617 stories by "Jan Simpson"
The end of the year has sneaked up on me. I got lost in the whir of finishing the school semester where I teach, getting ready for Christmas and dealing with some health problems (nothing se…
Yep; I've slipped back into a hole that's going to keep me from doing a regular post today. But this isn't a disagreeable hole. I fell into it by (1) reading two fascinating books about 19th…
The weather has been unseasonably warm here in the city but the winter theater festivals, including a few new ones, are plowing ahead as usual and so I thought I'd do a redux of the guide to…
The Stagecraft podcast is hosted by Jan Simpson. It is a series of interviews with playwrights (and musical book writers) of shows opening on Broadway and off-Broadway. Guest:Â Christopher…
As regular readers of this blog know, I'm crazy about my husband K. I also really appreciate his patience in allowing me to take up so much of my time with theater. We're just a third o…
Love 'em or hate 'em, the 1960s continue to influence American discourse. And those tumultuous times are front-and-center in two new recent plays: Gloria: A Life, a look at the career …
The Stagecraft podcast is hosted by Jan Simpson. It is a series of interviews with playwrights (and musical book writers) of shows opening on Broadway and off-Broadway. Guest:Â Larissa Fas…
The Stagecraft podcast is hosted by Jan Simpson. It is a series of interviews with playwrights (and musical book writers) of shows opening on Broadway and off-Broadway. Guest:Â Eleanor Bur…
The Stagecraft podcast is hosted by Jan Simpson. It is a series of interviews with playwrights (and musical book writers) of shows opening on Broadway and off-Broadway. Guest:Â Donja R. Lo…
It happens almost every fall and this year, it's even more intense than usual. There are so many shows opening that seeing them on top of making plans to celebrate the birthdays of my niece,…
Bill Irwin is a genius. And it's not just me saying that. The folks at the MacArthur Foundation made that official 34 years ago when they gave him one of their famous five-year fellowships t…
They say that timing is everything. And the timing could hardly be better for Heidi Schreck's What the Constitution Means to Me, which opened at New York Theatre Workshop last weekend, just …
Ever since Aeschylus wrote the first Greek tragedies back in the fifth century B.C., playwrights have been creating works that wrestle with the pressing issues of their time. One of the most…
The Stagecraft podcast is hosted by Jan Simpson. It is a series of interviews with playwrights (and musical book writers) of shows opening on Broadway and off-Broadway. Guest:Â Sharr White…
Just like the rest of us, theater makers can fall into ruts and end up doing the same thing over and over. That's what happened to John Doyle who repeated his conceit of having actors play t…
It may be a sacrilege to say this but I've never been a fan of the plays of George Bernard Shaw. I appreciate Shaw's place in the theatrical pantheon and his role as a pioneering progressive…
The Stagecraft podcast is hosted by Jan Simpson. It is a series of interviews with playwrights (and musical book writers) of shows opening on Broadway and off-Broadway. Guest:Â Simon Reade…
Drawing up a list of the fall shows I most want to see is my way of making myself feel better that summer (my favorite season) is ending. It's something I've done for even longer than I've b…
Maybe it's because I'm getting older but time seems to be passing more quickly than ever and the entire summer just flew by. One minute, I was watching my DVD version of 1776, which I try to…
Because I've always believed there should be shows on Broadway that cater to all kinds of tastes, it's not easy for me to say this but the new musical Gettin' the Band Back Together doesn't …
The Stagecraft podcast is hosted by Jan Simpson. It is a series of interviews with playwrights (and musical book writers) of shows opening on Broadway and off-Broadway. Guest: James Magruder…
So many people were raving about the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene's production of Fiddler on the Roof that I felt I had to see it. At the same time, I feared it wouldn't live up to al…
There's no post today because I'm taking time off to celebrate my birthday this weekend. The celebrations include a repeat visit to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child with my theatergoin…
Maybe there were too many top chefs in the room when they were cooking up This Ain't No Disco, the rock musical that recently opened at the Atlantic Theater Company's Linda Gross Theater. Ca…
What a difference a director can make. The first time I saw the dark comedy Straight White Men, it was directed by its playwright Young Jean Lee for a 2014 workshop production at the Public …
