Chicago Sky Select Kamilla Cardoso with No. 3 Overall Pick in 2024 WNBA Draft

Posted on April 15, 2024 by Tom Castaneda

The Sky’s the limit for Kamilla Cardoso, who is officially going pro.

The 22-year-old Brazilian college basketball star, who was named the Most Outstanding Player of the NCAA Women’s Tournament after leading the South Carolina Gamecocks to the national championship, was selected No. 3 overall by the Chicago Sky in the 2024 WNBA draft on Monday night at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

The draft was held with fans for the first time since the 2014-16 iterations of the event. Tickets for 1,000 spectators sold out within 15 minutes of them going on sale a few months ago.

Cardoso had a busy week, helping the Gamecocks win the national championship to complete an undefeated season.

She took part in the team’s championship parade on Sunday before traveling to New York.

But Cardoso wasn’t the only Latina player to be drafted to the WBNA…

Celeste Taylor, of Colombian and Puerto Rican descent, was selected by the Indiana Fever in as the No. 3 pick in the second round.

Esmery Martinez, who played for Arizona, became the first-ever Dominican player drafted into the WNBA when the New York Liberty drafted her as the No. 5 pick in the second round.

Meanwhile, her teammate at Arizona, Spaniard Helena Pueyo, was chosen by the Connecticut Sun as the No. 10 pick in the second round.

The Indiana Fever picked Puerto Rican basketball standout Leilani Correa, who played for Florida, as the No. 3 pick in the third round.

Oscar Isaac to Star in Broadway Production of Lorraine Hansberry’s “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window”

Posted on April 5, 2023 by Tom Castaneda

Oscar Isaac is headed to the Great White Way….

The 44-year-old Cuban-Guatemalan actor will star opposite Rachel Brosnahan later this month in the Broadway production of Lorraine Hansberry’s The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window.

The production, which opened a sold-out run Off Broadway at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in February, is now set to be the final production of the 2022-23 Broadway season.

Opening night for the limited, 80-performance run is Thursday, April 27, at the James Earl Jones Theatre.

Directed by Anne Kauffman, the revival will mark the first time the Hansberry play has been produced on Broadway in more than 50 years, and the first BAM-produced production to transfer to Broadway since The Gospel at Colonus 35 years ago.

The follow-up to Hansberry’s landmark 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window debuted on Broadway in 1964 shortly before the playwright’s death on January 12, 1965, at age 34. The recent Off Broadway staging broke all house records at BAM’s Harvey Theater.

Set in New York’s Greenwich Village during the early 1960s, Brustein’s Window focuses on the troubled marriage of idealistic writer Sidney (Isaac, in his Broadway debut) and aspiring actor Iris (Brosnahan). As the couple’s marriage seems to crumble, their friends and neighbors in the politically progressive West Village weave in and out of the Brusteins’ apartment and lives.

“This production, directed by Anne Kauffman and originally produced and nurtured by David Binder at BAM, is a celebration of the radical artistic vision of Lorraine Hansberry at the zenith of her art making,” said Joi Gresham, Literary Trustee, Estate of Lorraine Hansberry, in a statement.

The complete cast of the BAM production will make the move to Broadway along with Isaac and Brosnahan, including Gus Birney, Julian De Niro, Glenn Fitzgerald, Andy Grotelueschen, Miriam Silverman and Raphael Nash Thompson. The understudy company features Joey Auzenne, Katya Campbell, Gregory Connors and Brontë England Nelson.

The creative team includes dots (Scenic Design), Brenda Abbandandolo (Costume Design), John Torres (Lighting Design), Bray Poor (Sound Design), Leah Loukas (Wig Design) and Arminda Thomas (Dramaturg).

Cinema Guild Acquires U.S. Distribution Rights to Rodrigo Reyes’ “Sansón and Me”

Posted on November 18, 2022 by Tom Castaneda

Rodrigo Reyes’ poignant documentary will be hitting U.S. theaters…

Cinema Guild has acquired the U.S. rights to Sansón and Me, directed by the 39-year-old Mexican film director.

The film has been slated for release in theaters next year, beginning with a run at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on March 3.

Reyes’ latest feature emerged from his day job as a Spanish criminal interpreter in a small town in California, through which he met a young man named Sansón, an undocumented Mexican immigrant who was sentenced to life in prison without parole. With no permission to interview him, Sansón and Reyes worked together over the course of a decade, using hundreds of letters as inspiration for recreations of Sansón’s childhood — featuring members of his own family. The result is a vibrant portrait of a friendship navigating immigration and the depths of the criminal justice system and pushing the boundaries of cinematic imagination to rescue a young migrant’s story from oblivion.

The documentary won Best Film at Sheffield DocFest in June after world premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival.

The film also recently won the top prize at the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival and was named to the IDA and SFFILM Doc Stories shortlists.

“With Sansón and Me, Rodrigo Reyes takes the consequences of colonialism in Mexico that he explored in 499 and makes them intensely personal,” said Cinema Guild President Peter Kelly. “We’re excited by the ways he continues to push the documentary form and can’t wait to share this beautiful film with audiences.”

“I am very proud that the deeply personal journey of Sansón and Me has found a home with Cinema Guild,” added Reyes, “a company with an unwavering commitment to this art form we all love so much.”

Oscar Isaac to Star in New York Revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window”

Posted on October 7, 2022 by Tom Castaneda

Oscar Isaac is embracing the sign…

The 43-year-old Cuban-Guatemalan actor will star opposite Rachel Brosnahan in the first major New York revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window this February at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

The production, running February 4-23, 2023, at the BAM Harvey Theater, will be directed by Obie Award winner Anne Kauffman.

