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Why didn't I feel engaged by Potomac Theatre Project's revival of Howard Barker's Scenes from an Execution? The subject matter is important and timely and is presented by the author the way one wishes to see serious issues presented on stage, which is to say as the give-and-take discourse of intelligent and articulate characters. The subject is the freedom of artists in a so-called democracy.

It seems to me that if you're going to mess around with history, you ought to come up with alternatives that are provocative, purposeful, or at least juicy. Playwright Robert Gulack attempts a rewrite of the life of England's Virgin Queen in his verse play Six Husbands of Elizabeth the Queen—along the lines that the title suggests—but the enterprise ultimately makes no interesting points about its subject. The best parts trace the actual historical record, while the made-up sections feel meandering and poorly thought out.

For over an hour, Sam Eaton mesmerizes his audience with his masterful use of prediction, supernormal mentalism, memorization and calculation.

Lasanta is a non-linear stage noir that uses shadow puppetry, live jazz music, movement, text, and projections to explore the dynamic between men and women. The director's note in the program leads one to believe that this work is an in-depth look into the nature of love and beauty, yet all I really got out of it, on that topic at least, was that men are brutes and women are sex symbols.

Cirque Dreams Jungle Fantasy brings the world of acrobatics, aerialists, and circus to the Broadway stage. It is perhaps not the most felicitous of convergences: the show does not fit terribly well in the Broadway Theatre (sightlines in the front orchestra, where I was sitting, are not all that good, for example); the Vegas-y decor, framed by a unit set whose main attribute seems to be that it's portable, is on the tacky side; and the songs—all performed by an Idina Menzel-wannabe named Jill Diane, who plays "Mother Nature"—are interchangeably dull. But I found it pretty easy to set aside all the stuff I just quibbled about when the skillful performers who are the heart and soul of Cirque Dreams Jungle Fantasy get to do what they do best.

John Behlmann, Joanne Camp, TJ Edwards, Tom Galantich, and Keiana Reichard will star in the Pearl Theatre Company's production of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts, February 26-March 30. The production, which...

The Falcon Theatre will present Cindy and the Disco Ball, March 1-May 16. Directed by Joseph Leo Bwarie, Cindy and the Disco Ball is a retro retelling of Cinderella featuring book...

Full casting has been announced for August Wilson's 20th Century, a series of readings of all 10 plays of Wilson's Pittsburgh Hill cycle, to be held March 4-April 6 at the Kennedy Center's Terrace...

Casting and creative teams have been announced for the first two plays at the 32nd Annual Humana Festival of New American Plays, to take place February 24-March 30 at the Actors Theatre of Louisville in...

The Folger Theatre's production of Macbeth will be extended one week due to advance sales, and will now run February 28-April 13. This production is co-conceived and co-directed by Teller (of...

Andrea Lepcio has an ear ??? for poetic language that feels real, for richly varied voices, and for the secrets that pave the way to tragedy.

Did your parents ever con you into going to summer camp with the promise that once you got there, you'd have a great time?

Through almost all of Liz McCartney's rendition of the Jerry Ross-Richard Adler "Hey There" ??? which Rosemary Clooney turned into one of her many chart-topping hits ??? I had my eyes closed.

Noon Day Sun promises impact. Zena, a black woman with skin so fair she is called "snow," passes herself off in 1957 as a white woman named Wendy.

Signature Theatre Company couldn't have chosen a finer play, cast finer actors, or more strongly begun its season-long salute to the Negro Ensemble Company.

Thanks to the success of the ?Harry Potter? film series, Daniel Radcliffe is a fairly recognizable face. But with being famous comes a host of expectations from your co-workers.

?They?re always expecting some terrible person to turn up,? Radcliffe told the September issue of Vogue magazine. ?So you try to make sure that they know that you?re intelligent and not horrible. Then you try to be rugged and sexy ? but only after smart and lovable.?

Clay Aiken made quite a splash in his Broadway debut in Monty Python?s ?Spamalot,? earlier this year and the ?American Idol? alum is bound for the Great White Way once again.


Clay will reprise his ?Spamalot? role of Sir Robin, Access Hollywood has confirmed.

Katie Holmes just keeps taking it off.


Mrs. Tom Cruise, who made a huge hairstyle splash when she helped fuel Hollywood?s bob craze late last year, has been seen out and about in New York with a new pixie cut. Photos popping up on the Internet show Holmes sporting a shaggier version of the short ?do, with long bangs and a tapered neck.

