'An American in Paris'
[My play report on the current Broadway première of An American in Paris, the stage adaptation of the 1951 MGM movie, is considerably longer than my habitual reports. The extra length—nearly half the...
View ArticleA Trip to Poland
by Helen Eleasari[I imagine by now, dedicated ROTters know who Helen Eleasari is and how I know her. I’ve published many of her reviews of theater in Israel, written for the Jerusalem Post, and other...
View ArticleSummer Shorts 2015, Series A
In July I was able to return to New York City for an extended period and I tried to catch up with some of what I’d been missing while I was commuting south and staying with my mother in Maryland for...
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"Presidents at the Theater"
by Rebecca Ritzel[Now seems an auspicious moment to republish the article below, “Presidents at the Theater.” Last Tuesday, 14 April, was the 150th anniversary of the night that Pres. Abraham Lincoln...
View ArticleCarole Rothman: An Interview
[Carole Rothman is co-founder and artistic director of Second Stage Theatre. In March 1987, on the eve of the company’s Broadway début with Tina Howe’s Coastal Disturbances at Circle in the Square (4...
View ArticleWhat Constitutes Theft in the Arts?
When I was in college, Lee Kahn, the school’s theater director, used to like to tell us, “The first rule of theater is theft.” He said that so often that when I began to teach acting and theater...
View ArticleAppropriation in the Theater
A quick check with the Dramatists Guild in New York confirms that the magpie culture of borrowing and re-appropriation that drives current pop music is largely alien to playwrights, even when one work...
View ArticlePhilip Pullman’s 'His Dark Materials'
by Kirk Woodward[Frequent ROT contributor Kirk Woodward returns now with a slightly different piece of writing. In “Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials,” he gives us a critical analysis of the fantasy...
View Article"Decorum in the Digital Age"
by Philip Kennicott[On 11 February 2014, I posted an article by ROT contributor Kirk Woodward called “Reflections On Theater Etiquette” in which my friend discussed some of the ways that performers...
View ArticleJumpers for Goalposts
The final play in my series at Washington, D.C.’s Studio Theatre was Tom Wells’s Jumpers for Goalposts, a U.S. première. I caught the official opening performance in Studio’s Metheny Theatre, the...
View Article"What Were They Thinking?"
by John Kelley[I’ve been visiting the Washington, D.C., area for a while lately. As many ROTters know, I’m a native Washingtonian and my mother lives here. It’s hard to avoid the many monuments and...
View ArticleDispatches from Israel 4
by Helen Kaye[My friend Helen, who writes for the Jerusalem Post, has sent me three short reviews on recent productions in Tel Aviv and Be’er Sheva. Helen’s reviews, though the paper only gives her a...
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Some Of That Jazz
by Kirk Woodward[Once again Kirk Woodward, my friend and a frequent contributor to ROT, comes back to the blog with a new piece of writing. Returning to one of his strongest interests, music, Kirk...
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Home Alone 1
[As I reported in “An American Teen in Germany, Part 1,” posted on 9 March 2013, my dad became a Foreign Service Officer in June 1962 and was assigned to the directorship of the Amerika Haus in...
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Home Alone 2
[This is the second installment of three in the collection of correspondence from my father to my mother in the month he was alone in Germany while waiting for my mom to join him. You’ll read about...
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Home Alone 3
[This is the final section of the series of letters my dad wrote home to Mom before she came to Germany to share their new life there with him. Dad makes some observations about the Germans that might...
View ArticleSimon Callow
by Kirk WoodwardBy now, ROTters should be very familiar with who Kirk Woodward is and why his writing appears so often on this blog. (His last piece, “Some Of That Jazz,” was posted on 7 June.) This...
View Article'Bette Davis Ain’t for Sissies'
My second trip to the 59E59 Theaters last month was for Bette Davis Ain’t for Sissies, one of the entries in East to Edinburgh, an annual series of plays from North American companies before they make...
View ArticleDispatches from Israel 5
by Helen Kaye[On 20 July, Helen Kaye, a regular reviewer for the Jerusalem Post, sent me a pair of recent notices, one for an Israeli playby Gilad Evron, a 60-year-old playwright, screenwriter, and...
View Article'Ubu Roi' (Lincoln Center Festival, 2015)
In addition to my two trips to 59E59 (reports on Summer Shorts and Bette Davis Ain’t for Sissies are posted on ROT on 12 and 17 August, respectively), Diana, my frequent theater companion, and I went...
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