiness even during these dark, difficult times. By Logan Culwell-Block Andrew Gans Ryan McPhee I love you, too, Ms. Gancher said, and exited. Logan Culwell-Block Mr. Bengson, who exudes a defensive deadpan calm that hints at demons scrambling beneath, sums up their chronicle with the jaunty disclaimer, So here it is, the sound of introverts pining! That may not sound like much fun. July 20, 2021. The Bengsons performing in The Lucky Ones, which is the second part of a trilogy. Part of that was an awareness, new to Mr. Bengson, of what a fragile thing a family can be. sleeknoteScriptTag.src = ('//sleeknotecustomerscripts.sleeknote.com/47716.js'); Roger Catlin, a member of the American Theatre Critics Association,is a Washington D.C.-based arts writer whose work appears regularly in SmithsonianMagazine.com. The story is of the classic boy-meets-girl, boy-gets-girl, boy-loses-girl-because-life-is-nothing-but-loss mold. That changed a few times as our lives changed, as she ran with us as things kept evolving.. From the moment Shaun and Abigail Bengson met 11 years ago, there was a third wheel in their relationship a matter for no small measure of stress and apprehension. Yet she is terrified of compounding anyones anguish. paragraph.style.height = '0px'; Care about whats happening in Bay Area arts? We wanted to make it really intimate and trying not to replicate the experience of being in a theater with us, but figuring out what would be most enjoyable over this medium.. | When new work is offered, it streams online, often created by the artists themselves. The Broadway revival, on hold due to the pandemic, will now begin previews March 9, 2022. September 8, 2021. April 9, 2021. Abigail and Shaun Bengson performing in "My Joy Is Heavy!" (Arena Stage) Gift Article It feels something like a privilege to be given access to the melodic intimacies of "My Joy Is Heavy!," a. Shaun Bengson, left, and Abigail Bengson in Hundred Days at the New York Theater Workshop, a musical that charts the couples up-down-and-up-again relationship. Their first rehearsal turned into their first date, and three weeks later, they were married! Use this COVID-19 protocols checklist before heading No doubt "My Joy is Heavy!" document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); document.getElementById( "ak_js_2" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Keith Loria is a freelance writer and theater lover who has written about everything from business to sports to real estate with a lot of entertainment writing thrown into the mix. Its title song captured and likely inspired 4 million viewers on YouTube, and maybe just nudged Smith to tap The Bengsons to create something for the series they're calling Arena Riffs. In 2017, the couples Off-Broadway theatrical concert, Hundred Days, toured across the U.S. and was a big hit. By Andrew Gans Critical reception of The Lucky Ones has been mixed, with Jesse Green of The New York Times calling it a gawky, powerful work in progress, while Sandy MacDonald, in Time Out New York, found it harrowing.. Such considerations are usually private matters. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, St. Anns created the Urban Canvas public art platform on their facade, presented a series of pop-up concerts, and streamed a number of international works. | A large-scale show with a chorus, its intended as the second part of a trilogy that will continue with a musical about Mr. Bengsons early life. The Bengsons nightmare scenario is to have family drama break out in the audience, where they would have to witness it from the stage. This is a true story, Shaun Bengson tells the audience from the stage of the Connelly Theater in the East Village. Abigail Bengson in Hundred Days In Hundred Days, real-life married couple Abigail and Shaun. A couple's intimate portrait of celebrating joy during difficult times. For a musical that's so much about creating memories to last and evoke a lifetime, Hundred Days succeeds brilliantly in etching its eloquent lines and infectious melodies indelibly on the brain. May 3, 2021. (function () { More upcoming/ in development: Ohio (piece by piece productions). The stage performers' union will not re-open their audition centers, but is allowing employers to host their own in-person calls.