In Tom Dulack’s Breaking Legs at the Arctic Playhouse, college professor Terrence O’Keefe (Jeff Blanchette) has written a play-within-a-play whose goal is to make the audience feel as if they committed a murder, giving them a sense of what that would really feel like. After getting good reviews in Belgium and Buffalo, presumably getting a taste of […]
Fictional characters are fictional, which may not seem a profound observation, but real people can be, and to some extent must be, substantially fictional, too, because it is impossible to know them perfectly. Lizzie Borden was unquestionably a real historical figure, found innocent of brutally murdering her father and stepmother with an ax in a sensational […]
Counter-Productions Theatre Company will be presenting the world premiere of Kevin Broccoli’s newest play, The Married Name, running March 15-24 at the AS220 Black Box Theatre, 95 Empire, PVD. Directed by Victoria Ezikovich, the production marks the acting group’s penultimate production of this, its final season. Playwright Broccoli describes The Married Name as a “knock-down, […]
If you follow theater news, you’ve probably been made aware of several cancelled productions of To Kill a Mockingbird, including one in Massachusetts, due to super-producer Scott Rudin claiming that these productions were in violation of an agreement that Rudin made with the Harper Lee estate in regard to Rudin’s Broadway version, which is written […]
Okee dokee folks… The Providence Performing Arts Center was bustling on a Tuesday night for the opening night of School of Rock in Providence. All ages filled the PPAC auditorium and even though it was a (regular) school night, junior theater-goers were strongly represented. Many of you may have seen or are familiar with the […]
Escaped Alone is a puzzling and strange one-act by British playwright Caryl Churchill, now in her 80s and resting on her laurels 57 years after her first play for BBC radio. It involves a group of three women in their 70s – Sally (Karen MacDonald), Vi (Marya Lowry) and Lena (Carol Drewes) – who are […]
The Gamm is presenting the Rhode Island debut of Caryl Churchill’s Escaped Alone from February 28 through March 17. The show runs along with Samuel Beckett’s Come and Go. Carol Drewes plays Lena, a member of a group of older women who spend a summer of afternoons in a suburban backyard. They discuss grandchildren and lost […]
Almost, Maine, by playwright/actor John Cariani, holds the distinction of being one of the most popular plays of this decade – topping the lists for most produced at both the high school and community levels of theater. Dubbed “a real romantic comedy,” there is no doubt why the show has attracted the attention of these […]
The popularity — and profitability — of programming an evening of one-act plays is quite undeniable for most smaller theaters. In our current short-attention-span culture, televised entertainment is often doled out to viewers in 20-minute packages, so it stands to reason that live theater would easily follow suit. While television and plays are commonly produced […]
Phil Olson is not a well-known playwright, and most of his output has involved rewriting classics into the rather hyperlocal Bunyan Bay, Minnesota, where the main activities are being really cold, complaining about being really cold and ice fishing. I’m not exaggerating: A Don’t Hug Me Christmas Carol is a rewrite of Dickens’ A Christmas […]