The Theater Hall of Fame
The Theater Hall of Fame, housed at the Gershwin (originally the Uris) Theatre on Broadway, was established in 1970 by Earl Blackwell (1909-95), founder of Celebrity Service; producer and theater-owner...
View ArticleSome Plays about Jews from the Archives
ANNULLA, AN AUTOBIOGRAPHYby Emily MannThe New Theatre of Brooklyn28 October 1988About halfway through Annulla, An Autobiography, a Young Woman’s Voice explains, “Annulla’s art was her life.” In...
View ArticleTwo Script Reports
[In the 1980s and ’90s, I did some freelance script-evaluating for several theater companies in New York City and one in Washington, D.C. I was one of many script-readers at each theater, and our job...
View ArticleDispatches from Israel 20
by Helen Kaye[My friend Helen Kaye has been sending me articles and reviews from her work on the theater and culture desk at the Jerusalem Post since 2010 (“Help! It’s August: Kid-Friendly Summer...
View ArticleSome Greek Classics from the Archives
HECUBAby EuripidesRoyal Shakespeare CompanyBrooklyn Academy of MusicHoward Gilman Opera HousePeter Jay Sharp Building20 June 2005I saw Vanessa Redgrave in Hecuba by Euripides (c. 480-c. 406 BCE) at the...
View ArticleYevgenii Shvarts: Biography & Literary Criticism
[In 1984 and ’85, I served as literary advisor for the Off-Off-Broadway StageArts Theatre Company in New York City. My responsibilities included , among other things, establishing a script-reading...
View ArticleYevgenii Shvarts: Three Scripts Evaluations
[This is the second part of my post on Soviet playwright Yevgenii Shvarts. If you haven’t read part one, covering Shvarts’s biography and a little literary criticism, I strongly recommend you go back...
View Article'Cambodian Rock Band'
Okay, here’s a confession: I had no idea that there was such a thing as Cambodian rock music. When I first read that Lauren Yee’s play called Cambodian Rock Bandwas coming to New York’s Off-Broadway,...
View ArticlePresbyterian 'Avant Garde'
by Kirk Woodward[Kirk Woodward, who’s been the most prolific contributor to Rick On Theater, wears many hats in the performing arts. As most readers of ROT know by now, he’s a playwright, composer,...
View Article'The Hot Wing King'
All right, tell the truth. Aren’t hot wings and Buffalo wings the same things? I mean, really—they’re both made from the usually-discarded part of the bird, the part that mostly ends up in the soup...
View ArticleTheaters Go Dark Across The Nation (Part 1)
[I’m an associate member of the American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA), the professional organization for theater reviewers in print, on line, and on electronic media. Every couple of weeks, ATCA...
View ArticleTheaters Go Dark Across The Nation (Part 2)
[As I noted in my introduction to Part 1 of this post, I’m an associate member of the American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA), the professional organization for theater reviewers in print, on line,...
View Article'Astérix Le Gaulois'
I was first introduced to European comic book in the late 1950s, probably ’58 or ’59. I’d have been 11 or 12 and my family had sponsored an Irish au pair named Ita. (I no longer remember her last...
View ArticleTheatre Olympics
I’m a little embarrassed. I’d never heard of the Theatre Olympics, an international theater festival, until the end of last year. Since the first festival was held 25 years ago, I’m very late to the...
View ArticleThree Plays from Distinguished Companies from the Archives
THE DAY ROOMDon DeLilloWoolly Mammoth Theatre, Washington, D.C.John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts9 & 12 Jan. 2003I was in Washington, D.C., over the year-end holidays and my mother and...
View Article"Terrence McNally's lifetime award speech at the Tonys was ignored — but it...
by Chris Jones[The playwright Terrence McNally (1938 -2020) died on Tuesday, 24 March, at 81. [On Sunday, 9 June 2019, McNally had been honored at the 73rd Annual Tony Awards with a Special Tony...
View ArticleThree Plays from the Shakespeare Theatre
[Most regular readers of Rick On Theater know that I’m a Washingtonian by birth and that my parents lived in the District of Columbia or its suburbs for almost all their married lives. (My dad did a...
View Article"Kabuki: Inside the Japanese Artform with its Biggest Star, Ebizo"
by Jon Wertheim[I was watching the CBS-TV venerable newsmagazine 60 Minutes on Sunday evening, 19 April 2020, when it broadcast a segment of great interest to me: Japanese Kabuki theater. This segment...
View ArticleInterviews with Two Theater Pros: Theater Photographer & Dance Captain
[When most people who aren’t part of the theater world—whom one of my teachers fondly called “civilians”—see a play, I suspect they think of actors, singers, dancers, and maybe playwrights, directors,...
View Article'Blue Heaven' (or 'Going To Iraq') – Part 1
[In 1992, I was approached by Drama Review editor Richard Schechner, who was planning a series of articles on experimental theater companies that had begun in the 1960s and ’70s and were still...
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