Category: theatre

There was a lot of talk about voters not knowing how to properly measure the art form—to which the designers said, “Let us judge it” rather than eliminate it altogether. How can the art form be measured properly?

Michael Feingold: “Yes, our old three-dimensional art form has stepped into an internet world where everything is accessible in one quick click. Today’s playwrights can shift focus, tone, or even subject matter in an eye-blink. Amazingly, they can do it without losing hold of their core meaning.”

“Ever more voices are suggesting that Shakespearean text be adjusted for modern audiences, with the most artistically responsible attempts so far being ones where only words and phrases that truly impede understanding are judiciously replaced by modern ones.”

Rajiv Joseph’s Guards at the Taj was honored as best new play, Stephen Karam (The Humans) and Lucas Hnath (The Christians and Red Speedo) won awards for playwriting, and the ensemble cast of Eclipsed took one of several acting prizes.

Sorry, it’s not a recording of the full performance, but it is a 2¼-minute mini-doc with interviews and excerpts.

“One of the great privileges of steady theatergoing is that you get to keep falling in love again. You’ll cautiously revisit a show you once lost your heart to, thinking it can’t possibly be as intoxicating as it was the first time around, especially if there have been cast changes.”

“You can’t say it’s a shame to be remembered for A Raisin in the Sun. It’s one of the great American plays. But Lorraine Hansberry was so much more than that one play.”

“This is an all-woman, fully nude, abridged adaptation of William Shakespeare’s final play The Tempest, … produced by the Outdoor Co-Ed Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society.” (Remember them?) But you’ve missed the last show, we’re afraid …

“On a press relations level, the move smacked of sour grapes – a retaliatory swipe at Fleet Street for not cooing over every offering in Rufus Norris’s strong but hardly faultless first year. On a pecuniary level, it’s hard to see how redistributing that modest allocation to other (presumably online) outlets in the name of broadening critical diversity and bringing in new audiences stacks up.”