"New film 'Nine Parts' explores lives of Iraqi women after U.S. invasion"
by Jeffrey Brown, Anne Azzi Davenport, and Alison Thoet [The report below, “New film ‘Nine Parts’ explores lives of Iraqi women after U.S. invasion,” discussing the new film version of Heather Raffo’s...
View Article"Baring Beethoven's Secrets With Snips of DNA"
by Gina Kolata [Gina Kolata’s report on the DNA tests on the locks of hair believed to have been taken from the head of German composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 [baptized]-1827), “Baring Beethoven’s...
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Noh Theater of Japan
[I’ve posted a number of pieces about Kabuki, the dynamic traditional theater form of Japan, on Rick On Theater. (See, for example, “Kabuki: A Trip to a Land of Dreams” [1 November 2010]; “Grand...
View ArticleA Biography of Leonardo Shapiro, Part 1
[I met Leonardo Shapiro on 28 June 1986 in Baltimore when I interviewed him at the Theatre of Nations international theater festival, sponsored biennially at that time by the International Theatre...
View ArticleA Biography of Leonardo Shapiro, Part 2
[My biography of Leonardo Shapiro, avant-garde theater director and auteur, continues below with the teenager’s transfer from schools in Miami Beach and Dade County, Florida, in his sophomore year of...
View ArticleA Biography of Leonardo Shapiro, Part 3
[This installment of “A Biography of Leonardo Shapiro” starts with the young directing student enrolling at NYU in its newly formed School of the Arts. He immediately met several of the people who’d...
View ArticleA Biography of Leonardo Shapiro, Part 4
[Part 4 of “A Biography of Leonardo Shapiro,” below, starts with the theater director’s return to New York City after his two-year sojourn in New Mexico and the Four Corners. Having formed his second...
View ArticleA Biography of Leonardo Shapiro, Part 5
[“A Biography of Leonardo Shapiro, Part 5” begins with Shaliko’s last production at the Public Theater and the last show of the original company before Shapiro re-formed it five years later. It...
View ArticleA Biography of Leonardo Shapiro, Part 6
[In “A Biography of Leonardo Shapiro, Part 6,” the young director becomes a teacher in his own performing arts program. We’ll see how he adapts many of the lessons he learned at the Windsor Mountain...
View ArticleA Biography of Leonardo Shapiro, Part 7
[The seventh installment of “A Biography of Leonardo Shapiro” picks up with The Shaliko Company’s last company-built piece, 1989’s Strangers. As you’ll read, Shapiro never completed the work in this...
View ArticleA Biography of Leonardo Shapiro, Part 8
[This is the last entry in the Leonardo Shapiro biographical series. Shapiro’s return to the New Mexico terrain where he roamed with the Appleseed Circus in the late 1960s and early 1970s, where he...
View ArticleKeith Johnstone (1933-2023)
[When I read the New York Timesobituary of Keith Johnstone, identified as the “Champion of Improvisational Theater,” in the issue of 17 April (Section D [“Business”/“Sports”]), I couldn’t remember...
View ArticleSuzan-Lori Parks on the Covid Pandemic
[When New York City Mayor Bill DiBlasio declared New York City the “epicenter” of the pandemic on Thursday, 19 March 2020, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks gave herself an...
View ArticleTom Hanks, Novelist
[On 9 May 2023, publisher Alfred A. Knopf released The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece, a novel by actor Tom Hanks. On 12 May 2023, Jeffrey Brown, the arts correspondent for PBS...
View Article'Greatness Thrust Upon Them'
by Kirk Woodward[James F. Broderick (b. 1963), who lives in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. is a writer and a professor of English. (Glen Ridge, in Essex County in northern New Jersey, is a little over 15...
View Article2023 Writers Guild Strike
[The Writers Guild of America (WGA), the union that represents film and television script writers, went on strike on Tuesday, 2 May, resulting in the largest work stoppage for the WGA since the...
View Article"AI in the Arts Is the Destruction of the Film Industry. We Can't Go Quietly"
by Justine Bateman [Justine Bateman’s op-ed appeared on the Newsweek website on 17 May 2023 (AI in the Arts Is the Destruction of the Film Industry. We Can’t Go Quietly | Opinion (newsweek.com)). As a...
View ArticleTwo Theater Personages of Note: Ralph Lee (1935-2023)
[When I read of the death of Ralph Lee, the mask- and puppet-maker who also created the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade, I wanted to post something in his memory, but I didn’t want just to...
View ArticleTwo Theater Personages of Note: James de Jongh (1942-2023)
[As I stated in the introduction to the memorial post for Ralph Lee on 9 June, when I read of his death, I wanted to put something on Rick On Theater in his memory, but I didn’t want just to republish...
View Article"How intimacy coordinators ensure safety on theater and film sets"
by Jeffrey Brown and Anne Azzi Davenport[On 7 June 2023, PBS NewsHour ran a segment, a report by NewsHour artscorrespondent Jeffrey Brown, on the new field in film, television, and theater of what’s...
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