playwriting
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Returning to the Scene
To be simultaneously separated by masks (I wear two) and joined in responding with laughter with hundreds of others is to experience the contradictions of going to the theater these days. Of course, you can’t see the mouths, but maybe you see someone’s eyebrows dance or a tiny backward jerk of the head. In olden… Continue reading
A Commercial Jingle for Regina Comet, Alex Wyse, Ben Fankhauser, Bridge Theatre, Bryonha Marie Parham, Charlotte Bydwell, covid, Dan Wagoner, Hal Prince, Jay O. Sanders, Lakawanna Blues, Martyna Majok, Maryann Plunkett, National Theatre, Porch, Prince of Broadway, Rhinebeck, Richard Nelson, Robert LePage, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Stratford Festival, What Happened? -
Review: “Sanctuary City”
Movie trailers today mostly are constructed the same way – a line or two of characters yelling or a violent incident quick cuts to another violent incident or line or two of characters yelling. And accompanying each cut is a loud thudding or whomping sound designed to jolt the audience to attention. Using these noises… Continue reading
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Men in White, Sidney Kingsley, and Ancillary Thoughts
I recently read Sidney Kingsley’s play, Men in White (1933), and last night I watched the 1934 film adaptation directed by Richard Boleslawski. (Interesting that Boleslawski directed the film version of a work that had been directed on Broadway by one of his students, Lee Strasberg.) As was the case with Street Scene, the film… Continue reading
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Ride Share
In 1992, a former cab driver named Will Kern drew on his experience to whip up a bracing entertainment called Hellcab. An actor played the driver and an ensemble of six played something in the neighborhood of 30 passengers who occupied the back seat during one shift on Christmas Eve. It didn’t pretend to be… Continue reading
Alan Bennett, Hellcab, Judgment at Nuremberg, Kamal Angelo Bolden, Marty, Philco Playhouse, Playhouse 90, Reginald Edmund, Requiem for a Heavyweight, Ride Share, Simeilia Hodge-Dallaway, Talking Heads, The Days of Wine and Roses, The Miracle Worker, The Trip to Bountiful, Twelve Angry Men, Will Kern -
Remembering Preston Jones
In the mid-1970s, I was assigned a piece by an in-flight magazine distributed on American Airlines. The story focused on three playwrights who first came to the theater community’s attention in regional theaters. The three playwrights were David Mamet, Marsha Norman and Preston Jones. I interviewed all three by phone. I was friendly with Mamet… Continue reading
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Encountering Rose Franken
Continuing to wander through obscure corners of American playwriting, I have stumbled across a forgotten phenomenon. A writer named Rose Franken created a character who appeared first in a series of stories for Redbook, then in a series of eight novels, then as the leading figure in a Broadway play, then as the lead in… Continue reading
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Both Your Houses
I was determined to witness the moment when Joe Biden overtook the Orange Thug in Pennsylvania. I plopped down on the sofa in the living room under the illusion that this might happen at 2AM (which is about the time I usually go to sleep). I didn’t want to watch TV nonstop, so I thought… Continue reading
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Two Contrasting Plays
I continue my casual tromp through plays of the past, alternating reading from an anthology of early Pulitzer Prize-winners and an anthology of postwar African-American plays. The two most recent plays I’ve encountered, by coincidence, are about flawed Black authority figures. The Amen Corner (published in 1954, premiered in 1965) by James Baldwin is about… Continue reading
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TROUBLE IN MIND — Alice Childress
I continue to read plays from the past I’ve never gotten to see. Mostly, as I’ve said before, I’m alternating between an anthology of plays that won the Pulitzer Prize early on and an anthology of post-war plays by Black writers. Finally caught up with Trouble in Mind by Alice Childress. It’s been going through… Continue reading
Jeffrey Sweet--Making the Scene 