Making it to the final four on ?Dancing With the Stars? was an accomplishment Marissa Jaret Winokur will always be proud of, but now she has another that tops her primetime TV moment by leaps and bounds ? she?s become a first time mother.

Fresh off the success of this summer?s feature film version of ?Mamma Mia,? Hollywood is clamoring for more singing and dancing on the big screen. Musical fans will get their wish with a sequel to 2007?s ?Hairspray? and a remake of the cult classic film ?The Rocky Horror Picture Show.?

"Ace, the Broadway-aimed musical about a boy's flight through his own family history, begins previews Aug. 27 in Arlington, VA, with a flock of divas helping to keep the production aloft.

"Haley Joel Osment, who was Academy Award-nominated for his performance in "The Sixth Sense," will make his Broadway debut in the fall in the revival of David Mamet's American Buffalo.

"The 2008 Toronto Film Festival will screen "Every Little Step," a new documentary tracing the recent Broadway revival and original production of A Chorus Line.

"Award-winning Broadway composer Charles Strouse will make two appearances at the London show-biz shop Dress Circle in September.

"108 Productions' staging of Terrence McNally's Corpus Christi, previously seen at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and the Dublin International Gay Theatre Festival, will play a limited run at the Rattlestick Theater in New York this fall.

The Mark Taper Forum will reopen with a revival of John Guare?s ?House of Blue Leaves? after a yearlong, $30 million renovation.

Lincoln Center Theater will present Horton Foote?s ?Dividing the Estate? this fall at the Booth Theater.

Gorilla Rep?s production was presented on a gently sloping stretch of grass in Fort Tryon Park, and the ingenuity of its staging was impressive.

Nature takes its course in high style in the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival?s inspiriting production of ?Cymbeline.?

Significant shows at the Edinburgh International Festival and the Festival Fringe considered the anxieties and preoccupations of contemporary youth.

I guess we kinda needed a summer vacation. But it hasn't been all play and no work. We've been writing. I've been researching and writing my thesis. Matt and the Available Light gang have been writing Time and a Few...

Taking a break from the Great Debate, this post from screenwriter / director John August caught my attention. It's relevant because it adds another dimension to our discussion about making a living as an actor, especially if earning that living...

I'd like to extend a big thank you to Mike Daisey for addressing the questions I raised in yesterday's post. I regret I haven't yet had an opportunity to see HTFA for myself, but after reading the points in his...

Mike Daisey is at it again, this time duking it out with TCG's Theresa Eyring. It's highly recommended, especially for those of you who spent your weekend eating hot dogs and watching fireworks instead of reading blogs about the...

Julie Taymor gives some great talks. And TED hosts some great talks (check out the YouTube channel). And now, TED hosts one of Taymor's great talks, and puts it on the internet. She makes some really beautiful statements about what's...

Next up in a series of interviews with Vancouver theatre critics is Jo Ledingham, who has been consistently reporting on our theatre scene at the Courier for quite some time. Once, years ago, I was putting up a couple of my original plays for their first run and, stupidly, hadn’t bothered to invite any of [...]

Last month I talked about the basics of starting your own blog. In this month?s column, the second of three on blogging, I talk about how to use new media as a way of promoting your art event. If you google Vancouver blog, the number one hit is Miss 604. Rebecca Bolwitt is a born-and-bred-in-Vancouver professional [...]

Oh my goodness. As of this afternoon "slash" this evening, I have embarked on a wild (slightly absurd) adventure. I told my Visa APR screw it, drank a bunch of coffee, and trotted over to Calumet Photographic to collect the...

Every once in a while I get stuck, my creative wheels have spun enough, or not enough grease has been applied to keep it all moving. Then, some thing happens... You meet someone, see something, or hear something that sparks...

Mopping my floor last night (finally - man, it was like living in a gravel pit), I had the Democratic National Convention on in the background. It was hard not to, actually, since it hijacked every channel. And - aside...

The taping process. Oh, what a love. What a frustration. What a -- ?! So I put this big project on tape last Wednesday evening with my coach, Peter Kelley (who's awesome, by the way, if anyone needs an audition...

Over the weekend, I had my first major musical theatre audition in over a year. I was, understandably, uptight about it as I remembered and did all the things that crazy singers (like me in my former life) need to...

