Oral storytelling is one of the oldest traditions known to man; the intimacy of storytelling was how groups of people retold their history, entertained each other and reinforced their cultural values. The Rhode Island Black Storytellers’ (RIBS) Funda Fest, which takes place in late January and early February, keeps that tradition alive as storytellers share […]
Four public high school girls and an intelligent, caring teacher study and rehearse Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. This may seem nothing very unusual, but that play is a classic story of cliques forming within small groups, politicking for advantage. Its subject, the Salem witch trials of 1692-1693, were driven in large part by the testimony […]
The new National Tour of the classic Andrew Lloyd Webber musical CATS will kick off at the Providence Performing Arts Center January 22 and will run through January 27. CATS is based on Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot. The musical tells the story of a tribe of cats called the Jellicles and the […]
New Bedford’s Your Theatre Inc. (YTI) has a pleasant January planned with their upcoming production of the 1945 Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy Harvey by Mary Chase. The volunteer community theater has been a non-profit mainstay of the cultural scene in the southcoast area for more than 70 years, producing a full season of shows annually. Suzanne […]
Trinity Rep opens the new year with a play that is epic indeed: Marcus Gardley’s Black Odyssey, which transposes Homer’s story of Ulysses’ decades-long journey to come home from the Trojan War onto an African American Second Gulf War veteran, swept off a transport ship on his way back from a tour of duty. Co-directed […]
Epic Theatre Company is kicking off 2019 with Emily Mann’s adaptation of Federico García Lorca’s acclaimed drama The House of Bernarda Alba under the direction of Carol Schlink. Federico Garcia Lorca is widely considered to be Spain’s most important playwright and poet. The author of Blood Wedding and Yerma, his last work, The House of […]
Artists’ Exchange celebrated its 15th annual production of A Christmas Carol: The Musical Reclamation of Ebenezer Scrooge this holiday season. The production, adapted and directed by Rhiannon Lynn Annin, with original music by Ethan Miller, ran from December 6-22 at Theatre 82 in Cranston. Despite being performed every Christmas by various theatrical groups from […]
It’s difficult to predict what the future of theater will be — or if there will be a future for anything, really — and trying to predict what theater will be like in Rhode Island in five, 10 or 100 years from now is a difficult challenge. We’ve always had a very unique theater community here, and […]
Newport Playhouse deploys an obviously talented cast in their production of A Doublewide, Texas, Christmas who struggle valiantly to elevate a script from the writing team billing themselves as “Jones, Hope, Wooten” – actually Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope and Jamie Wooten – who collectively have authored nearly two dozen plays that possess all the humor, charm, and […]
Let this be a lesson to all those aspiring performers and producers out there. Sometimes you just need to get on the phone and make things happen for yourself. Such is the case with the much buzzed-about upcoming local production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, the acclaimed Tony Award-winning rock musical opening January 18 […]