Described by BAM as a “sweeping drama of identity, idealism, and love,” The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window is set in 1960s Greenwich Village and focuses on a diverse group of friends “whose loudly proclaimed progressive dreams can’t quite match up with reality. At the center are Sidney and Iris Brustein, fighting to see if their marriage – with all its crackling wit, passion, and petty cruelty – will be the final sacrifice to Sidney’s ideals.”

The play debuted on Broadway in 1964, five years after Hansberry’s masterpiece A Raisin in the Sun and shortly before her death in 1965 at age 34.

The Sign in Brustein’s Window has not been produced on a major New York stage since then.

Kauffman presented an acclaimed revival of the work in 2016 at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre.

“We are in dire need of Hansberry’s voice…we know so little of her and define her by one play: A Raisin in the Sun,” Kauffman said in a statement. “Without a doubt Raisin is a masterpiece, but Hansberry’s evolution and contribution to this country’s culture, history and political motion stretches way beyond that astonishing accomplishment. Her work as an artist and activist is varied and deep. The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, written four years after A Raisin in the Sun, embraces human complexity and frailty while aggressively shaking us free of our delusions, yet very few people know of it. Now they’ll know.”

David Binder, BAM Artistic Director, said, “During the five years I spent working to produce the first Broadway revival of A Raisin in the Sun (in 2004), I fell in love with The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window. I shared this passion for Lorraine’s play with Anne and the two of us spent many, many years working together to mount the show in New York. It’s an honor to present Lorraine’s beautiful, and rarely seen, play, finally, at BAM.”

The creative team and full company will be announced soon.

In addition to his numerous screen credits, Isaac has appeared on the New York stage in Hamlet, We Live Here, Romeo and Juliet and Two Gentlemen of Verona and Beauty of the Father, among others.

The original 1964 production of The Sign in Brustein’s Window starred Gabriel Dell and Rita Moreno. A short-lived 1972 revival starred Hal Linden and Zohra Lampert.

Bobby Cannavale Signs with Creative Artists Agency (CAA)

Posted on September 21, 2022 by Tom Castaneda

Bobby Cannavale is making management moves…

The 52-year-old half-Cuban American actor has signed with Creative Artists Agency (CAA).

Cannavale has moved from WME, after just opening alongside Ana De Armas at the Venice Film Festival in the Andrew Dominik-directed Blonde.

He next will star in Gracie Otto’s Seriously Red, and opposite Robert De Niro in the Tony Goldwyn-directed Inappropriate Behavior.

Cannavale has had memorable turns in projects from Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman to Boardwalk Empire, Motherless Brooklyn, I, Tonya, Ant-Man, The Station Agent and many others.

In television, Cannavale will next star in Ryan Murphy’s limited series The Watcher with Naomi Watts. He was recently seen in Hulu’s limited series Nine Perfect Strangers, alongside Nicole Kidman and Melissa McCarthy. His other TV credits include Homecoming, Angie Tribeca, Mr. Robot, Master of None, Nurse Jackie and Vinyl.

On the stage, Cannavale is a two-time Tony Award-nominee for Mauritius and The Mother F*cher With The Hat. A member of the LAByrinth Theater Company, the New Jersey-born Cannavale last appeared on stage in the 2020 production of Medea at The Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Bobby Cannavale to Star in Simon Stone’s Contemporary Rewrite of Euripides’ Tragedy “Medea”

Posted on July 26, 2019 by Tom Castaneda

Bobby Cannavale is preparing for a tragedy…

The 49-year-old half-Cuban American actor will star opposite Rose Byrne in Simon Stone’s contemporary rewrite of the Euripides’ tragedy Medea at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in January.

Originally staged in 2014 by Amsterdam’s International Theater Amsterdam(formerly Toneelgroep Amsterdam), Medea will pair real-life couple Byrne and Cannavale, with additional cast to be announced.

Stone’s adaptation of the Medea story uses the true-life crime case of American Debora Green, who poisoned her cheating husband and killed two of her three children in 1995. The adaptation played London’s Barbicanin 2019, where it starred Marieke Heebink and Aus Greidanus Jr.

Cannavale was seen on Broadway last fall in The Lifespan of a Fact, co-starring Daniel Radcliffe and Cherry Jones. His many stage credits include the Tony-nominated Mauritius, The Motherf*cker With The Hat, The Hairy Ape, Glengarry Glen Ross, Hurly Burly, and others.

He’s a member of the Labyrinth Theater Company. His upcoming films include The Irishman, Superintelligence, and Motherless Brooklyn.

“I’m excited to welcome writer/director Simon Stone following his enormous success with Yerma,” said BAM artistic director David Binder, “and look forward to having the incredible actors Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale in lead roles on our stage.”

Medea will be produced in Brooklyn by International Theater Amsterdam, BAM, and David Lan, who will serve as BAM’s Theater Associate.

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Tag Archives: Brooklyn Academy of Music

Chicago Sky Select Kamilla Cardoso with No. 3 Overall Pick in 2024 WNBA Draft

Cinema Guild Acquires U.S. Distribution Rights to Rodrigo Reyes’ “Sansón and Me”

Oscar Isaac to Star in New York Revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window”

Bobby Cannavale Signs with Creative Artists Agency (CAA)

Bobby Cannavale to Star in Simon Stone’s Contemporary Rewrite of Euripides’ Tragedy “Medea”