Artistic Directors Douglas Aibel and Sarah Stern announce casting for Vineyard Theatre’s Developmental Lab production of Tori Sampson’s THIS LAND WAS MADE, directed by Whitney White. Vineyard’s Developmental Labs allow a playwright and director to explore a work-in-progress on its feet in collaboration with a full creative team, and include staging and design elements. Presentations are Thursday, July 26 –…
“There have been, and will be again, many destructions of [humankind] arising out of many causes; the greatest have been brought about by the agencies of fire and water, and other lesser ones by innumerable other causes.” – Plato (“Timaeus”) Rinne Groff has created an engaging extended metaphor based on the 1911 fire that destroyed the iconic Dreamland on Coney…
There is considerable Jewish culture captured in the musical “Fiddler on the Roof” the iconic musical that has won a respectable reputation in theater history. Since it first opened on Broadway in 1964 to win nine TONY awards, “Fiddler” went on to become the longest running Broadway musical. Since that original production, there have been five Broadway revivals. The collaboration…
“Brecht on Brecht” the theatrical collage of works by Bertolt Brecht first compiled by George Tabori in the early 1960s is appearing at Atlantic Stage 2 in repertory with “The Possibilities” and “The After-Dinner Joke” as part of PTP/NYC’s Season 2018. This is the Potomac Theatre Project’s thirty-second season in New York City. “Brecht on Brecht” features songs and scenes…
“What I set out to do was make an experimental musical theater. Broadway is a museum that’s not moving forward, and musical theater should reflect what and how we are now — our pop culture, our political situation.” (Elizabeth Swados 1951 – 2016) Broadway is no longer a museum with the recent arrival of “School of Rock – The Musical”…
David Ireland’s “Cyprus Avenue” currently running at The Public’s LuEsther Hall sneaks up on the audience like a cat burglar armed with an AK-15 assault rifle. What one assumes will be lost is far less than the devastation left behind by the action in Ireland’s disquieting play. The detritus remaining after Eric Miller’s (Stephen Rea) violation of his wife Bernie…
During the Fidel Castro regime, “Operation Pedro Pan” transported children fleeing the growing fears of Communist indoctrination in Cuba to the safety of the United States where some of the children were reunited with family or relatives while others were cared for by the Catholic Welfare Bureau. Based on this historic event, the new musical aptly titled “Pedro Pan” is…
Playwright Mike Lew characterizes his play “Teenage Dick” as “vaguely from Richard III.” The protagonist of this engaging and quite dark play is high school junior Richard Gloucester (Gregg Mozgala). Richard has CP and likes to speak with a Shakespearean flair and verbiage. His disability and diction have made him the object of verbal and physical harassment. This Roseland High…
Margery Kempe was an English Christian Mystic during the 14th and 15th centuries who was tried for heresy multiple times but never convicted. During the late Middle Ages, the task of interpreting the Bible and God was restricted to ordained priests but interpretation through the senses and body became the dominion of woman mystics. Kempe’s autobiography is the first written…
During the April 2, 2000 matinee performance of Julie Taymor’s “Green Bird” at the Cort Theatre, a flying wall accidently struck actor Reg. E. Cathey during a set change in the dark. This unexpected interruption resulted in the cancellation of the performance and sent Cathey to the hospital for x-rays. Fortunately, the actor was not seriously hurt and was reported…