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Theater
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GUIDE TO WRITING A THEATER SCRIPT
If you like the world of theater and are amazed by the classics usually represented on stage, think that there are also current works that even we can write ourselves. It would help if you had some imagination, desire, and this guide of steps to write a script for theater. Theater scripts are pretty different…
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WHY TEACH DRAMA TO STUDENTS
Drama in school boosts the children’s confidence, develops their communication skills, and makes them stronger. Teaching drama also improves academic performances that are essential for higher scores and grades. Students who participate in drama often improve reading comprehension, maintain better attendance records, and have higher standardized test scores. The involvement in the drama increases student…
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GREATEST PLAYS THAT WERE A GAMBLE
Theatre is a mirror, a sharp reflection of society — Yasmina Reza It is said that theatre is life, cinema is art, and television is just furniture. It is considered the highest form of art that illustrates what is happening in society. The heart doesn’t lament what eyes doesn’t see. Therefore, cinema, plays, and books…
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Theater Review: TAMING THE LION (Theatre 40 in L.A.)
I’M JUST A DANDY LION Homophobia may still be somewhat of a problem in today’s entertainment arenas, but it isn’t nearly as chaotic for queer artists who, nine decades ago, had to go undercover (so to speak) in order to continue with any kind of meaningful livelihood and/or physical safety. And that affected actors the…
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Theater Review: AN OCTOROON (The Fountain Theater in L.A.)
THE PLAY’S THE THING It’s no wonder that Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ brilliant adaptation of Dion Boucicault’s 1895 suspenseful melodrama The Octoroon is eight times better and more exciting than any other offering on America’s stages. It speaks to the current conversation of race in America while presenting a rather unknown actual nineteenth-century play that is rife…
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WHY STUDENTS SHOULD VISIT THEATRES
Performance arts are an important part of the culture. This medium, however, has lost a little of its glimmer ever since moving pictures and films started a few decades earlier. Theater visits were once a part of the curriculum of students. But now, many educational boards have decided to replace the live theater with recorded…
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Theater Review: GOODS (Artemisia Theatre in Chicago)
GOODS AND READY Family. Waste. Refugees. Class. Climate Change. All these and more fly off today’s headlines, but like a genie in a magic lamp, playwright Lauren Ferebee has fit them all — and more — inside a tiny capsule moving through the universe, where two American women have been collecting space trash for twenty…
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Theater Review: THE STORY OF MY LIFE (Chance Theater)
A STORY WELL TOLD BY CHANCE THEATER The Story of My Life is a warm, intimate and sweet two-character musical about Alvin Kelby and his childhood friend, Thomas Weaver. A flop in its New York debut, the 2009 show — which tugs at the heartstrings far more than the intellect — has been a regional…
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Theater Review: WAITING FOR GODOT (The New Group Off Stage)
ZOOM AND DOOM AND GLOOM IN A ROOM Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is not an easy play to write about, let alone produce, act, or even watch. It’s challenging, opaque, and ambiguous. On the surface, it’s about nothing at all. Deep down, however, it’s about everything. It carries a multiplicity of meanings that accumulate like…
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Theater Review: FEEL THE SPIRIT (Shotgun Players in Berkeley)
THE SPIRIT OF THIS PIECE RESIDES IN PERFORMER VERO MAYNEZ What I left with from Feel the Spirit, which opened last night virtual-but-live from Shotgun Players, is the central performance of Vero Maynez (below) as Gabriella, a gay pastor at a Christian Church whose parishioners believe themselves to be tolerant but soon shy from liberalism…
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Theater Review: AMOUR (Art Lab and ShowTown Productions)
