by Jess Hoffman Sand Lake Center for the Arts is continuing its eclectic season with a play by Capital District native Brendan Mack about a murder trial and barnyard animals–a play that combines the wonder of children’s classic Charlotte’s Web with the gritty real world of mental illness and criminal…
by Jess Hoffman To close out their season, Black Theatre Troupe of Upstate New York is producing a collection of one-acts, playfully titled One Act Jamboree. The one common thread among these plays is that they showcase, in one way or another, the Black experience. Many of these plays are…
by Jess Hoffman If you are looking for a world premier of an award-winning modern playwright without having to travel to New York City, you may be in luck! Three Mothers by Ajene D. Washington won the Next Act! New Play Summit in 2022 and it is now being produced…
by Jess Hoffman Playhouse Stage Company has taken on a challenging yet rewarding project with their current production of Spring Awakening. For those unfamiliar with this musical, it is a rock musical adaptation of the 1891 German play of the same name by Frank Wedekind. It premiered in 2006 (when…
by Jess Hoffman Until I saw Schenectady Civic Players’ current production, August: Osage County was my favorite play that I had never seen. That is to say, I had read the play and absolutely loved it, but I had never had the opportunity to see it produced. Although it won…
by Jess Hoffman Fun Home is a musical adaptation of the autobiography of Alison Bechdel. For those unfamiliar, Alison Bechdel is a well known lesbian comic artist and feminist, most well known for her long-running comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For and for bringing “The Bechdel Test” into feminist…
by Macey Levin  Bridge Street Theatre’s SoloFest presented its third of four one-woman plays March 15 through 17. “The Great Divide,” written and performed by Amy Crossman, is a comic, and heartbreaking tour de force. As a nineteen-year-old she goes to a New Year’s Eve party where she knows only…
by Jess Hoffman Creative License’s current production at Cohoes Music Hall calls itself a ghost story. In a sense it is; but Afterlife is about those psychological ghosts that haunt people from the inside: grief and regret, to name just two. The first act revolves around married couple Connor and…