I’ve probably talked about “Audition” by Michael Shurtleff on this blog once or twice before. If you’ve worked on a production with me, you’ve heard me bark about “humor” and “opposites” more then once. The powerful thing about Shurtleff’s guideposts is they are easy to understand and execute in the moment, whether it be an [...]

A Delicate Balance by Edward Albee is the story of those of us who settle. When life becomes so routine, you don’t live it anymore. Very depressing… very thought provoking… very… Albee.  This play is a fun read.  It seems to have this feeling the entire time that there is going to be something more [...]

Just finished Act I. What an amazing Act. Totally have me hooked into what’s next. Nothing has really happened yet I am completely ready for more. This is an example of where character development has kept me engaged. I actually care about these people and I don’t know why. Can’t wait for Act II. Probably be [...]

Well. I am either getting dumber, not politically charged enough, or both, but Romance lost me. Don’t get me wrong, the play was once again genius, real dialogue, but the farce didn’t connect for me. I didn’t care enough about the goal. I thought it was funny to end an absolutely absurd scene with the [...]

I bought this play a while ago because it sounded funny and thought provoking. Anti-semitism, homosexuality, antihistamines, lawyers, and the Middle East. Now that spells humor. Reading Mamet is almost as fun as reading Labute. While you don’t get as many “\” (for those of you who have read Labute, you know what I mean), [...]

by chris mills

Ah, the doppleganger. Since Hoffman (ha, E.T.A., not Dustin), it?s been a crackling staple of the uncanny. Perhaps the troubling double has been such a successful literary trope because it can work either in bona fide sci-fi modality, producing the terrifying, uncontrollable Frankensteinian other, or in a more nuanced Freudian rendition, as a passable explanation for ?human nature? and the darkness contained therein, always waiting to bust out. This latter rendition is largely the underwriting logic in Tennessee Williams Summer and Smoke. Tlaloc Rivas is directing a new production of the 1948 play at the Clurman, staging the original version, rather than the later, revised The Eccentricities of a Nightingale, produced by The Actors Company Theatre in the spring. Rivas?s staging has some smart and fresh directing going on. One of the sparkiest overall moves was to cut as close to the bone as possible. The set is beautifully designed, and makes the simplicity of a platform and chairs seem sexy, tactile and rich with possibility, and the show is lit with both nuance and clarity. Without extraneous stage detail, we are still continuously sure as to our location in this almost stark?but never bleak? landscape. Just as blue plays across the costuming, providing a cool touch in the peek of a sock, a sweater trim or bit of lace, the details are right, reading when they should and still when they?re not. The actors, as a team, fill in the emotional landscape with technique similar to the design?smart, small details and determined movement, rather than broad or busy strokes.

All of these components were lovely, but, face it we must, if you?re gonna do Summer and Smoke, you need a powerful, subtle, energizing woman to emcee the proceedings. The actor playing Alma??soul? in Spanish (a, might we say, religious version of the doppleganger?)?needs to perform that most difficult actor?s task: she must totally transform before our eyes. Because the story of a ?spinster? with a long unrequited love for the boy next door is just the surface tale; it is the actual nature of love that is at stake. Is love sacrifice or indulgence? Is it generated by minute plotting or spontaneity, through passion or responsibility? Does it require dignity or soul-baring honesty? Mary Sheridan?s Alma Winemiller, needs to ask these questions for a repressed woman, operating in the history of women as both subject and object of repression, as written by a queer man in an era of deep sexual constraint, with punitive consequence for bad behavior. This, of course, is no easy task; it is, however, necessary, if the play is to deliver its force. The decision at which Alma arrives requires a total re-imagining of the method, purpose and function of love. Her risks need to be life threatening, literally. Her questions and decisions, like any act of primal transgression, need to take place on the rim of destruction; one which she arguably tips over?though this production pulls its ambiguous punch at the close. What we need as viewers is the terrible spectacle of someone crumbling into the future, repatching a facade in order to survive. Too often in this production, Sheridan seems brittle and petulant, like an aging girl playing dress-up, serving up a weak tea party. And, as the great Bette Davis warns, old age is no place for sissies.

