The Potomac Theatre Project (PTP/NYC) has selected two Howard Barker plays for their 29th Season. PTP/NYC is a remarkable theatre collective that has always been willing to take risks in presenting challenging plays in repertory. This 2015 Season is no exception. Mr. Barker’s “Scenes from an Execution” is brilliant and the production at Atlantic Stage 2 is as scintillating as…
“I am not meant to be understood. Don’t you see? Oh, you miserable, well-meaning, always-on-the-right-side, desperate little intellect! Death to be understood. Awful death…” (Galactia to Rivera, Scene Nineteen) The best learning results from the learner grappling with an authentic situation, with rich dense text, and with self and others. This process translates to the development and appreciation of the…
Katt Tait’s “Black Magic: Songs Unchained” is a 50 minute rehearsal of the power of song to soothe, strengthen, empower, and organize. Against the backdrop of a powerful collection of images that focus on the slave trade (in Africa, in the United States, and throughout the privileged world) and slavery, Ms. Tait sings a treasure trove of songs from the…
Conor McPherson’s “The Weir,” a haunting play of effervescent charm, finds a cozy home at the Irish Repertory Theatre. Directed by Irish Rep veteran Ciarán O’Reilly, the play bathes comfortably in old-country charm, fireside folk tales, and sepulchral gloom. The play centers around one night at a bar in rural Ireland. Excitement stirs in the placid village when Valerie, a…
There is probably something important in Morgan Gould’s “Losing Tom Pecinka” currently running at the New Ohio Theater as part of this year’s Ice Factory but whatever that might be is buried beneath layers of self-effacing (and self-absorbed) puerile humor that resembles a mashup of the worst Saturday Night Live sketches and the dreariest of daytime soap operas both replete…
It is difficult to know precisely what playwright Jalila Baccar envisioned her award-winning play would look like on stage but it is doubtful it was anything like the disappointing production of her important drama currently running at the 4th Street Theatre in Manhattan’s East Village. This Horizon Theatre Rep production is overlong, overwrought, and depends too heavily on projections of…
Everything seems to be in place in Winsome Brown’s one woman tribute to her late mother Mary. Ms. Brown has gathered stories from her mother’s life, written a script which tells those stories from the points of view of a cast of fifteen characters (in addition to several Irish cousins), used more than the requisite number of rich tropes, and…
“Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose, And nothin’ ain’t worth nothin’ but it’s free.” Kris Kristofferson, “Me and Bobby Mcgee” Under the guise of a grippingly gory vampire story, Joseph Wilde’s “Cuddles” exposes more than throbbing veins. His sharp and witty (actually, it is) tale of two sisters living a symbiotic life in the elder’s home exposes…
Who we are, who we were, who we think we are, who we think we were, who others think we are, and who others think we were is the stuff of the process of examining one’s practice – even the stuff of metacognition. Such thinking can be restorative or contemplative; however, often it results in a kind of restlessness that…
Based on the experience of child textile workers in industrial-era United States, Pioneers Go East Collective’s American Mill #2 is about as by-the-book as a postmodern theatre piece can be. Multimedia, song and movement, found text, and an ephemeral premise touch on all the conventions to which we’ve grown accustomed. PGEC shows their youth in American Mill #2 ; some…