The plight of the homeless is being explored on November 18 in A Place Called Home at Mathewson Street Church in Providence. The interactive performance was created by Frank V. Toti, Jr. and Steven Pennell, the coordinator of the Urban Arts and Culture program at the URI Providence campus. A Place Called Home is also […]
The latest show from Brown University Theatre’s Sock and Buskin is an extremely ambitious project; any Caryl Churchill play is enough of a challenge on its own, but the apparently rarely performed Lives of the Great Poisoners is more of an opera than a play, minimally accompanied and demanding in both vocal and technical skill. The play, […]
When an audience member of Fun Home approached its playwright Lisa Kron and said it was “much bigger than a story of a lesbian,” Kron replied, “It’s exactly the size of the story of a lesbian.” A story about a lesbian is no small feat. Fun Home, which only hit Broadway a few years ago, […]
Not every young adult novel has the power to transform a teacher into a playwright, but after years of teaching Tending to Grace for its use of literary devices, a stage adaptation began to take shape in Laurie Murphy’s mind. With the blessing of the author and the support of Swamp Meadow Community Theatre, that […]
By the end of the talk back following the Friday night performance of New and Dangerous Ideas, it became abundantly clear that the audience members who were convinced they understood the content of the play still had a long way to go on the path of enlightenment. Race is a tricky subject. Conversations about identity […]
While many theaters have the boldness to market their next show as “the theatrical event of the year” it is admittedly more of a rarity when the experience lives up to the hype. Thankfully, in the case of Epic Theatre Company’s site-specific production of Lucas Hnath’s Red Speedo, the event far exceeds its billing. […]
The classic animated Disney musical Mulan, Jr. will be performed at the Stadium Theatre from November 17 – 18. The Huns have invaded, and it is up to the misfit Mulan and her mischievous dragon sidekick, Mushu, to save the emperor. Defying the village matchmaker, Mulan takes up arms and disguises herself as a […]
We think of Broadway as being a pretty gay place, but most musicals, even today, follow a rather heterosexual formula, with a straight couple at the center of the action and maybe some peripheral gay couples. Rarely do you see a musical with a gay main character. In fact, the first mainstream musical to feature […]
From the first melancholic notes of the opening number, “To Build a Home,” it is clear that this show aims to lay bare its very soul to audiences. Based on Robert James Waller’s 1992 novel, The Bridges of Madison County musical was written by the Tony Award-winning creative team of Jason Robert Brown (The Last […]
A year after the 2016 election, the same questions persist that have poked at the arts community for decades prior. The open debate about the roles of race, gender and sexual identity in this freshly riven society is not new, so much as it is in high relief. The echo chambers within the arts have […]