Category: theatre

Charles McNulty of the Los Angeles Times: “Artists would be better served to channel the anger and disgust they feel into their work. Let dissent inflame their imaginations. Theater practitioners and patrons — in other words, citizens — would be advised to expand the focus of their outrage.”

Howard Sherman: “There will be more plays – and poems and books and movies and perhaps even operas and symphonies – about the new America that looms. The America that was revealed by a rash of racist and misogynist attacks in the past week, has been present all along in some quarters. It has now been given leave to emerge based on a perception that law enforcement may be less concerned.”

Like the “Trump Starbucks” thing organized to buy punish Starbucks by buying coffee and asking for it to be under the name Trump, this appears to be going well. “Finally, there were, naturally, a handful of ‘Hamilton’-related Joe Biden memes that cropped up to join the Twitter fray.”

“Stage acting has long been a poorly paid profession, and it is not unusual for union members to agitate for higher wages. But Off Broadway performers said their campaign this time was different because their wages had become increasingly unacceptable – in most cases, Off Broadway actors are paid no more than $593 a week, in roles that generally last only a few weeks, and they have to pay 10 percent to an agent, 2.25 percent to their union, and about 30 percent in taxes, leaving them with take-home pay that does not, they say, cover the cost of living in New York.”

“In the past, graduate companies kept body and soul together on breadcrumbs for maybe eight to 10 years, always with the hope that if you were good enough you would eventually secure more regular funding. That expectation now seems to have gone.”

It’s the one Shakespearean lead that he resisted for years – “I don’t want to do anything that feels pedestrian or obvious,” he said. Now he’s finally playing the role – Off-Broadway, opposite Daniel Craig – and here he talks about why. (For one thing, the producer spent two years wooing him.)

Washington, DC’s Theater J has gone through more than a little turmoil over what it has presented in recent years; even so, it’s not where you’d expect to see Lucas Hnath’s play about a conflicted megachurch. Adam Immerwahr, the company’s (new-ish) artistic director, explains why he’s producing The Christians and how he’s made over DC’s Jewish Community Center into a megachurch.

“Everywhere you turn there’s a stage luminary. (Look, there’s Robert Morse!) All these familiar faces provide a welcome distraction from the reality that this three-act farce (performed with two intermissions) is a big snore.”

It all started when Davy Rothbart (you may remember him from This American Life – he’s the guy who scalped Chicago Bulls tickets and took his deaf mother to a faith healer in Brazil) found a note on his windshield that said, ‘Mario, I [bleeping] hate you. You said you had to work then whys your car HERE at HER place? You’re a [bleeping] LIAR[.] I hate you I [bleeping] hate you[.] Amber. p.s. page me later.”