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James Earl Jones
I wouldn’t presume to call James Earl Jones a friend, but I had four encounters with him that immediately leap to mind. Some years ago, I was involved with a group attempting to revive the theater in Stratford, Connecticut. If the outfit had been successful, I was told I would become literary manager, a gig Continue reading
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Playing With History
One of the things that theater is supposed to do is to give us a way to tell ourselves stories about ourselves. A bunch of us gather together in a public place with some other people who get up in front of us and show us behavior that, with luck, may help us understand better Continue reading
1776, A Hundred Circling Camps, Andrew Hamilton, Arthur Miller, Bonus Army, Caroline Sherman, Cole Escola, Dogteam Theatre Project, Donald M. Miller, Empire, Hamilton, Iphigenia in Aulis, Irve Tunick, John Peter Zenger, Lenny Bruce, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Marian Seldes, Mary!, Peter Stone, Rebecca Wear, Robert Hull, Sam Collier, Sherman Edwards, Sidney Kingsley, Studio One, Supreme City, The Crucible, The Patriots, The Trial of John Peter Zenger -
“Here There are Blueberries” and Other Reports
By coincidence, Here There are Blueberries, the new documentary play by Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich (conceived and directed by Moisés Kaufman) has arrived shortly after Jonathan Glazer’s film The Zone of Interest reached a wider American audience through its Oscar and Annette Hess’s German TV series The Interpreter of Silence arrived on streaming channels. Continue reading
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Review: “Sally and Tom”
I couldn’t help but think of the musical Kiss Me, Kate as I emerged from Suzan-Lori Parks’s new play, Sally and Tom at the Public Theater In both, we see actors dealing with each other as they work on a new play. In Kiss Me, Kate, the offstage relationship between the couple playing the leads Continue reading
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A Conversation With Christopher Durang
This appeared in my book What Playwrights Talk About When They Talk About Writing, which was published by Yale University Press in 2017. Q: When I’m asked to teach, I discover more about what my philosophy is just because I’m required to articulate it to others. To what degree have you surprised yourself teaching? To Continue reading
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Review: DEAD OUTLAW
I didn’t expect to see two musicals within one year about the disposition of corpses. But, yes, last summer I saw the London hit, Operation Mincemeat and the other day I saw Dead Outlaw. Both shows are based in fact. Mincemeat is about a misinformation operation run by British intelligence during WWII which involved dressing Continue reading
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“Pericles”
Often when an improv scene is going nowhere, the director will shove an actor onto the stage to bring a new energy, a new texture, a new something to play. And sometimes it works. Particularly if the new actor comes on with a powerful objective or obsession and the people onstage can turn from the unrewarding Continue reading
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Review: “Brooklyn Laundry”
I sometimes wish I knew less about how plays are built. I’ve been going to the theater regularly since my early teens and putting up plays professionally for more than 50 years, so the techniques and conventions of naturalistic dramatic writing are imprinted as pathways as broad as six-lane highways in my brain. On the Continue reading
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Review: “Jonah”
I recommend Rachel Bonds’s new play Jonah (currently playing at the Roundabout’s off-Broadway venue) despite the fact that it doesn’t quite work for me. But I often get something valuable out of plays that I don’t think work. Despite the title, Jonah is not primarily about the character of Jonah. He is one of three Continue reading
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Review: “Job”
I’ve said it before, but what the hell: I think there is a difference between being a reviewer and being a critic. A reviewer is someone you check with to decide whether you want to see something. A critic is someone who discusses the work in some kind of depth, on the assumption that you’re Continue reading
Jeffrey Sweet--Making the Scene 