This Month in Theatre History
February recalls the premieres of 2 groundbreaking Black musicals on Broadway, the contentious beginnings of English theatre in the Big Easy, and a little company that could in Pennsylvania.
February recalls the premieres of 2 groundbreaking Black musicals on Broadway, the contentious beginnings of English theatre in the Big Easy, and a little company that could in Pennsylvania.
Lorraine Hansberry’s long-awaited sophomore effort was greeted coolly, even confusedly, in 1964, but ambivalence—about art, activism, and their fraught intersection—has always been in the play’s DNA.
A look back at SoHo in the 1970s, where theatrical experimentation by Meredith Monk, Robert Wilson, Richard Foreman, the Performance Group, and Mabou Mines defined an era.
A playwright and abolitionist responsible for a variety of firsts, an international tour that changed acting in the West, and the birth of a feminist theatre collective with a unique approach to playmaking.
December brought the premieres of a powerful Pulitzer-winning drama, a Yiddish play by a prolific Jewish playwright, and a docudrama about a flashpoint in U.S. history.
How 2 veterans of New York’s 1960s-’70s avant-garde theatre made edgy, alternative theatre in a conservative state, and what enduring lessons their example may hold out for others.
November looks back on some Houdini hijinks, the origins of two major regional theatres, and a First Nations-led premiere.
Back in August after a pandemic hiatus, the biennial gathering of Black theatremakers reclaimed its status as both a reunion and a showcase for new work.
October recalls the extraordinary career of a 19th-century performer, the founding of both an Indianapolis institution and a West Coast bilingual theatre project, as well as the premieres of 2 very different works by queer Latinas on the East Coast.
September sees the beginnings of theatre in the U.S., the openings of major theatres on opposite coasts, a starry ‘Godspell’ reunion, and the start of a Chicago festival of Latino theatre.