Jenny Bennett

bennyjennett.com

Menu

Skip to content
  • Home
  • jb Director
  • jb Actor
  • Press
  • Contact
  • Bio

Press

It was such an honor for the team to be nominated for ten AUDELCO awards, for  The Three Musketeers at The Classical Theatre of Harlem (CTH) — and we swept the design awards!  #All4Harlem #CTH3M #Theatre4All   From The Amsterdam News:

“The Three Musketeers” from the Classical Theatre of Harlem has nine nominations. It is nominated for dramatic production of the year; director/dramatic production—Jenny Bennett; choreography—Tiffany Rea-Fisher; lead actress—Miriam Hyman; supporting actor—R.J. Foster; sound design—Luqman Brown; costume design—Rachel Dozier-Ezell; set design—Christopher and Justin Swader; and lighting design—Kate Bashore.

New York Times Review: The Three Musketeers, 7/14/17

Screenshot 2018-07-21 15.10.57

Jenny Bennett’s staging, working from Catherine Bush’s adaptation, squarely emphasizes the book’s more extroverted and humorous side: The biff-bang-pow production is to the novel as Adam West’s Batman was to the grim Dark Knight…

Ms. Bennett’s production moves cartoon-fast and hits all the essential plot points, including our heroes’ skirmishes with the eye-patched Rochefort (R. J. Foster). By the end, you may find yourself longing for Classical Theater of Harlem to tackle Dumas’s two sequels next.


 Stagebuddy.com Review, The Three Musketeers7/17/17

Screenshot 2018-07-21 15.02.55

Directed by Jenny Bennett for The Classical Theatre of Harlem (at Marcus Garvey Park), this newest production of The Three Musketeers stays refreshingly true to Dumas’ story without sacrificing dramatic integrity…

With a clever script, good actors, and a flamboyant staging, the only thing that could make this fast-paced production more fun would be free admission. And mon dieu! It has that, too! So saddle your steed and get ready to shout “All for one!” etc. ad nauseam.


Zeal.nyc Review: The Three Musketeers, 7/12/17

Screenshot 2018-07-21 15.21.41

I had the pleasure of being reintroduced to the story of Portos, Athos, Aramis, and D’Artagnan recently in The Classic Theatre of Harlem’s production of The Three Musketeers, directed by Jenny Bennett. Not only did this production give a nod to Harlem, it relates perfectly to many of the political overtones that we are currently experiencing globally… The Three Musketeers should not be missed.


The Fall of King Henry (Henry VI, pt 3) at the American Shakespeare Center (ASC). Opened September 9, 2017 and played through Thanksgiving in repertory with Peter & the Starcatcher, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and Much Ado About Nothing (also directed by jb). #ASCFallofKingHenry #ASCHenry Here’s a blog post on the show.


The Queens Chronicle Review:Much Ado About Nothing, Titan Theatre Co 4/12/18

Screenshot 2018-07-21 15.39.17

The production, under the direction of Jenny Bennett, who also did the adaptation, is distinguished by its hip, fresh vibe… At last Friday night’s opening, the spectators, including many children, filled the intimate space with laughter nearly from start to finish.


BroadwayWorld.Com: In rehearsal with Titan’s Much Ado About Nothing 4/1/18

(Photos by Michael Pauley)

Screenshot 2018-07-21 15.43.33
Screenshot 2018-07-21 15.44.03
Screenshot 2018-07-21 15.43.52
Screenshot 2018-07-21 15.44.14
Screenshot 2018-07-21 15.43.25

 

Screenshot 2018-07-21 15.32.33
Screenshot 2018-07-21 15.33.29

 


The Winter’s Tale, ASC 2015

The Winter's Tale | American Shakespeare Center
The Winter’s Tale | American Shakespeare Center
The Winter's Tale | American Shakespeare Center
The Winter’s Tale | American Shakespeare Center
The Winter's Tale | American Shakespeare Center
The Winter’s Tale | American Shakespeare Center
The Winter's Tale | American Shakespeare Center
The Winter’s Tale | American Shakespeare Center
The Winter's Tale | American Shakespeare Center
The Winter’s Tale | American Shakespeare Center
Meandering Mary
 In staging William Shakespeare’s genre-defying play The Winter’s Tale, companies face three main obstacles: the bear, the time, and the statue. If the production successfully addresses those problems with a coherent and committed cast, the production flourishes. Luckily for audiences at the American Shakespeare Center, guest director Jenny Bennett crafted a heartwarming and heartbreaking fairy-tale, that barely flinched at the imposing challenges.

