April 18, 2011 — Clybourne Park, a play by Bruce Norris, produced at Woolly Mammoth Theatre in 2010, was awarded the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama today. The jury’s citation praised the play as “a powerful work whose memorable characters speak in witty and perceptive ways to America’s sometimes toxic struggle with race and class […]
Archives for April 18, 2011
National Pastime
Most theatre companies line up as either devotees of drama or musicals. Keegan Theatre stakes its reputation on embracing and producing both. The company’s work is often strong and compelling. However, with National Pastime, the company has fallen into the sin of bad musical comedy: the actors are having more fun on stage than we […]
The Color Purple
The musical version of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize winning “The Color Purple” is the story of Celie’s odyssey from utter despair to triumph. It is the story of discovery and the power of love. The touring production of musical version is back for a brief stop at The National Theatre and it assaults the senses with […]
2011 Curtain Call – meet the producers
“Google “billionaire theater producer” and you will find no results. In fact, theater is often where investors go to lose money, as Mel Brooks hilariously taught us in The Producers. Why does any company do it, then – take on the incredible risks of producing a show or founding a new theater company? Generosity of […]
Chesapeake
If you want to see a play about friendship, go see Art at Signature. But if you want to see a play about art, you should see Lee Blessing’s Chesapeake, now playing at the Bay Theatre in Annapolis.
Fragments
Say the name Samuel Beckett, and most people think: Waiting for Godot, existentialism. Theatre of the absurd, where absurd means meaningless. As we watch Peter Brook and Marie Hélène Estienne’s spare but striking staging of five uneasy pieces by the late Irish playwright, the word also takes on its more everyday meaning. And we realize […]