A Hazy Shade of Theatre: The Case for Clearer Design
Stage fog and haze are great tools for the right occasion. But must they be a default design element?
Opinion
Dream Ballet Vs. Steam Heat
Two new dance biographies show what we can (and can’t) learn from the revolutionary choreography of Agnes de Mille and Bob Fosse.
A Gay ‘Inheritance’ That’s Generations in the Making
Matthew Lopez’s two-part epic uses E.M. Forster as a template and is playing in London, but this sweeping, imperfect play is unmistakably American.
In With the New at Oregon Shakes
By doing such vital work by living playwrights, this classical destination theatre with Shakespeare in its name effectively puts them on equal footing with the Bard.
What a Girl Wants
‘The Wolves,’ ‘Dance Nation,’ and ‘School Girls,’ all by young female playwrights, show girlhood in all of its complexity and ferocity.
High Noon for Democracy in ‘Ameryka’
What do Polish and U.S. history have in common? Nancy Keystone’s beguiling new mash-up makes the connections.
Viola Spolin’s House Is for Sale
Are we going to let the place where the mother of improv developed much of her thinking, and wrote her seminal book, be snatched up and possibly torn down?
Reading Between the Lines of Rejection Letters
Is there a way to humanize playwrights’ familiar submission/rejection cycle? Remembering that there are human beings on both sides of the exchange can help.
Women Ran the Table at the 2018 Humana Festival
At the 42nd Humana Festival of New American Plays, the Kilroys and Anne Bogart spoke, Lauren Gunderson got a prize, and a majority female-authored program commanded the stage.
Ibsen, Our Contemporary
What gives this 19th-century Norwegian’s plays their lasting power? ‘Power’ is the operative word.