At The Theater: To Wear A Mask, Or Not To Wear A Mask
[Earlier this month, the Broadway League, the national trade association for Broadway theater-owners and -operators, announced that it would drop its requirement that all members of the audiences at...
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Sam Gilliam (1933-2022): A Personal Tribute
[As you’ll read below, my parents had a small art collection, consisting of some 40 oil paintings, watercolors, prints, sculptures, and a tapestry. When my mother died in 2015 (my father had died in...
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'The Orchard'
by Kirk Woodward [Frequent readers of Rick On Theater will be familiar with my friend Kirk Woodward. He’s the most prolific of the guest-bloggers I’ve published on ROT, with something over 100...
View Article"Deaf cast challenges musical theater norms in production of 'The Music Man'"
by John Yang, Anne Azzi Davenport, and Alison Thoet [The transcript below is from a report on “Canvas,” the segment of PBS NewsHour that covers arts and health features. This story aired on 5July...
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Andres Valencia, 10-Year-Old Artist, Part 1
[On the evening of 23 June, I was watching the late news. Near the end of the broadcast, there was a report of a young artist who made a stir last December at Art Miami, a gigantic art fair,...
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Andres Valencia, 10-Year-Old Artist, Part 2
[This is the conclusion of my profile of preteen artist Andres Valencia, the continuation of Part 1, which was posted on 17 July. (Of you haven’t read the first part of the profile, I strongly...
View ArticleBroadwayCon
In olden days, before the dawn of the internet, Broadway lovers who lived out of town often starved. They had to wait for the Sunday Times Arts & Leisure section to arrive on the following...
View ArticleStrange Art
[It seems I’ve been focusing on visual art on Rick On Theater over the past few weeks. I started July off with a tribute to Sam Gilliam (posted on 2 July) and two weeks ago, I launched two-part...
View Article"Who Can Play the King? A Casting Debate Goes Beyond Color."
by Marc Tracy [Three productions this summer of William Shakespeare’s Richard III took different approaches to the title role: Colm Feore appeared at the Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario,...
View Article"The Framing Of Meryl Streep"
by Amanda Hess [Actors use props in many different ways, the first, but not most important, of which is as an object to use on set. My father, who wasn’t an actor or any kind of theater professional,...
View ArticlePat Carroll Pat Carroll Pat Carroll: A Tribute – Part 1
[As a tribute to actress Pat Carroll, who died last month, I’m presenting a hybrid post in two parts. The first part will cover her obituary and a more detailed biography, focusing on her career....
View ArticlePat Carroll Pat Carroll Pat Carroll: A Tribute – Part 2
[This is the second and last installment of “Pat Carroll Pat Carroll Pat Carroll: A Tribute.” (If you haven’t read Part 1, I recommend going back to 14 August and doing so; you’ll find this segment...
View Article"Entertainment in the Age of AI"
[The following article and two sidebars appeared in the Summer 2022 issue of SAG-AFTRA (11.3), the quarterly magazine of the union that represents actors in television and film. [Readers should note...
View ArticleArt From Collections
[I’ve compiled another small collection of old art reports from my archive. The first two reports below predate Rick On Theater and the third was never posted on the blog. [Though I may have added...
View Article'The Last Cyclist'– Part 1
[About two weeks ago, I caught a promo on WNET, New York City’s Public Broadcasting Service station, announcing a broadcast of a play called The Last Cyclist. I’d heard the name before, seen it in...
View Article'The Last Cyclist'– Part 2
[Thank you for returning to Rick On Theater for the conclusion of “The Last Cyclist.” The first part of this post was published on Friday, 2 September, and covered the background and production...
View Article'Matisse: The Red Studio' (MoMA, 1 May-10 September 2022)
In May, my friend Diana and I decided to pay a visit to the Museum of Modern Art to see an interesting Matisse show. It was based on his 1911 painting The Red Studio (L’Atelier rouge), a painting of...
View Article"Smithsonian and U.S. Army join forces to save works of art and culture...
by Jeffrey Brownand Anne Azzi Davenport [The report on the present-day work of the U.S. Army’s Monuments Officers, posted below, was broadcast on the PBS NewsHour on 7 September 2022. An extension of...
View Article"The Reformation"– Introduction: "A Revolution Behind the Curtain"
by Callie Holtermann [Jesse Green is the chief theater reviewer for the New York Times. Over the summer, he wrote a series of articles examining the conditions in the theater in the United States, to...
View Article"The Reformation"– Article 1: "Is It Finally Twilight For Sacred Stage...
by Jesse Green[The first article in Jesse Green’s “Reformation” series was published in the print edition of the New York Times of 12 June 2022 in the “Arts & Leisure” section and was updated...
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