Category: theatre

We’re are not in Hoboken but in a space beneath the 14th Street entrance and exit of New York City’s High Line, and this is the immersive theatrical experience of Seeing You.

“[It’s] about more than booking acts, selling tickets and waiting for the cash to roll in. It means knowing where to hire a crane at 3am so you can lift a trampoline through a window, as Zoo Venues’ artistic director, James Mackenzie, had to do one year. Or dealing with a hole that opens up overnight right in front of Pleasance Dome’s entrance. Or ferrying truckloads of water from Leith to fill the Pleasance Courtyard tanks when the water supply fails, so the venues’ toilets can flush.”

Writes editor Adam Moss: “Sara never imagined herself a critic, but she has the makings of a great one. She comes at theatre criticism from an unusual background and perspective, which will be helpful, but she also happens to be a wonderful critical writer—vivid, wry, interesting, impassioned. We’re excited to welcome her to the dialogue.”

Diep Tran: “We theatre journalists are a marginalized minority ourselves: overworked, underpaid, and constantly fighting to justify our existence. We’re not all that different from the artists we claim to love. And if we really love theatre, then we need to find a better way to talk about the diverse people who make it. Because right now, we—whose job it is to tell the truth—are failing at it.”

“The program, known as the A.R.T. Institute, is housed within Harvard’s acclaimed American Repertory Theater, and has had several recent setbacks that contributed to the freeze. In January, the federal government called out the institute for burdening its students with loan debt averaging about $78,000 each.” This for a program that does not confer an MFA degree.

“When Kevin Broccoli wrote his two-man play James Franco and Me, he had vague hopes that the real James Franco might tweet about it or maybe, just maybe, come see a performance. Instead, Mr. Franco’s lawyers have sent a cease-and-desist letter to a New York theater that was going to stage the satire in August.”

Dozens more men than women are acting on stage because of the continuing fascination by arts institutions and audiences with William Shakespeare’s comedies, tragedies and histories – written during a time and in a place where women were legally prohibited from acting.

“The play’s lead actor, Mohamad Alrefai, showed up for his first interview at the United States Embassy in Beirut eager to introduce himself and to show his supporting documents for a visa, only to be told by an American consular official to keep his mouth shut, he recalled, and his stack of papers to himself. Several members of the group were asked to furnish their social media handles so American officials could read what they had posted. The director, Omar Abusaada, said he was asked if he belonged to a terrorist organization. “Would an actual terrorist say yes?” he later wondered aloud.”

Laura Collins-Hughes: “The capacity to take women seriously is at the heart of all of this: the idea that we’re not an aberration but half the population, and just as human as the other half. It is ridiculous to me that the need for equal footing even has to be a discussion — that the inherent value of a theater that looks and sounds and feels like all of us should require defending.”