Let me tell you, it is a weird thing to see 18-year-olds in 2018 perform a play about being on the brink of turning 30 in 1990. This production was great and interesting–and also kind of surreal. The problem, I think, with doing Tick, Tick…Boom! right now is that it isn’t far enough away, but it […]
I saw Men on Boats at Bridgewater College as a participating production for KCACTF. It was fantastic. The script tells the story of the Powell Expedition, while asking questions about the typical story, which, of course, we only have from Powell himself. One cool thing about this script is that the playwright, Jaclyn Backhaus, said that she […]
The Wolves is being performed literally everywhere right now. If you are in the United States, the odds that there is a performance of it this weekend within a hundred miles of your present location are very high–and I recommend that you go avail yourself of the opportunity to see it. I hadn’t seen it […]
I saw As You Like It as a participating production for KCACTF Region 2. This production did some interesting work in terms of gender bending. The wicked duke was a female actor in a dress, but with a mustache–sort of gender nonbinary, I guess. Touchstone had half of their costume as a female and half male, […]
TW: This response mentions suicide. I’ve probably mentioned that one super fun thing I get to do is respond to college shows for the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF). I enjoy traveling to these shows, talking with students about their work and their process, and getting a feel for the kind of work […]
I took the kids to see a student matinee of As You Like It at the American Shakespeare Center. This turned out to be a great move. The audience mostly consisted of high school students. My kids were about as well-behaved as any of them, and I wasn’t self-conscious about their wiggling energy. One thing I […]
Today feels like the right day for reflecting on a Greek tragedy. After all, November 23 is traditionally the day when theater was born. Thespis of Icaria, near Athens, stepped out of a chorus and became the first actor in the mid-6th century BCE. Or maybe he didn’t, but that’s the story (and people definitely […]
This fall, counting my Labor Day Shakespeare road trip, I had the privilege of seeing thirteen plays (and I’m going to fit in at least two more before it’s officially winter). I saw plays from nationally renowned companies. I saw college plays. I saw plays by small professional troupes that are doing some truly amazing work. […]
I’ve been following Eric Minton’s Shakespeareances blog, and in particular, his Canon Project. He’s seeing 38 plays in 38 theaters in North America in 2018. One of the productions he saw was our (Pigeon Creek Shakespeare’s) remount of Much Ado (he blogged about it here and here), so I got to meet him and learn […]
I recently spent just under 48 hours in lower Manhattan for a work thing. Apologies to anyone I didn’t get to see while I was there–it was a blink in and out of town. It was a crazy trip, but I did manage to sneak in a visit to Broadway on my one night in […]