Shakespeareances, Eric Minton

Typical of Shakespeare’s other late romances, The Winter’s Tale is a roller coaster of comic heights suddenly rushing into tragic valleys. Bennett smooths out the ride, presenting it as a progression to great joy with unbearable, unnecessary heartache along the way. She nevertheless maintains Shakespeare’s ballsy juxtapositions.

Full review here.


Ask A Director

Curated by Hannah Wolf

4th Feb 2014 | 1 note
JENNY BENNETT Hometown?  Fayetteville, GA (In truth, I;m a bit of a mutt, and ;home; history (5+ years) includes places ranging from near Detroit, Michigan to Virginia to NYC to Kaohsiung, Taiwan.) Where are you now?  NYC What;s your current project?  I;m directing The Comedy of Errors at Purchase Rep, with the seniors in the Acting Conservatory at SUNY, Purchase. Why and how did you get into theatre?  I;m a fourth-generation theatre woman, so I got into the theatre in utero. In fact, my mom was playing Guinevere when she was pregnant with me, and ;Jennifer; is a derivation of that name. My great-grandmother Treesa Way Merrill toured a vaudeville circuit as a child performer, and started Will-o-Way Repertory Theater (named for her dad, William Way) in Bloomfield Hills, MI in the 1940s, in what was previously their apple orchard. Various shows and celebrity performers came through there- Vincent Price, Lotte Lenya (Brecht on Brecht, I believe), etc. Her daughter Celia (my grandma) then ran Will-o-Way as Artistic Director with my grandpa as Theater Manager (I have fond childhood memories of helping him sell apple cider at intermissions.) My mother grew up acting and working in that theater, and went on to study at Carnegie in the late 60s. I grew up on a cot in the back of my mother;s theater (teaching high school in GA), and summers at Will-o-Way. It was actually a great disappointment to my mother that I went into the theatre, because she wanted me to be President, or an astronaut. Blood won out, though: it;s a genetic condition. What is your directing dream project?  Paying theatremakers really, really well so we can spend proper time to do an epic investigation of ;type;: our cultural expectations and then blowing them up. I;d cast a pool of terrific actors of various genders, ages, sizes and flavors, and we;d work on a (probably) Shakespeare play. But every show would start with drawing the characters everyone would play from a hat. I daydream about various details of this project all the time. I just need a big pile of money to pay terrific people well for a long time to get it done. What kind of theatre excites you?  “Live” theatre. And I;ve seen quite a bit of theatre with live humans in it that feels dead. Present, surprising, vital, spiky, hilarious, gutting, political, personal theatre. I;m also rather a fan of the epic, and a little tired of 2 and 3 -person plays.  What do you want to change about theatre today?  I really enjoy a company model, for practical and artistic reasons.  Practical: artists have a home base, some security, and develop a language/ background of working together that contributes to the work. Audiences like that, too. But there are fewer and fewer company models anymore- though programs still train theatremakers almost exclusively in that model, as if it exists. It;s very strange, when you think about it. I;m also really committed that all theatremakers from writers to actors to designers to stage managers to run crew to prop artisans to paint charge are all working on the same thing. There can often be an odd division, an us/ them mentality that does nothing to contribute to the play and can often damage it.  What is your opinion on getting a directing MFA?  I think everyone should take at least a year and ideally three-five between undergraduate work and grad school- go out in the world so it can kick your ass like it;s supposed to, so you get that experience of theatremaking outside of an institution. Then, if you choose to pursue an MFA, you;re really, really choosing it, which will make for mindful craft development. I;ve always been a multiply-interested theatremaker: I directed my first show in 1988, but also trained in acting and stage management and props and, and, and. My MFA is in Acting, in a classical theatre training program. My directing work, after training, has been out in the world, doing it. And one informs the other; all theatremakers are working on the same thing, from slightly different angles. I certainly treasure my time in graduate school (which is a good thing: student loans suck), and it;s a core part of who I am as a theatremaker. Investing in yourself is always a good idea, I think. There are practical benefits, too- professional networks, collaborators who become lifelong, access to terrific facilities and smart, passionate professionals to learn from, etc. If you;re inspired by a way of working available for training in a specific MFA program, go get it! If you;re coming from “I ought to get an MFA”, I don;t think that;s true, if you;re willing and able to build your network and ways of working by working.  Who are your theatrical heroes?  Boy, that;s a tough question: my answer changes regularly, depending on who I;m working with and what I;m seeing, what I;m present to. Stage managers, always. Shakespeare and his players continually knock my socks off. So does any committed person making theatre right now where there was none before, however they;re doing that. Really, at a certain point, everyone who spends their precious life working on the theatre is a theatrical hero to me. Because I think the theatre is working on the world, and the messy, wonderful, terrible, delightful, cruel, unjust, beautiful, infuriating, inspiring nature of humanity, so we can applaud or change it.  Any advice for directors just starting out?  Announce a time and place of a theatre piece. Then, make it happen (you have to, you just announced it). Repeat. Seriously, I think we get caught up in seeking permission to make theatre from existing places or people we;ve made Gatekeepers of Art. So just go make some theatre. It;ll be hard and take a lot of your time and you;ll have to do rather a lot of producing yourself, so do that.  Plugs! The Comedy of Errors opens February 28th at Purchase Rep.  My website is bennyjennett.com
Hannah Wolf curates this cool blog, Ask a Director, and invited me to participate. We met at the LCT Directors Lab in 2012. Her blog is a fantastic resource for exploring different directors- there’s concise Q&As with everyone. Go Hannah!

