by Macey Levin The first Chinese woman to arrive in America was Afong Moy in 1834; she was 14 years old. Her father sent her here after receiving a payment from the Carne brothers who exhibited her in the Pearle Museum in New York City. Afong Moy is the protagonist…
by Barbara Waldinger In a recent interview with the Times Union, Nicole Ricciardi, director of Shakespeare & Company’s current production of Creditors, describes the play as “one ninety-minute song.” Despite the fact that there is no music, Ricciardi and her consummate cast devote themselves to “following the rhythm” in Strindberg’s…
by Roseann Cane The only way to truly understand the impact of a crisis is to put a face on it, to humanize it, to make it accessible on a feeling level. We may read about current events, but as ghastly as it is to read about families being torn…
by Barbara Waldinger How is it possible for a local theatre, performing in a school with a cast of seventeen, including a small group of experienced actors working alongside a number of young students, to mount a credible, fully-staged and costumed production of Shakespeare’s Richard II, a play written entirely…
by Barbara Waldinger Henrik Ibsen is a tough act to follow. At the end of his 1879 masterpiece, A Doll’s House, audiences gasped as Nora Helmer left her husband and three children, delivering what George Bernard Shaw famously called “the door slam heard around the world,” presumably never to return.…
by Macey Levin Playwright James Anthony Tyler’s work has been performed in several off-Broadway and regional theatres including the Berkshire Playwrights Lab in Great Barrington, MA, whose Some Old Black Man by Tyler transferred to New York this past season to very good reviews. Williamstown Theatre Festival is currently producing…
by Roseann Cane In the days following the end of the Civil War, a young Confederate soldier named Caleb (Justin Pietropaolo) painfully makes his way into his once-grand Richmond family estate to find the place in ruins. Caleb, too, is in ruins: a bullet in his leg has been left…
by Roseann Cane There are rare occasions when audience hooting, hollering, and foot-stomping add to the enjoyment of a night of theater, and Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny Cash, which just opened at the Capital Repertory Theatre, is a sterling example of just such a treat. One of the…
