Recent Essays

We've all been there. The curtain call is over, the house lights come up, and a representative from the theater comes out on stage to inform the audience that, in a few minutes, there will be a post-show discussion with the playwright. Thankfully, a partnership at Playwrights Horizons in New York City is rethinking that model. Playwright Dan LeFranc and director of New Play Development Adam Greenfield are turning the concept on its head by making the playwright the interviewer, instead of the interviewee.

Allison Vanouse continues her look at productions from university students in Boston. In this post she reviews Steven Berkoff's adaptation of Kafka's Metamorphosis, directed by Elaine Vaan Hogue

In this installation, Deborah Yarchun sheds insight on the importance of Jewish theatre in the United States. 

We chose to do "Yellow Face" because of the meaningful questions it raises about the parameters of identity. We chose to do "Yellow Face" because of the revealing and resonant glimpse it gives at immigrant families in the United States; because of its multi-layered examination of the “American Dream”; because of the uproarious and irreverent way it uses humor to expose darker themes. We chose to do "Yellow Face" because clearly, it’s a Jewish play!

What make theater Jewish? This strikes me as just as complex a query as, “What makes a person Jewish?” or, for that matter, “What makes theater?”

Patricia Davis reviews 1st Stage's production of Stephen Temperley’s Souvenir: a Fantasia on the Life of Florence Foster Jenkins.

Paul M. Davis illuminates the importance of artists and technologists collaborating in the civic sphere.

Despite the fact that I have never thought of myself as an artist engaged in an exploration of my own background, I have somehow, almost inadvertently authored a trilogy of plays (over twelve years and separated by five other plays) about the search for faith, each of which features an atheist, or at least hard-questioning Jew.

The last two posts of this series have documented the kinds of rehearsal scheduling and breaks that some of the Polish post-Grotowski theaters use. However, in addition to this normal set of practices, on rare occasions, some theaters rehearse without taking any breaks at all.

This week's conversation topic is "The Playwright and The Panel: Improving Theatrical Discourse" and will be moderated by Doug Howe @NITEcorp—who like all of our moderators, authors, and content producers—self-selected to peer-produce on this commons-based platform! This hour-long Howl will take place on Thursday, March 13 on hashtag #newplay at 11am PDT (Vancouver) / 1pm CDT (Austin) / 2pm EDT (New York) / 18:00 GMT (London) / 7pm CET (Berlin). On Thursday, get heard in the conversation by searching for #newplay in Twitter (sort by “all”) and by putting “#newplay” somewhere in your messages. Spread the word!