I try to stick to the theater but the French Crime Wave series at Film Forum, drawing to its spectacular close, is so super that I can?t help mentioning it. Pierrot Le Fou was on this weekend, and lord, who can say no to Godard, Karena and Belmondo? Well, not me, and afterward, a brief walk will deposit you at ?ino?making you remember how much better it is than its bigger, brasher, louder sibling, Inoteca?where you might try the summer tomatoes with delicious pesto, bright as a dewy field of basil, or end with mascarpone-topped, honey-soaked bread and fresh fruit. And if you?re lucky, your friend will point out that the movie was kind of like revisiting a crush, reminding you of how smart and sexy and generally terrific the object of your affection really is. That moment, happily, will help you (if you?re me) remember what it is that makes a classic?to return to last week?s thread. Whether a movie, a play, a sweetie or that aged sweater that you just can?t toss. Love brings us back and makes us want to share what we know of it with others. Like the high, thrilling rush of infatuation, the dark devotion that turns us into Mr. Hyde or the deep affection for known contours that still might hold surprises, the classics carry a history of love and for that alone, we must return to them.

by Abigail Katz

It appears the planets are out of alignment in the theatre universe. Each day seems to bring another story of a cancelled show, an actor replacement, a change of venue, and gloomy days ahead. At the same time there are several Broadway shows setting preview dates "at a theatre to be announced." On the Great White Way alone, we have dueling Mamets, the producers' battle for Hair, no available theatres, and no money.

With this kind of drama, who needs plays?

So what gives? Am I blowing this out of proportion, or are we actually in a very exciting time that could shake things up a bit?

Thoughts?

by Brook Stowe

Just got a look at the calendar and realized how rapidly my time here wandering the Hallowed Halls of Eisler is coming to a close.

I wanted to put out a word about the anthology I edit, the New York Theater Review -- specifically that I am still very much in search of a play. One more play. The right play. The play. And this seems like a splendid venue -- peopled as I'm sure it is with robust and wholesome apple-cheeked lads and lasses of the theater -- to put out the call.

The Review, should it somehow have escaped your attention thus far, is an annual collection of essays and plays and sometimes interviews that aims to capture the way we really live now south of 14th Street and over ever-widening swaths of Brooklyn and Queens.

Past editions have included new plays by Sheila Callaghan, Ping Chong & Sara Michelle Zatz, Quiara Alegria Hudes, Taylor Mac, August Schulenburg, Tommy Smith, Adam Szymkowicz, Ken Urban & Anne Washburn. We generally publish three new plays per edition, and I think I'm pretty much decided on two. But the third play is proving elusive, hence this call.

What am I looking for? Ah, that's when I go all Cheshire Cat on y'all. Not intentionally; there are no real firm parameters, no set guidelines, no theme-of-the-year to write to with this. All I can say is -- I know it when I see it. Or read it. So ... if any of you wonderful people out there in the dark are fans of any of the playwrights above -- or at least familiar with their work -- you'll know the street we walk down. And should you have seen a play on a downtown NYC stage this year you're just bursting to recommend (and yeah, it can be your own play), please get a hold of me. Probably better this way. (I haven't gotten very good at remembering to come back here and check for comments). Probably best to send a query first and let me get back to you. And if I don't get back to you right away, don't take it personally, my little beauties -- I am, among other things, in the process of moving from Manhattan to Brooklyn, and will be a bit of the gypsy, especially this coming week. Remember to tell me The Playgoer sent you.

More info on our past and current editions here, here and here, fyi.

Back at the end of the week with some kind of final something about all of this.

Til next ...

by chris mills

Former: What makes a classic? Yeah, that?s what I?m asking. You may say I?m remedial (hell, perhaps you already have), but that?s today?s query. BECAUSE I happen to be in a company that is doing a production off Death of A Salesman in the fall (Oct 22, 14th St. Y theatre?c?mon down), and I read yesterday that Avery Brooks is to star in a production at Oberlin, directed by Justin Emeka, a professor of theater and Af-Am studies. I, of course, both have and am developing a set of reasons as to why this particular Miller (not my favorite), why Miller (easier for me to answer) and what the particular joy is about entering into a space SO mapped out, SO well-trod, so known. And what it might mean for both maker and viewer to come out on the other side. What do we learn from investigating what's already been investigated?