YOU’LL FALL IN LOVE WITH AMOUR “I wanted to write an opera-bouffe, an intimate evening with light, lyrical singing and delicate charm,” wrote composer Michel Legrand. “Marcel Aymé’s delightful story of an ordinary little man who suddenly finds himself gifted with extraordinary powers seemed to be the perfect material for such an amusement.” Kevin Massey, Kara Lindsay, Thom…
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Theater Review: TRYING (North Coast Rep)
NORTH COAST REP SUCCEEDS, BUT THE PLAY IS STILL TRYING The eagerness of youth; the decay of old age; cynicism in a world of injustice; literature; mortality; idealism; FDR; and timeless quotes. All of these wrapped in the contentious years of 1967 and ’68 is what you’ll find in Trying, based on playwright Joanna McClelland…
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Theater Review: [HIEROGLYPH] (San Francisco Playhouse and Lorraine Hansberry Theatre)
AS WITH A HIEROGLYPH, THIS PLAY IS DIFFICULT TO READ Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s [hieroglyph], now streaming from San Francisco Playhouse and and Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, belongs to a genre known as Theatre of Identity, aka Social Issues Theatre. The idea is to call attention to a particular cultural identity or crisis – in this case, the…
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Theater Review: UNRAVELLED (Global Brain Health Institute / UC San Francisco / Trinity College Dublin)
BOLÉRO: BEAUTIFUL SYMPTOM OF A TERRIBLE DISEASE FOR BOTH PAINTER AND COMPOSER Based on true events and incorporating research and interviews conducted by playwright Jake Broder as a Hellman Visiting Artist at UC San Francisco’s Memory and Aging Center, UnRavelled explores the fascinating connection between the work of Canadian painter Anne Adams (1940–2007) and French…
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Theater Review: HI, ARE YOU SINGLE? (Woolly Mammoth, IAMA)
JUDGING RYAN Ryan J. Haddad opens his autobiographical solo play Hi, Are You Single? with a funny, sexy, and sweetly awkward phone masturbation scene. His search for sex and intimacy as a queer man with cerebral palsy is by turns seductive and acerbic. And he is not coy about wanting to get laid. Haddad pushes…
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Theater Review: BOLLYWOOD KITCHEN (Geffen Playhouse)
CURRY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH CURRY About a week prior to virtually attending Bollywood Kitchen, Sri Rao’s inventive solo memoir and home cooking experience, a beautiful box arrives containing seven jars of curated Indian spices, a Bollywood popcorn kit, a chocolate chai affogato kit, basmati rice, coconut powder, recipe cards, and a shopping list…
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Theater Review: BORDERS AND CROSSINGS (Public Theater’s Under the Radar)
PERSONALIZING DIASPORA Perhaps one of the reasons more people aren’t wearing masks in the U.S. to protect themselves and others during the COVID pandemic is that, even with 369,000 deaths to date, many still don’t know someone personally who has passed, and therefore do not know the stories of the deceased. Within the obfuscation of…
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Theater Review: RICH KIDS: A HISTORY OF SHOPPING MALLS IN TEHRAN (Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival)
WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND LAYS AHEAD If you think Carl Sagan’s Cosmos is mind-blowing, or the way Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. could put history into context is dumbfounding, or Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat is so accurate about globalization as to be disturbing, or that Julia B. Schor’s take on consumerism, The Overspent America…
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Theater Review: SONGS FOR A NEW WORLD (SF Playhouse)
A WORLD APART FROM TYPICAL VIRTUAL FARE Like a breath of fresh air, Jason Robert Brown’s Songs for a New World far exceeded my expectations of both virtual theater and Brown’s uneven song cycle. This is an early work from the Tony-winner for Parade and Bridges of Madison County. “It’s about one moment,” Brown said. “It’s about hitting the…
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Theater Review: THE FUTURE (Geffen Playhouse)
I HOPE THE FUTURE IS MORE EXCITING THAN THIS The Geffen Playhouse is forging ahead as Geffen Stayhouse, offering another magic show disguised as theater. Following the phenomenal success of The Present, the Geffen has now mounted a fairly similar one-man-show written and performed by master illusionist Helder Guimarí£es. While theaters around the country have…
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