Category: theatre

As “Angels” gets major revivals on both coasts (and “Caroline, or Change” transfers to the West End in London), Kushner says he’s tried to get his most famous work out of his head – but he just keeps taking notes on productions, and then revising, or maybe creating a new project … about Angels. “I’m thinking of putting together a book, a user’s guide to the play, by taking all the notes and offering brief descriptions of the characters and then walking actors and directors through the entire thing.”

It’s a matter of sexual harassment and abuse being a major public health and safety issue in all sectors of our society, and wanting to do something about it, especially when the leadership of arts institutions tend to do whatever it takes to preserve themselves first, at the direct cost of the health and safety of the individuals they’re supposed to serve.

Russell M. Dembin: “For me it was more than fine: [the] casting elevated the play to another level, embracing the characters’ Jewishness while speaking to a time in which many people, not only American Jews but especially communities of color and other historically marginalized groups, feel less safe and welcome in this country.”

Wendy Rosenfield: “Even without seeing them, I know this much: Anne’’ story isn’t multicultural; it’s Jewish. … This would all be admirable if the voices at the center of the (nonfiction) story weren’t already marginalized, and weren’t marginalized further by a casting process that once again sought to replace the attic denizens’ identities with something more ‘universal.'”

“Kirill S. Serebrennikov … [is] accused of embezzling 133 million rubles, or about $2.3 million, in government funds allocated to a festival he ran. For many in Russia and abroad, however, the case against Mr. Serebrennikov seems like a piece of politically motivated theater: punishment for a provocative artist who has been an outspoken critic of President Vladimir V. Putin. … The Gogol Center, the avant-garde theater he has led since 2012, [is now making a high-profile visit to the German capital].”

Alisa Solomon: “How deeply and daily disappointing that the paper of record erases the same people and perspectives that are ever more disdained by the current regime. That for me, at least, goes some way toward explaining the outsized irritation – my own and that of many colleagues – that greeted Jesse Green’s recent 5,000-word essay ‘A Brief History of Gay Theater,’ which ran in [the Men’s Style issue of] T: The New York Times Style Magazine on Sunday, March 4.”

“I’m a 40-year-old AIDS researcher who understands that Angels in America is not a particularly interesting or honest representation of those early years of the plague. Indeed, there have been many better representations of AIDS in America for decades now, but none have achieved canonization quite like Angels has.”

Kit Yan, whose shows have been selling out American Repertory Theatre and winning awards, says it’s a challenge. “Director Jessi Hill and I have had a lot of conversations about what is slam poetry and what is theatre. The rules of slam poetry include a microphone, a time limit, no props … all these things you can’t do. Putting slam poetry into a theatre and just taking some of those rules out frees up the story in so many ways.”

In short, Harper Lee agreed to let Aaron Sorkin write a script, but it wasn’t supposed to change the characters or “denigrate” them. Lee’s dead, but her lawyer says the script (of a play that’s supposed to open on Broadway in December) goes too far. “What happens now? The two sides could settle the dispute. Or the case could go to trial. In the meantime, we asked seven lawyers with relevant expertise to help us untangle the thicket — how much change is permissible, and who gets to decide whether the script crosses that line?”