139 stories by "Scotty Bennett"
"Avalona, A Musical Legend," created by Dina Fanai, with music and lyrics, is a concept album with elements of modern opera. While not a musical in the usual sense of that form, it fits in a…
Urban Stages conducted a Dynamic Duos playwriting competition for one-act, two-character stories covering any subject during their 2023-24 season. Eight plays out of over three hundred submi…
"Safe House" is an amorphous mosaic of sight and sound just out of reach of being any one thing. It is at once a song cycle, memory play, comedy, tragedy, a visual and aural potpourri of sen…
Doyle's storytelling skillfully blends didactic commentary with humorous anecdotes, holding the audience's attention throughout and resulting in a thoroughly satisfying evening of entertainm…
"Night Sings Its Songs" by Norwegian author Jon Fosse (pronounced FAH-suh), the 2023 Nobel Prize-winning playwright, explores alienation and emotional disconnection by a couple in a dysfunct…
In reading the script, I didn't see how the story made any sense or could have been given a reasonable life on stage. I was very wrong on both scores. The four actors of the ensemble breathe…
The modern verse translation reasonably maintains a semblance of the Elizabethan iambic pentameter form supported by the ensemble's solid delivery of the lines. People familiar with Elizabet…
"Sheltered" by Cate Wiley is a story about what it is to be a homeless woman in a city in the United States. As directed by Liz Peterson, this play tells the stories of these women trapped b…
"January" presents a story about the emotional impact of the killing of one child by another by weaving together the thoughts and actions of the two single mothers involved and how the natio…
Charlotte Bennett directs an exquisite cast of three in an exploration of these themes. Nicole Sawyerr solidly leads the ensemble in the lead role of Abigail Waller, a working-class playwrig…
There are a number of problems with these vignettes, ranging from the individual characterizations of the men involved to the superficial nature of the historical details of the events being…
Sarah Blush directs a cast of five in the story of a father and daughter on a road trip from New York City to a storage unit in California. It is a trip that is both se in the present and pa…
"Welcome to The Big Dipper" is a musical comedy with music and lyrics by Jimmy Roberts and a book by Catherine Filloux and John Daggett (inspired by the play "All Dressed Up and Nowhere to G…
"Woman on a Ledge" is an adaptation by Hershey Felder of harpist Rita Costanzi's writings about her life. Ms. Costanzi is a world-renowned harpist whose life experiences have been woven into…
Ako's portrayal of Izumo no Okuni combines traditional Japanese dance movements with Western-style acting. The nature of the script limits the impact of her performance. The dialogue is simp…
"Café Utopia" by Gwen Kingston and directed by Ashley Olive Teague tells the tale of a juice bar that, on the surface, appears to be socially progressive, but behind the scenes, is a differ…
Haller has created a world where robots have conquered all of humanity through the ability to copy, with precision, the technical aspects of a functional society. The lack of understanding o…
Fisher directs a solid ensemble through a production of "Medea" that is a spoof of a college production with a gay man in the role of Jason and a feminist as Medea. It takes place from the l…
"Rawshock" is a powerful, insightful, compelling play that lays bare the craven manipulation of corporate healthcare in the name of profits. It is beautifully written by Rita Lewis and super…
The story weaves together the group's history with flashbacks to their childhood, high school years, and a time immediately after college. It is a show that tries to cover too much territory…
Welcome to 'Lakeplay," a character study-play written by Drew Valins and directed by Hamilton Clancy. It is billed as "a terrifying adventure" but does not live up to that description. There…
"Dickhead," written by Gil Kofman and directed by Richard Caliban, is a story about the patriarch of a dysfunctional family in the midst of a near-total disintegration. The action is centere…
"Honor," a one-act play, written and superbly directed by T.J. Elliott, explores the conceptual nuances of "honor" within the context of a corporate investigation into a case of harassment a…
This adaptation, directed by John Hickok, uses the Fitzgerald story as a counterpoint to a tale of a couple caught in the legal vagaries of the United States and Canadian immigration laws. T…
"In Search of Elaina" is a story by Kara Ayn Napolitano that digs into the weeds of a remembered past. It explores what happens when the life left behind catches up and crashes into the care…