BoingBoing

A short film I was in, ‘Next Life‘ by Casimir Nozkowski, got a nice feature on Boing Boing.

‘Next Life,’ a life-affirming dramatic short film with a sci-fi twist

jb Still from film Next Life by Casimir Nozkowski


Theatermania

Ami Brabson, Reg E Cathey, Suzzanne Douglas Set for Madwoman of Chaillot Reading

By Dan Bacalzo • Jan 30, 2012 • New York

Reg E Cathey

Reg E Cathey

Classical Theatre of Harlem will present Ami Brabson, Reg E Cathey, and Suzzanne Douglas in Jean Giraudoux’s Madwoman of Chaillot, adapted by Maurice Valency. Jenny Bennett will direct the reading at The Malcolm X & Dr Betty Shabazz Memorial & Educational Center, on Monday, February 6 at 7pm.


HenryNYtimesTyCacek
TyCacekagincourtnytpic

The Village Voice  Review of Henry V

[I]n a thoughtful production marked by a string of nontraditional elements and brave choices, director Jenny Bennett mines Henry V for disaffection rather than chest-thumping loyalty to king and country, bringing to the surface the more sardonic aspects of Shakespeare’s ambivalent historical epic.


Backstage Review of Henry V.

Director Jenny Bennett helms the proceedings with bold theatrical savvy. Her stylized depictions of the battles of Harfleur and Agincourt are models of well-conceived economic staging. She uses the wide-open playing space, bordered on three sides by the audience, almost like a gymnasium, which her actors inhabit with athletic prowess. Most of them take on multiple roles, switching characterizations without missing a beat, giving both language and action their due.


Here’s an excerpt from an interview I did for Works by Women, ramping up to the HENRY V I directed Off-Broadway at the Classical Theatre of Harlem. I talk about being a 4th-generation theatre woman: this picture is my great-grandmother, touring a vaudeville circuit.

WBW: What gives you hope for American theater women?
JB: That there are so many American theatre women. The way to get more work is to make more work ourselves! Nobody’s gonna say ‘Oh, hello stranger: have this opportunity.’ I know so many American theatre women who are putting it together, a project at a time, getting their voices heard, telling an infinite variety of stories – that’s how hope becomes reality – by doing. And we’re doing it, ladies!


NYC Onstage, March 8, 2009. The Expatriates, The Beggars Group

“… top honors go to the sensational Jenny Bennett as literary pundit and fellow alcoholic Dorothy Parker. She nails both Parker’s devastating wit and intense loneliness in a single scene when she and Fitzgerald have sex on a lark (”penny for your thoughts”). That she is equally delicious in two other cameos as Isadora Duncan and Gertrude Stein is icing on the cake.” – NYC Onstage, March 8, 2009.


Stagebuzz, March 2009

Excellent work is done all around, especially by … Jenny Bennett, who shows excellent range as Dorothy Parker, Gertrude Stein, and Isadora Duncan. – Byrne Harrison, Stagebuzz.

Widgets

Social

  • View bennyjennett’s profile on Twitter
Create a website or blog at WordPress.com
Cancel

 
Loading Comments...
Comment
    ×