When the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol was first published in 1843 by Chapman & Hall, its author was struck by the the world’s reevaluation of the famous holiday. Traditions and customs were evolving, and symbols we take for granted today were only beginning to cement themselves, like carols and Christmas trees. Forty-three years […]
Now that we’re approaching nine months of theater’s absence here in Rhode Island, it seemed like a good time to take stock of how the performing arts have managed to stay creative while their venues are dark. Initially, it appeared as though many were willing to simply wait out the pandemic, but once it became […]
If you take the train home to Rhode Island from New York the day before Thanksgiving, you might feel that energy of migration. The motion of thousands of other people all headed in various directions — back to families and Friends-givings, weekend bags on the seat next to them, potentially dreading the political conversation that […]
They met at the Hotel Providence. “We didn’t meet there. We agreed to meet up there. He was visiting from Chicago for a wedding and we matched on Tinder. He asked if I wanted to come to his hotel. He was honest about the fact that he was only going to be in town for […]
They were eating dinner at Dolores and talking about where they would move if Biden lost the election. “The baby was coming the following month, and we didn’t know what this country would look like for people like us if we had another four years like the four we just had.” Both of them have […]
If you ask her how she used to spend her Sundays, she would tell you about Cellar Stories. “This isn’t going to be you writing about how many books I have, is it? Because I have a lot of books, but I have to get rid of some. I don’t want to–The thing is, I […]
If you were living in Providence in 2004, it’s possible you may have been invited to a party. “My friend asked me to go with her, and she got sick last minute, and couldn’t go, and she tells me, she tells me, ‘You should still go! Go and have fun.’ I was not the type […]
It seems like a lifetime ago that I had the pleasure of reviewing Psych Drama Company’s production of Edward Albee’s At Home at the Zoo. The theater had an exciting season planned before the pandemic, but I was excited to hear that rather than stay dormant, they’re mounting an exciting virtual production of The Lion […]
If you were walking down Benefit Street in Providence a few years ago, you might have seen an old woman standing outside a house asking to be let in. “She was insisting. She was insisting that she lived at the house.” The resident of the house was a family made up of two parents, a […]
“Jim and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would say to them. She said the right thing, always.” ~ Dylan Thomas, A Child’s Christmas in Wales In 2004, the Gamm Theatre presented Wallace Shawn’s Aunt Dan and Lemon, a rarely done and intellectually ambitious play about a woman’s memories of her charismatic “Aunt […]