Category: theatre

“Is there any legitimate reason for calling out this one actor’s race, since it is not being discussed as germane to any interpretation of the production or the particular scene. It is, so far as I can tell, casual and irrelevant. Which makes it stand out to me all the more.”

“These gentlemen did not appreciate a freckle-faced little lady telling them what to do in anything resembling an authoritative voice. They would yell back at my request and I would immediately back down.”

When Shakespeare used the word “black” he was not exactly describing a race the way we would. He meant instead someone with darker skin than an Englishman at a time when Englishmen were very, very pale. Although Othello is a Moor, and although we often assume he is from Africa, he never names his birthplace in the play.

China Doll, “bolstered by Mr. Pacino’s star power, has been selling very strongly at the box office, but there has been some skeptical early buzz about Mr. Mamet’s play and Mr. Pacino’s performance, and the delay will both lengthen the amount of time the team has to work on the project before critics weigh in, and reduce the effect of reviews because they will run later in the play’s limited run and after the traditionally lucrative Thanksgiving weekend.”

“I can’t see well. … But what I can see is red lights all over the theatre, and I know that’s people taking photographs. It’s a kind of oblivion to other people.”

“Each decade gets an hour, an outfit, and ten songs (give or take), which were popular among the specific segment of America that Mac has focused on for that span: ‘90’s alternative lesbians, say, or turn-of-the-century Jewish immigrants. It is a queer, feminist, anti-racist version of American history, and judy (Mac’s stage gender pronoun) tells it with sequins, balloons, and plastic toys.”

“The winners will split a $45,000 prize. The playwrights will also be given a weeklong retreat with a director, dramaturg and actors at an organic farm in upstate New York, and the plays will be given staged readings, intended to help with their development, at regional theaters around the nation.”