"The Reformation"– Article 2: "When Paying Your Dues Doesn't Pay the Rent"
by Jesse Green [Green’s second essay in the series “The Reformation” appeared in the print edition of the New York Timesin the “Arts & Leisure” section of 10 July 2022; the online edition (from...
View Article"The Reformation"– Article 3: "Shutting the Door On a Hard-Knock Life"
by Jesse Green [Jesse Green’s third essay of the “Reformation” series was published in the print edition of New York Times on 7 August 2022 in the “Arts & Leisure” section. It was updated on 24...
View Article"The Reformation"– Article 4: "Racism Erodes the American Theater"
by Jesse Green [This final essay in Jesse Green’s New York Times series, “The Reformation,” was published in the print edition of the Times on 4 September 2022 in the “Arts & Leisure” section; the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Little Amal and 'The Walk'
[I’m a regular watcher of the PBS NewsHour and on a Tuesday evening last month, the program ran a segment on a 12-foot-tall puppet named Little Amal who was walking the streets of New York City to...
View ArticleA Theory of Theater
by Kirk Woodward[I don’t think I need to introduce Kirk Woodward to readers of Rick On Theater as he’s by far the most prolific guest blogger on ROT. Even occasional readers of this blog will probably...
View ArticleA Tribute to Charles Fuller (1939-2022)
[Playwright Charles Fuller died at 83 on 3 October 2022 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where he had lived since 1989. He was best known for his 1981 work A Soldier’s Pay, for which he won the 1982...
View ArticleTom Stoppard &'Leopoldstadt'
[Tom Stoppard is one of my favorite playwrights; since I first encountered his work some fifty-odd years ago, I have reveled in his wordplay and his convoluted logic and intellectualism. I was...
View Article'The Legend'
[This post is about Washington Irving and the commemoration of the 200th anniversary of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Before you get into the report on the centerpiece of that celebration, I want to...
View Article'Home' (7 June 1981)
[I saw Samm-Art Williams’s Homeat the Negro Ensemble Company’s new base, Theatre Four on West 55th Street, just outside the Theatre District, in June 1981. (The date in the headline of this recovered...
View ArticleMusic & Moods – Poetry & Pain
[I’m posting two transcripts from segments of the PBS NewsHour from last month. The first one, below from 24 October 2022, is from two student reporters who explored the connection between music and...
View Article'Shy' by Mary Rodgers
[I’m posting three pieces related to the publication of Mary Rodgers’s memoir Shy, written with Jesse Green of the New York Times. First is a report on the book by my friend and frequent Rick On...
View Article"On the Edge of His Seats in London Theaters"
by Alex Marshall[The following article about theater seats is from the New York Times of 2 November 2022 (sec. C [“Arts”]). It’s an entry in my occasional series on Rick On Theater in which I post...
View ArticlePlaying Dead
“LANDING THE ROLE OF A LIFETIME BY PLAYING DEAD”by Remy Tumin [Did you ever wonder where movies and TV shows get people who play dead bodies at crime scenes and accidents? Most, I suppose, are just...
View Article"Is That Mondrian Upside Down?"
by Julia Jacobs And does it matter? A curator concludes that a work was hung ‘the wrong way around.’[There always seem to be stories about mistakes with works of art. Usually it’s simply because new...
View Article'The Hours'– New Opera at the Met
“ADAPTATION OF ‘THE HOURS’ BECOMES OPERA EVENT OF THE YEAR”by Jeffrey Brown and Anne Azzi Davenport [The Hours, a new opera in English composed by Kevin Puts (b. 1972), with a libretto by Greg Pierce...
View ArticleBoris Mikhailov: Photographic Provocateur
[I’m not usually a fan of art photography, but when I read this article on the Ukrainian photographer Boris Mikhailov, I was fascinated by his vision. I’d never heard of Mikhailov before, so I filled...
View ArticleTheater Boards
[In 1985, I conducted interviews with my father, Eugene K***** (1918-96) and Herbert Schmitz (b. 1933), members of the Folger Theatre Group’s Advisory Board, and Lee G. Rubenstein (b. 1934), President...
View ArticleMore Script Reports VIII: Known 20th-Century Writers
[I haven’t posted any of my old script reports on Rick On Theater since last April. It’s a good time to put up a few more. [This selection are all scripts by writers from the last century who are...
View ArticleSpirit of 1907 Christmas, Recovered in 1999, Completed in 2016
[On Christmas Day 2009, I posted what I labeled “Arguably the most famous editorial ever written.” It contained the line, now world famous: “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus!”[The column ran in...
View ArticleTom Stoppard
by Kirk Woodward[On 22 October, I posted “Tom Stoppard & Leopoldstadt” on Rick On Theater. It’s an assemblage of different pieces about the playwright, including a short biographical sketch. As...
View Article