Wednesday, May 1, 2024
ALTERNATING CURRENTS is a heart-felt ode to the utopian ideal of community driven co-op housing in NYC. It’s a gritty excavating of systemic racism, union failure, mixed race marriage challenges and the desire for belonging. It poses probing questions about community engagement and the pressures associated with toeing the line. It’s a slick, energetic production that scratches beneath the faded veneer of the golden age of post-World War II American prosperity. The Working Theater’s Five Boroughs/One City Initiative encompasses five teams of commissioned writers and directors tasked with collaborating with working people to create an original play that is firmly rooted
Month: May 2018
Theatre: Two Local Festivals Celebrate Ancient Greek Theatre
Despite their rigid structure, Ancient Greek plays resonate in whatever era they are presented. Gods and demigods dealt with the same jealousy, conflict, passion, and humor mortals encounter in the real world. These powerful emotions are the centerpieces of two festivals: The Third Annual Onassis Festival, "Birds: A Festival Inspired by Aristophanes", offers Nikos Karathanos’s magical production of the comedy at Brooklyn co-producer St. Anne's Warehouse, and The Seeing Place Theater's "Whistleblower Series" at the Lower East Side Paradise Factory features Brandon Walker's timely and provocative recreation, The People vs. Antigone. "Where are the birds?" Pisthetaerus (Nikos Karathanos) and Euelpides (Aris Servetails) ask each
Riding The Waves of Surfer Girl: An interview with Amy Northup
Animus Theatre Company is an ensemble of artists that develops new work and realizes the full potential of infrequently produced plays that explore the fragility and resilience of the human spirit. Currently, they’re producing one of Lesyle Headland’s Seven Deadly Sins Cycle. Headland known for Bachelorette and Sleeping With Other People had vowed years ago to write a play about each sin and the last and seventh is about to open with IAMA Theatre Company in LA. With the New York Premiere of Surfer Girl, a female driven monologue which will be embodied by eight ladies over the course of it’s
The Spring Fling: Chemistry at IRT Theater
“The Spring Fling” is a satisfying merry-go-round of seven 10-minute plays that explore the theme of “chemistry” as a jumping off point for the 2018 season. This F*It Club’s award-winning initiative is in it’s eighth year and presents commissioned world premiere works by emerging and established playwrights. It’s a sumptuous theatrical buffet where you get to experience a wide variety of talented playwrights, directors, actors and designers all in one go. All the chaff is winnowed away so we are left with strong kernels of possibility. It is thrilling to see how each playwright has imaginatively explored the theme and
“The Rainmaker” at The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture – Black Box Theater
I didn’t realize how thirsty I was for a well made play, performed by a stellar cast, until I soaked in the charms of the “The Rainmaker” by N. Richard Nash. It’s a classic play from the “golden age” of American theater that transported me to the halcyon days of 1920’s farm life in the American West. Time slows down here on the Curry farm as you get drawn into their close-knit, yet fraying family quilt. It’s like paging through an old album, with sepia photographs, that slams you with intense nostalgia and a longing for people you have never
La Folie at The Black Lady Theatre
La Folie by Heloise Wilson is a deeply relevant revelation of a neglected slum that could be found not far out of Paris between 1950 and 1970. La folie translates into “insanity", an apt name for a muddy desolate place that was advertised to some as a paradise where they could find work in France and live like royalty. This was a real place that most French people have never heard about because it was almost completely un-documented and avoided by the government and press. Wilson and director Laura Tesman found an important balance between pain and hope and took
RANDY WRITES A NOVEL at The Clurman Theatre at Theatre Row
This is cheek sore, solar plexus spasm funny. This is laughter therapy that exfoliates grumpy out of your psychological wardrobe. Randy can turn a phrase like he’s cornering a Lotus Elise SC. You’re watching a truly hilarious stand-up comedian who is sitting down. He looks like the love child of Kermit the frog and Barney the dinosaur but has more facial expressions than Jim Carrey as Ace Ventura. You marvel at how “felt” and eyeballs can be more enlivened than the bulk of the humans you know. Randy may be energized by puppetry but he has almost as much soul
Tony Award Nominees Announced for 2018
The American Theatre Wing has announced the nominees for this year's Tony Awards. The ceremony will be televised on CBS on Sunday June 10, beginning at 8 pm Eastern Daylight Time. For a complete list of nominees, please visit the Tonys website. Tony Nominations by Production Mean Girls - 12 SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical - 12 Angels in America - 11 The Band's Visit - 11 Rodgers & Hammerstein's Carousel - 11 Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts One and Two - 10 My Fair Lady - 10 Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh - 8 Once On This Island - 8 Edward Albee's Three Tall Women - 6 Farinelli and The
Mobile Unit: Henry V at The Public Theater
At any given moment in a theatrical season, it is likely there is a Shakespearean production being performed in both major and minor theatres and cities across the English-speaking world. The Bard’s relentless staying power is undeniable. But how do modern companies keep the work fresh and relevant, particularly the Histories, many of which are set in times, places and about people which seem to bear little significance on contemporary life in America? One simple answer is that at the root of all of these stories lie rich, complex and utterly human characters whose grappling with their struggles and delights in their