626 stories by "Jan Simpson"
One of the questions I often ask myself after seeing a new show is: why are the show makers telling me this story? I haven't been able to figure out the answer to that question fo…
The Convent, the new play by Jessica Dickey, is like a mashup of Bess Wohl's Small Mouth Sounds about a disparate group of people trying to find themselves on a spiritual retreat, and Caryl …
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 Bob …
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 Charly Evon…
Transgression"social, sexual and otherwise"has been the bread and butter of Neil LaBute's career. It might be the downfall of it too. Last year, allegations about some unidentified misconduc…
Something radical is happening on New York stages this season. It's mainly taking place off-Broadway and it's largely being driven by women of color who have written that most traditional of…
Most theatergoers, especially those with limited time and resources, try to figure out which shows to see through a combination of word of mouth, social media and official reviews, particula…
Life has gotten crazy again and I couldn't find the time to write this week. So as I usually do when this happens, I'm turning on the ghost light that theaters use when they're temporarily e…
Over the past decade the playwright Theresa Rebeck has had four shows premiere on Broadway and at least a half dozen others open in major off-Broadway productions. And I can't figure o…
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…