It sounds like a loaded question, but I mean it with all honesty (and weird joy, because theater is so caught up in the resuscitation of what already been done).
Latter: Information. I mentioned Jake Hooker?s show, What We Should Judge When We Judge? to you and got a chance to see it last night. And it was a delightful take on the ?performative lecture,? which is a form I love and think is developing as more and more people take up its concerns. For me, it?s kind of like the explosion of ?performance art? (a term I hate to use as it became?deservedly so, in many instances?a catch-all for bad work) in the 80s. It was a moment in which there was a kind of power as artists and others decided that they were able, and had the right, to make live art. But, what?s interesting and different in this 2008 performance chapter, The Performance Lecture is that it often deals with some deep or arcane or philosophically dense subject. And the subject (last night?s started with Greek Lyric poetry?remember iambic vs. trochaic? Pindar, Sappho and Anacreon?) is important to the piece and well-examined but also functions (in the best use of the form) as a springboard to ruminations that range far and wide, frequently returning to questions about ?the human condition.? It?s a different form than the well-made play, say, which shows these questions; the performance lecture instead asks/asks about these questions through a veil of information, rather than through a creation of detailed realism. And what is the query, Chris Mills (you might be asking)? My question to you is: What works for you?

Happy weekend....

by Brook Stowe

If you met August Schulenburg at a party or struck up a conversation with him in the checkout line at D'Agostino's, you would probably take him to be an affable, unfettered fellow -- someone who perhaps delights the neighborhood children with his quirky balloon designs or spends weekends tinkering with his vintage panhead Harley out in the front yard. A brief exchange, a passing conversation might well leave you entirely unaware that Schulenburg is one of the most original, tormented and demanding playwrights working here -- or anywhere else, I'd wager -- today.

OK, so maybe he leaves the tormented part in his word processor, or just transfers it all upon the shoulders and into the psyches of his characters (and directors), but I am hard-pressed to think of any contemporary American playwright working so constantly and compellingly in the murky twilight of human consciousness, where dreams mingle with reality and the corporeal grazes the spiritual in contact both bruising and desirous.

Other Bodies, offered up by the Flux Theatre Ensemble as part of the 12th Annual NYIFF, is Schulenburg's latest exploration into why we exist. Continuing to explore some of the themes of last year's Fringe Audience fave, Riding the Bull -- deceptive money-making schemes, the desire/repulsion dichotomy between men and women, people and God; suddenly explosive, sexually-propelled cathartic violence -- Other Bodies offers a pungent new layer into the mix: gender switch. A man who plays women to get ahead sexually and professionally wakes up one day to find he has become one.

And then the party really gets started.

If you're thinking Ellen Barkin and Blake Edwards here, stop. Right now. The gender bender of Other Bodies just gives Schulenburg increased latitude to share his obsessions with us, those of deeply flawed, deeply longing individuals desperately seeking the acknowledgment if not the favor of a fickle and elusive God.

It's not easy going. On either side of the fourth wall. Other Bodies is the pure theater of language. Schulenburg crafts his work solely from weaving language together, layer upon layer, exchange upon exchange. No multimedia mashup here -- no, hey, that passage is a little thin -- I know! We'll fill it with a clip from "I Love Lucy" and chalk up whatever the hell that might mean to the vagaries of postmodernism!

No, no, ye blogolicious faithful. Not here. Not this time.

Other Bodies -- like all of Schulenburg's work -- demands you stay engaged or you get left behind, demands you participate intellectually, demands you think about what is happening before you as it is happening. Schulenburg's theater is the theater of the mind as well as the body, of the ephemeral moment as well as the timelessness of the pursuit.

And -- just because I used demand three times in the above graf, I'm going to just keep on and marvel both at the demanding task Schulenburg lays at the feet of his cast and director, and how well both rise to the challenge. Vince Nappo and Christina Shipp negotiate not only numerous characters, but numerous characters switching genders with nothing but themselves and Jason Paradine's minimalist set to work off of over an exhausting and, yeah, demanding 2-plus hours of performance, all under the confident guidance of director Heather Cohn.

OK, I'll stop being so demanding now.

But ... I will say ...

Any of you out there who may have actually been reading these dog days posts of mine know I never advise of anything too soon, and I continue to hew firmly to that policy here. If nothing else, I am consistent: Other Bodies has but one more performance as part of this year's Fringe, and that is today at 3:45 at CSV, 107 Suffolk St.

If you want to see the latest work of one of the best American playwrights working today, get on down there.

If you want to chat up the playwright later, look for the easygoing, affable guy out in the lobby.

Til next ...