My cell phone has been acting up lately. It seems to know exactly how to keep me on my feet, making my life a constant whirlwind of surprises. A Gemini’s dream. “It’s a funeral…chicken, fish, or steak?” was the majority of what I could make out from our conversation. “A What?” I yelled into the […]
Artistic inspiration comes in many forms. For Festival Ballet Providence Artistic Director Mihailo Djuric, the muse for his company’s upcoming production was a series of orchids photographed in various states of decompose. “It’s amazing how drying orchids look like dancers,” notes Djuric. “They even have faces.” Indeed, after viewing several photographs, the imagery becomes remarkably […]
Jonathan Larson’s Rent has become something of a sacred cow in modern musical theater. Its opening in 1996 was almost eclipsed by its author’s death, and Rent cemented its place in the American Musical canon regardless of its objective merits. Easily dismissed as a reboot of Hair, Rent was actually a logical culmination of Larson’s previous, […]
Many Americans have a sense of British history that comes from a smattering of watered down school lessons and reruns of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. The Royals are a fetish for some and costume dramas have been dominating the airwaves lately, but for us non-Anglophiles, our grasp of The Tudors is hazy at best. Anne […]
by Mary DeBerry Brown University’s Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies graduate program is at once highly selective and highly intensive. From January 31 to March 2, students in the demanding three-year M.F.A. program have a chance to present their work to the public in the month-long festival. This year marks the fourth annual […]
Now in its third year, the Writing is Live Festival at Brown University is an exciting opportunity to see a number of works in progress. Most importantly, the Festival will be the only time all of Brown’s graduate students come together on a shared project, featuring six plays by writers in Brown’s graduate and undergraduate theater programs. […]
With the season’s first snowstorm behind us and the mercury dropping to bone-chilling levels, RI’s winter dance offerings are ready to heat things up. From local productions to several touring troupes, things could get hot around here long before the spring thaw. Festival Ballet Providence (FBP), the capital city’s resident professional ballet company, will get […]
Now that the holiday season is over, we can safely put aside the family fare and turn from heartwarming messages of hope to emotional destruction and collapse. Not that Epic Theatre Company was ever going to follow seasonal trends: last month’s RI Premiere of Sarah Ruhl’s dark and twisted Passion Play, as well as the […]
As more arts programs disappear from academic curricula, the Manton Avenue Project (MAP) is fighting back to educate and inspire Olneyville area students. Some 200 local theater professionals from the Gamm, Trinity, the Wilbury Group, and other companies that might ordinarily vie for theatrical greatness, have combined their talents and volunteered their time to mentor […]
One trick of great playwriting is crafting a theatre piece that is more than meets the eye. For example, David Auburn’s Proof is a play about math that isn’t about math at all. And Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive is not really about learning how to drive. A similarly great play, Sarah Treem’s The How and the Why, […]