8,501 stories from Backstage
It is not easy to treat “Alone” as just another play, for two reasons. First and foremost are the circumstances in which I saw it: an Off-Off Broadway production that went on whe…
Ruth and Augustus Goetz’s “The Heiress,” a drama based on Henry James’ novel “Washington Square,” has shown up on Broadway once every other decade since i…
There is a ferocious whirlwind roaring through Roundabout Theatre Company’s Black Box Theatre, and its name is Daphna Feygenbaum, a senior at Vassar College who’s dead serious ab…
“Let me say straight off, I’m a witch,” announces Sowa (Lonette McKee), the Harlem-based protagonist of Diane Richards’ “Sowa’s Red Gravy,” in the p…
Training is important. As an actor, even if you disagree with the teachings of your professor, at least you know what won’t work for you. But as any struggling thespian will tell you, …
A spooky operatic treat, just in time for Halloween, “The Medium” is a highly accessible chamber opera guaranteed to excite anyone with a bent for musicalized melodrama. With bot…
With over 50 professional stage companies and nearly 1,000 members in the Actors’ Equity union, theater in Philadelphia is undeniably booming. Proof? In addition to the Barrymore Award…
According to the London newspaper The Independent, as of May 2011 Jon Fosse was the most performed European playwright alive, with 900 productions in more than 40 languages, outpacing such n…
Memories of the 2008 housing and banks crisis stir images of angry businessmen cursing in suits as foreboding numbers pile onto computer screens and corporate bigwigs sweat out backroom deal…
This season Target Margin Theater’s Lab is presenting an array of productions—plus a reading and a panel discussion—celebrating the legacy of Yiddish theater. “Dukus,…
Can a well-written autobiographical essay be translated into a vital theater piece? In the case of “House for Sale,” Daniel Fish’s adaption of Jonathan Franzen’s insi…
Alfred Hitchcock is having a moment. Just a month before the movie "Hitchcock," in which the director is played by Anthony Hopkins, hits theaters comes the news that Hitch's famous 1954 film…
A controversial change to the judging criteria for the L.A. STAGE Alliance’s Ovation Awards is roiling the Los Angeles theater community and could lead to an “evolution” of…
The ever-popular Ted Talks is known for leaving no intellectual stone unturned, from why schools are killing creativity to writer Elizabeth Gilbert’s tips for respecting your muse. And…
Los Angeles theater executives are mulling whether a director’s artistic vision is compromised by a push for diversity.
Critics have said Asian-American, African-American, and Latino a…
Have we lost touch with our bodies? Aaron Jafferis says we have—and hip-hop is the cure: “Hip-hop, by connecting the heartbeat of rhythm, brings poetry back to the body.” T…
Last week we talked about movies. This week, in the continuing epic of the Theater Season That Isn’t, we (naturally) lead with "Rebecca."
You know, the show whose spectacular, slow-mot…
“Wild With Happy” is a misleading title for writer-performer Colman Domingo’s new play at the Public Theater. In certain instances it is wild, as in the opening church revi…
Richard Maxwell is a director whose work would be only briefly interrupted by the apocalypse. One pictures him, just after the end of World War III, rounding up the survivors to put on an ob…
Shakespearean actors have a new booster on the West Coast. San Diego’s Old Globe has hired Barry Edelstein to be its new artistic director, and the former New York theater executive sa…
The producers of the “Annie” revival now in previews faced two very big challenges on the road to Broadway: finding a triple-threat little girl to wear that iconic red wig, and f…
Actors across the country can relive the birth of Motown and rise to stardom with the likes of Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, and Michael Jackson in a new Broadway musical based on the life and …
Casting director Bernard Telsey has two pieces of advice for actors who are auditioning for him.
“Be the most prepared you can possibly be…and know what you’re auditioning…
When Jewish-American art dealer Isaac asks Pakistani-American corporate lawyer Amir “Did you feel pride on Sept. 11?” and gets the hesitant answer, “Yes,” everything …
Imagine “Seinfeld” meets Rodgers and Hart as directed by Woody Allen. With book, music, and lyrics by David Rossmer and Steve Rosen, who both play the title character (one in the…
