Are our theaters indifferent, craven, or complicit? Take your pick.
Theater
Theater Review: “Seneca Falls” – A History of Women’s Suffrage, Tongue-in-Cheek
The script is not a conventional history of women’s suffrage: dramatic Jean Ann Douglass mobilizes satire, sexuality, suffering, and sarcasm.
Theater Commentary: Notes Toward a Definition of Theater, Part One — “Be Bold and Wild”
As we grapple with building the brave new world of live theater in a Covid and post-Covid world, a few stray thoughts.
Theater Review: “Heroes of the Fourth Turning” – What Lurks in a Zoom-screen Void
The play’s swift running give-and-take is chillingly beguiling, its myriad allusions arousing your curiosity as you consider the characters’ positions and conclusions yourself.
Critical/Theater Commentary: Slapping Sleeping Media Outlets A “Woke”
Taking action on even a modest number of these suggestions will undoubtedly shake up the current puerility of much of American theater criticism.
Arts Commentary: “Hamilton” — Streaming on Disney Plus, Feeling Like You’re in the Room Where it Happened.
The opportunity to see the culture-changing Broadway phenomenon Hamilton on Disney Plus, sucked up all the arts oxygen over the Fourth of July weekend.
Poetry Review: “Outside” — Poetry and Prose of French Writer André du Bouchet.
Take the poems slowly, enjoy the Cage-y silences, the concentrated words as they appear.
Theater Commentary: A Modest Proposal — Boston Theaters, Junk Your Seasons!
Today’s spirit of protest calls for risk and innovation, dissent and defiance. Our timid stages fall disgracefully short of reflecting that iconoclasm.
Theater Commentary: The Boston Theater Critics Association — Finally Reached a Conclusion?
The Boston Theater Critics Association should take action in support of #MeToo. But this will probably be the last year I request that Israel Horovitz’s Elliot Norton Prize be withdrawn.
Theater Interview: Anthony Clarvoe on “The Living” — Surviving Plague Time
The Living “is about the impulse to draw back, to lie, to conceal, and to retreat versus the impulse to gather, to commune, to cooperate, to find common ground. Those two conflicting impulses seem to inform our response to every disaster.”