Long Wharf Lays Out New Direction In 2022 – 23 Season

“So did you hear? We’re moving,” said Kit Ingui, managing director of Long Wharf Theatre, to appreciative laughter Wednesday evening at the Stetson branch library in Q House on Dixwell Avenue. Ingui, Long Wharf Artistic Director Jacob Padrón, Mayor Justin Elicker, branch manager Diane X Brown, and Arts & Ideas Executive Director Shelley Quiala were there to announce Long Wharf’s plans for its 2022 – 23 season, as it moves out of the space it has occupied on Sargent Drive for years and moves into an itinerant model, bringing theater directly into New Haven’s communities.

Brown drew a parallel between Long Wharf’s new path and the opening of the new Q House on Dixwell Avenue, where her branch is now housed. Opening the doors of the new space in March was a way of ​“demonstrating our renewed investment in the Dixwell neighborhood to create a library that was an unparalleled community hub that serves the needs of the people in this community and is a place of learning, imagination, and empowerment for all,” she said. Long Wharf’s similar goals, in her estimation, were hampered by its Sargent Drive location, all but inaccessible without a car. 

“That’s about to change,” she said. ​“Long Wharf has thoughtfully realized the need to center community more meaningfully in its offerings and decided to do something about that.… This is about creating amazing theater everywhere for everyone.” Of the theater’s new direction, she said, ​“this is what New Haven’s neighborhoods like Dixwell need now and have needed for decades. This is what cultural equity looks like in action, and I can see such a bright future for the possibilities this will bring to our city.”

New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker began with a moment of silence for the mass shootings in Uvalde, Tex., and Buffalo, N.Y., to reflect on ​“how we can play a role in preventing these types of incidents from happening, and also the gun violence that we experience in our community.”

Turning to Long Wharf Theatre, he said, ​“the work that you have done in particular in the last two years, really thinking about your role in the world, is something we need to see so much more of in society right now.” In the face of racial injustice nationally, ​“the work that is being done … by so many members of our community and by many nonprofits I think is exemplified by the work Long Wharf has done — looking within ourselves, yourselves, about the systems that have been created that many of us have been a part of,” with the aim of figuring out ​“how we can rethink those systems, in certain cases dismantle those systems, to truly walk toward a society that is equitable and provides access to everyone.”

“You took a real risk by stepping into this journey that you’re on,” Elicker continued. ​“I admire you for the work that you have done and the leadership that you’ve taken.… We are here with you as a city and I’m excited about what you’re going to accomplish,” as well as ​“the wonderful places in our city that will be activated by the work that you’re doing.” Like Brown, Elicker lauded Long Wharf’s direction as being aligned with the city government’s own goals of including the goals of cultural equity in its policymaking.

“We are stepping out of 222 Sargent Drive and stepping into closer relationships with the communities of Greater New Haven,” Ingui said. ​“We have quite a bit of work to do to move out of a facility we have occupied for decades, and we are also committed to deeply engaging with the people of New Haven and its surrounding communities to co-create our future.” The 2022 – 23 season, she said, was built on the three ideas of ​“artistic innovation, radical inclusion, and kaleidoscopic partnerships.”

Long Wharf will preserve some of its current programming, Ingui said, including the Lab at Long Wharf, where artists can work on their pieces and present them to an audience. It will also continue with Play Club, which proved popular. These would be joined by Project 57, a commissioning of 57 artists to create a quilt representing each of Long Wharf’s 57 years. That project will be done in collaboration with Artspace, New Haven Pride Center, and the International Festival of Arts and Ideas.

Arts & Ideas Executive Director Shelley Quiala then described her excitement at Long Wharf’s new direction. ​“Storytelling in theater is about who’s there to experience and who’s there to tell, and the more configurations we can have of that, the more interesting our stories are,” she said. She explained that she studied social change in theater — ​“that was one of the things that lit me up,” she said — and was most inspired by the Chicano theater movement that Padrón came out of. That movement did such things as putting theater on the back of a flatbed truck to mobilize workers. ​“As much as I love a big theater with lights and things happening inside of it, I’m also really energized by a vision that says ​‘that’s not the only place that fabulous, incredible storytelling can happen,” she said. ​“I’m excited for what that can mean for this city.”

Padrón then laid out what the 2022 – 23 season would look like; in his conception, it’s laid out in three acts. The first act represents the last few events held in the theater’s Sargent Drive location. From Aug. 2 to 4, Long Wharf presents a virtual reading of Black Trans Women at the Center, a festival of short plays directed and co-produced by Dane Figueroa Edidi that will include a panel with the writers, directors, and dramaturg after the performance. From Aug. 26 to 28, the theater will host a concert of Jelly’s Last Jam, a performance about jazz pianist Jelly Roll Morton that will feature music, tap dancing, and will ​“celebrate New Haven’s history of jazz in the iconic Dixwell neighborhood,” presented in partnership with Stetson Branch Library. The last event at the Sargent Drive space will be the sharing of a work in progress, Dignity, Always Dignity, about a Broadway star stranded on an island who wants to perform ​“one last show before the waters swallow him up”; as Padrón summarized, it’s a piece about climate change.

The second act of the 2022 – 23 season begins with a parade in September at the Sargent Drive space to say goodbye, complete with ​“festive communal rituals and micro-performances.” Long Wharf will then present a virtual performance of the New Haven Play Project, which ​“aims to share stories of Muslim Americans, showcase their experiences, and begin meaningful dialogue with Muslim and non-Muslim communities through Connecticut.”

The third act, in 2023, then will give a true sense of what Long Wharf might look like as an itinerant theater. In the spring, Long Wharf will present Live from the Edge, by UNIVERSES, directed by Steven Sapp and Mildred Ruiz-Sapp, playwrights in residence with support from the Mellon Foundation. The production will trace the development of the ensemble’s ​“poetic language from childhood rhymes and community rituals, to poetry and theater, hip hop, and gospel.” Part of developing Live from the Edge involves giving Sapp and Ruiz-Sapp ​“the opportunity to explore different neighborhoods in New Haven to find the right artistic container to present the work, demonstrating the new model’s ability to give power back to creators in determining how and where their works will be presented.” Long Wharf will also continue to facilitate the Next Narrative Monologue Competition for high school students from around the state, this time partnering with Yale Repertory Theatre. Finally, the theater will return to its roots with a benefit reading of The Crucible — the first play Long Wharf produced in 1965 — held at the John Lyman Center for the Performing Arts at Southern Connecticut State University and featuring a to-be-announced ​“star-studded cast.”

“We are committed to building a theater that belongs to all people who call this city their home,” Padrón said, ​“and we believe in the promise that Long Wharf theater can be for everyone.”