'The Originalist' (PBS)
From 6 March to 31 May 2015, Washington, D.C.’s Arena Stage presented the première of John Strand’s The Originalist at its home base, the Mead Center for American Theater in Southeast, near the Potomac...
View Article'A Doll’s House, Part 2'
Of all the non-musical plays on Broadway this season, the one that seemed to have gotten the most hype, including buzz surrounding its eight Tony Award nominations, was Lucas Hnath’s Ibsen sequel, A...
View ArticleMicroRep
by Kirk Woodward[Kirk Woodward’s newest contribution to Rick On Theater, “MicroRep,” is a description of a project Kirk developed to perform plays in “alternative spaces”—simply put: not in theaters....
View Article'While I Was Waiting' (2017 Lincoln Center Festival)
The theme of this summer’s Lincoln Center Festival, which ran from 10 to 30 July 2017, was “transcending borders,” according to Nigel Redden, the festival director. I chose two of the festival...
View Article'To the End of the Land' (2017 Lincoln Center Festival)
When the Lincoln Center Festival brochure came out last April, there were two shows that caught my attention. One was While I Was Waiting, a Syrian play about which I was just curious (for reasons I...
View ArticleSupertitles
by Philippa Wehle[I’ve just posted reports on two foreign-language plays, both part of this summer’s Lincoln Center Festival. One, While I Was Waiting, was in Arabic and the other, To the End of the...
View ArticleColley Cibber
by Kirk Woodward[Kirk Woodward, the most prolific of Rick On Theater’s contributors, is not only a playwright, actor, director, and teacher of acting, but, like me, he’s a perpetual student of theater...
View Article'Calder: Hypermobility' at the Whitney
Among my favorite artists, largely because his work is just so entertaining and . . . well, fun, is Alexander Calder, principally a sculptor—though that title’s too limiting to do him justice—who also...
View Article“Talk to Me”
by Ryan Bradley[Actors are constantly faced with the need to adjust their speech patterns. This is as true for stage performers as it is for film and television actors. And it’s no different for...
View Article'The Big Lift'
I recently posted an eight-part series called “Berlin Memoir” recounting my recollections of my 2½ years as an intelligence officer in West Berlin from July 1971 to February 1974. (The memoir was...
View ArticleWriting 'As You Like It'
by Kirk Woodward[Kirk Woodward’s newest contribution to Rick On Theater is a speculation; Kirk’s going to guess at how William Shakespeare, undoubtedly the greatest playwright in the English language...
View ArticleAll the Town’s a Stage
Some tell their stories in kitchens, warming hands and souls over coffee; others write confessions. For decades, the residents of the tiny Tuscan town of Monticchiello have turned their lives into...
View Article"On The Real: Documentary Theatre"
Article 1[I’m going to do something a little different with Rick On Theater the rest of this month. When the September issue of American Theatre magazine came out, I saw that there was an article on...
View Article"On The Real: Documentary Theatre"
Article 2 [I’m doing something a little different with Rick On Theater the rest of this month. When the September issue of American Theatre magazine came...
View Article"On The Real: Documentary Theatre"
Article 3[I’m doing something a little different with Rick On Theater the rest of this month. When the September issue of American Theatre magazine came out, I saw that there was an article on...
View Article"On The Real: Documentary Theatre"
Article 4 [I’m doing something a little different with Rick On Theater the rest of this month. When the September issue of American Theatre magazine came out, I saw that there was an...
View Article"On The Real: Documentary Theatre"
Articles 5 – 7 [I’m doing something a little different with Rick On Theater the rest of this month. When the September issue of American Theatre magazine came out, I saw that there was an...
View Article'Jackson Pollock: A Collection Survey: 1924-1954' (MoMA)
When my friend Diana asked me at Jackson Pollock: A Collection Survey: 1924-1954, the art exhibit we saw at the Museum of Modern Art on 26 February 2016, what it is that I like about Pollock’s...
View Article"In Conversation: Lynn Nottage & Paula Vogel"
by Tari Stratton[This interview with playwrights Lynn Nottage and Paula Vogel, who both made long-awaited Broadway débuts this past season (Sweat at Studio 54, 26 March-25 June 2017, and Indecent at...
View ArticleThe Red Letter Plays: 'In the Blood'
Suzan-Lori Parks’s Residency One tenure has extended from its start in the 2016-17 season at the Signature Theatre Company (The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, reported on 1...
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