ADV – Leaderboard

Three on the Aisle: The Critic as Artist?

On this week’s podcast, Terry Teachout wrote a play! Can Peter Marks and Elisabeth Vincentelli review it? Plus, an interview with director of the moment Lila Neugebauer.

Critics Terry Teachout (The Wall Street Journal), Elisabeth Vincentelli (The New York Times, Newsday, and the New Yorker), and Peter Marks (The Washington Post) get together to address and argue about the latest onstage.

This week Teachout calls in from West Palm Beach, Fla., where he is working on his new play, Billy and Me, about the friendship between Tennessee Williams and William Inge, at Palm Beach Dramaworks. Teachout, who also wrote (and has directed a production of) Satchmo at the Waldorf, discusses what it’s like to be on the other side of the curtain: How does his playwriting inform his criticism, and vice versa? What’s it like to see various productions of his own plays—and does it help him gauge the variables in the shows he reviews? How does he address potential conflicts of interest?

Then Marks, Teachout and Vincentelli welcome the accomplished, prolific director Lila Neugebauer. She just had two shows back to back at Lincoln Center Theater, Zoe Kazan’s After the Blast and Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves, and her collaboration with the company the Mad Ones, Miles for Mary, moves to Playwrights Horizons in January 2018 (it premiered at the Bushwick Starr last year). Neugebauer’s extensive regional credits include Annie Baker’s The Aliens and Lucas Hnath’s Red Speedo, both at Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C. She talks to Three on the Aisle about choosing plays, the art of collaboration, what she sees as the director’s role, and her bucket list.

Also in this episode, a discussion of sexual harassment in theatre, and why we haven’t heard of it as much as in Hollywood and the media (Teachout has some interesting theories on the subject).

To round up the podcast, the trio discuss a recent show they have particularly enjoyed.

You can hear all this, and more, on Three on the Aisle.

Download the episode here. Subscribe via the RSS feediTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher.

Have comments or requests for what the critics should talk about? Email them at threeontheaisle@gmail.com, or go to @threeontheaisle on Twitter.

Support American Theatre: a just and thriving theatre ecology begins with information for all. Please join us in this mission by joining TCG, which entitles you to copies of our quarterly print magazine and helps support a long legacy of quality nonprofit arts journalism.

ADV – Billboard