“They are the talk of the theater world: a generation of black playwrights whose fiercely political and formally inventive works are challenging audiences, critics and the culture at large to think about race, and racism, in new ways.” A conversation with Jackie Sibblies Drury, Jeremy O. Harris, Antoinette Nwandu and Jordan E. Cooper. – The New York Times
Category: theatre
‘The Most Powerful And Relevant Theater Being Written Today’ — Ben Brantley On New Plays By Black Writers
“I can’t remember a more electrifying run of new, innovative plays during my 25-year tenure as a New York theater critic than the heady spate of works by African-American playwrights that have opened Off Broadway during the past two seasons.” – The New York Times
New Wave Of African-American Playwrights In A Radical Moment
Wesley Morris: “Occasionally, a play ends and nobody really knows what to do, because it just took an audience to outer space, to the center of the earth, to this new electric zone that knows what’s wrong with this country and isn’t afraid to personify it, laugh at it, behold it. … The work is also black — its blackness providing a lens through which to see and be seen.” – The New York Times
10 Works Over 5 Years by Black Playwrights, All Intended to Challenge
“Oftentimes, the most outrageous of plot twists are what make that happen,” say Ben Brantley and Jesse Green. – The New York Times
Ibsen Was A Hugely Influential Playwright And His Ideas Permeate Still. But…
Terry Teachout writes that the ideas – groundbreaking and shocking in their times, are now so familiar that they’re boring. “To be sure, we live with their culture-changing consequences—we know them well—but the plays themselves too often come across as static, talky exercises in bourgeois-baiting, as smug as Shaw at his worst but without his compensating wit.” Commentary
Playwright Lucas Hnath — A 21st Century George Bernard Shaw (Via Wallace Shawn)
“Hnath is a master of Socratic dialogue … In a Hnath play, you repeatedly find yourself agreeing with a pointed speech, then agreeing with its rebuttal. … Many playwrights promote the beleaguered liberal values of tolerance and skepticism, but Hnath enacts them onstage. This, you feel, is what it means to think something through.” – The New Yorker
La Jolla Playhouse And Goodman Theatre Co-Commission Plays By And For Artists With Disabilities
“National Disability Theatre has announced a partnership with La Jolla Playhouse and Goodman Theatre to commission two new works written, directed, and designed by artists with disabilities for casts featuring only actors with disabilities. The selected playwrights are Gregg Mozgala … and Christopher Shinn.” – American Theatre
Bringing The Music Back To Ancient Greek Drama
“Greek tragedy survives today as words on a page, but ancient performances were distinguished as much for music and dance as for speeches and dialogue. … The musical dimension of ancient tragedy was long given up for lost, but a [recent] performance of Euripides’s Herakles at Barnard College showed how much is being recovered, thanks to recent archeological finds and painstaking research.” – The New York Review of Books
Great Theatre Challenging Capitalism — At $1,000 Or More Per Ticket
“We are lingering in a moment in which there is a fashion, or even a giddiness, for spending large sums of money on theatrical experiences that explore the foundations and promises of American capitalism.” – The New York Times
An Argument Against A Darker Reinterpretation Of “Oklahoma!”
Judith Miller: “It is one thing to emphasize the darkness that lies beneath this iconic musical’s cheery surface. It is another to turn what Rodgers and Hammerstein intended as a celebration of the American spirit into a sanguinary condemnation of it.” – City Journal