Theater for the New City is presenting Ishmael Reed’s play, The Conductor, directed by Carla Blank. The production began previews on March 9 and the final performance is Sunday, March 26 at 3:00 p.m. Tickets are $18. Click here for tickets and more information. Performances available in-person and via livestream. Theater for the New City is located at 155 First Avenue (between 9th & 10th Street) in New York’s East Village.
In San Francisco, former school board members Alison Collins and Gabriela López were objects of threats because they sought to replace a scandal ridden test system with what they deemed a fairer Lottery system. The neo-liberal corporate press joined extremists groups in their condemnation of the two.
For some, the two are ultra-progressives. To others, they are the Rosa Parks and Dolores Huertas of the school reform movement.
Ishmael Reed, the playwright who took down “Hamilton” and challenged the pro-Warhol corporate version of the relationship between Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, now applies his fiction to the SF Recall Election. His play, The Conductor shows why The New Yorker calls Ishmael Reed “American literature’s most fearless satirist” and Backstage calls him a “modern-day Moliere.”
The cast features Emil Guillermo as Gabriel Noitallde, Laura Robards as Hedda “Buttermilk” Duckbill, Brian Simmons as Warren Chipp, Imran Javaid as Shashi Parmar, Kenya Wilson as Melody Wells, Monisha Shiva as Kala Parmar, with Dimitri Dewes, Jr., Joy Renèe LeBlanc and Ephraim Kofi Asante as understudies.
Emil Guillermo is an award-winning writer and journalist who performs his tragi-comic “Amok Monologues,”a storytelling series on the absurdities of Asian American life around the country at fringe festivals, schools and theaters. An essayist/columnist on AAPI issues since 1995, his work has appeared in ethnic and mainstream newspapers around the country. He has won the $5,000 Social Justice Prize from AAJA. A collection of his work, “Amok: Essays from an Asian American Perspective,” won an American Book Award. His columns are now home based at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund website. In 2015, after the shooting death of a family member, he began telling his stories on stage and started his “Amok Monologues” series based on his essays. Born in San Francisco to parents who were in the first wave of Filipinos to settle in the U.S., Emil graduated from Harvard College. There he first studied acting, but because of a dearth of roles, he went into broadcast journalism. He was a television reporter in Dallas, San Francisco and Washington,DC, where he also anchored the news. In radio, he was host of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” in 1989. becoming the first Filipino, and the first Asian American man to host a regularly scheduled national news show.
As a podcaster, he hosts “The PETA Podcast,” for the animal rights group PETA. His live podcast, “Emil Amok’s Takeout” is on Amok.com and on YouTube.
Lately, Emil has gone back to the stage as an actor in the off-Broadway production of The Conductor, by the noted writer Ishmael Reed.
The production team includes Production Coordinator Rome Neal, Set Design by Mark Marcante, Light & Sound Design by Alexander Bartenieff, Costume Design by Diana Adelman, Stage Manager by Michael Durgavich and Video Documentation by Miles Shebar.
COVID Protocol:
As of September 26th, 2022, we are no longer requiring proof of COVID-19 vaccination for our audience upon entry.
Wearing of masks is suggested in the lobby, restrooms and performance spaces at Theater for the New City, but they are not required.
Backstage Pass with Lia Chang 