Lynne Weiss

A HIGHLY RECOMMENDED LESSON ON FAMILY LEGACY Actors’ Shakespeare Project continues its exploration of August Wilson’s Century Cycle with an absolutely superb production of the 1987 Pulitzer-winning masterpiece The Piano Lesson. In a Pittsburgh home in 1936, two siblings of the Charles family debate whether to sell or keep an heirloom–the family piano, which is…

HOW THE COOKIE CRUMBLES From Intimate Apparel and Sweat to Clyde’s, playwright Lynn Nottage is known for her ability to illuminate the lives of ordinary and working-class people, Black and white. Crumbs from the Table of Joy is one of her early plays, first produced in 1995. Under the direction of Tasia A. Jones, the…

THE ELATION OF NEGATION Written by Jordan E. Cooper and directed by Dawn M. Simmons, the Boston premiere of this Tony-nominated series of provocative satirical sketches explores various facets of Black life in the United States, challenging audiences to consider whether racism can ever truly be eradicated. It’s the kind of humor that leaves you…

TAP INTO JOY AT A.R.T. I felt the first chills early in Diary of a Tap Dancer. It was during an ensemble number set in the Bronx and the birth of hip hop – I got that feeling in my solar plexus which told me this was a show bound for great things. That feeling…

FEAST ON THIS! For the second year, Front Porch Arts Collective offers its Holiday Feast of staged readings of scripts from the holiday episodes of Black sitcoms of the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. The brainchild of co-producing artistic directors Dawn M. Simmons and Maurice Emmanuel Parent and directed by Jackie Davis, this event is fast…

A PLAY TO BE THANKFUL FOR Director Tara Moses (Seminole Nation of Oklahoma/Mvskoke) leans into the challenge of bringing the satirical comedy The Thanksgiving Play to the stage with “a full cast of Native and actors of color.” The casting note for the published play, by Larissa FastHorse, a member of the Sicangu Lakota Nation…

NOISES OFF, LAUGHS ON Just in time for the holiday season, Lyric Stage Company of Boston has something for audiences eager for some silly fun. Written by Michael Frayn the quintessential farce (within a farce) is a true ensemble piece about an amateur acting troupe presenting Nothing On, the name of the play within the…

GALILEO’S THEORIES WOULD PROVE THAT THE SUN DOESN’T MOVE – GALILEO’S DAUGHTER ALSO DOESN’T MOVE It’s an intriguing notion: the ground-breaking scientist and astronomer Galileo Galilei, who defied the Catholic Inquisition to publish his observations regarding the movement of Earth around the sun, had a daughter who shared his intellectual curiosity. Dava Sobel’s 1999 biography…

A TIME-TRAVELING JANE AUSTEN What if Jane Austen had managed to read The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan’s groundbreaking 1963 exploration of why well-educated and prosperous women were so unhappy in their roles as homemakers and mothers? Obviously, it would have been impossible for Austen (1775–1817) to do such a thing, so playwright Kate Hamill has…

SOMETIMES YOU CAN GET WHAT YOU WANT I have been in a foul mood for the past several days, looking for ways to smash the patriarchy, cursing the unseasonably warm and dry November in my soul and longing to methodically knock a few people’s hats off. Thus I accounted it high time to get to…

SETTING THE STAGE FOR AN EXTRAORDINARY CYCLE OF SHOWS How appropriate! I thought, as I stood in the August Wilson Lobby of the Huntington Theatre last night. I was about to see Sojourners, the first in the nine-play Ufot Family Cycle that celebrates multiple generations of a Nigerian and Nigerian-American family. Playwright Mfoniso Udofia was…

MEMORY AS AN ACT OF LOVE The East Coast premiere of playwright Steven Drukman’s snappy and cleverly written Pru Payne is movingly brought to the stage under SpeakEasy Stage founder Paul Daigneault’s direction. A top-notch cast gives voice to Drukman’s script, led by the especially impressive Karen MacDonald in the demanding role of Pru, a…

A PLAY THAT’S OUT OF THE BOX Like an acrobat without a net who thrills us with her daring, Iranian-German playwright Nassim Soleimanpour offers a play with virtually no set, no costumes, and an actor doing a cold read of a completely unfamiliar script to keep an audience enthralled with his 75-minute work Nassim. On…

THE LAUGHS ARE IN SPANISH AND ENGLISH, TOO Playwright Alexis Scheer draws on her Colombian-Jewish upbringing in Miami to create this comic celebration of the city’s Wynwood arts scene and the people who make it happen. Directed by another daughter of Miami, Mariela Lopez-Ponce, who, like Scheer, is now based in Boston (is it the…