back the future
Arts journalist and editor Mark Blankenship is pleased to announce the debut of The Flashpaper: Theatre’s Thoughts on Right Now, a new journal dedicated to the urgent ideas of contemporary theater artists. Each issue of this print-only publication features original content created in response to a timely prompt from a diverse group of artists working in a variety of forms….
“[That’s all that’s left] of that daft urge to make amends/when it’s far too late, too late even to make sense of the clutter/of false trails and reversed horseshoe tracks/and the aniseed we took it in turn to drag/across each other’s scents, when only a fish is dumber and colder.” – “Incantata” Stanley Townsend is the celebrated Irish actor who…
It is a beneficial and rewarding venture to rework a classic piece of theatre that has withstood the test of time because it was revolutionary in the development of the genre and made an important commentary on the socio-economic status of the time. If the vision and purpose is to update the storyline to reflect the present situation with the…
Successful entrepreneurs like Harry (an overzealous but hypersensitive Raúl Esparza) typically attempt to guard their “art” from “commerce” for as long as possible. They feel frightened by the prospect of commercial success overwhelming their sense of artistic integrity. At least that is Harry’s point of view in Theresa Rebeck’s “Seared” currently running in the Susan & Ronald Frankel Theater at…
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s groundbreaking “On Death and Dying” was first published in 1969. The Grief Cycle outlined in this book remains the standard for understanding the “stages” of bereavement for those survivors of death. Milly Thomas’s “Dust” currently running at New York Theatre Workshop in the Fourth Street Theatre provides a new standard of understanding the stages of grief, one for…
Performances of a new off-Broadway play begin with previews, advance through opening night and reviews, and settle into a run of some indeterminate length depending on original projections of success and extensions, finally closing leaving the play’s actors and creative team in the beginnings of yet another post-closing bereavement process. But what of the play itself? Did the run of…
“We are stardust, we are golden/We are billion-year-old carbon/And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.” (“Woodstock” by Joni Mitchell) Jomama is the performer and alter ego of Daniel Alexander Jones who created the production “Black Light” now playing at Greenwich House Theater after a successful run at Joe’s Pub. She is a soul sonic superstar and when…
Present, past, and several possible futures collide with the biblical story of Job in Craig Lucas’s “I Was Most Alive with You” currently playing at Playwrights Horizons Mainstage. And within each time frame and tale exist a multitude of layers of complexity and contingency about the human condition, particularly its vulnerability and resilience in the face of elucidated and unexplained…
Currently playing at Walkerspace, The Pond Theatre Company’s “The Naturalists” is a compelling look at how one’s “secret” past can suddenly and unexpectedly encroach on the present and delay one’s progress into the future. Brothers Francis Sloane (a thoughtful and tender John Keating) and Billy Sloane (a defiant and burdened Tim Ruddy) enjoy an uneventful present in their mobile home…
Outer Critics Circle, the organization of writers and commentators covering New York theatre for out-of-town newspapers, national publications and other media beyond Broadway, announced on Friday September 14, 2018 Cynthia Allen, Richard Ridge, David Roberts and Janice Simpson will serve as new members of the OCC Executive/Nominating Committee. “The Outer Critics Circle found itself in a period of transition during the springtime, as we…