ELIZA BENT
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Want to Know How The Story Ends? Pay Up.
For a practical lesson in economics, try being hungry on Governors Island. The ferry ride to this lovely enclave is only $2—or completely free if you sail out early—and considering all the activities, views, and traffic-free silence the place offers, that’s a spectacular deal. But if you don’t bring your lunch, noontime might find you […]
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The Tiniest Details Changed the “Sex”
BY ELIZA BENT Almost every play begins with a rush of inspiration, and ideally, that energy remains palpable for the rest of its life. Once it’s time to actually stage the show, however, creative impulses must contend with practical necessities. As counterintuitive as it might sound, playwrights often need to account for the smallest, concrete […]
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Sing Like America (With Gertrude Stein)
Gertrude Stein’s groundbreaking opera gets mixed with hip-hop, country, and jazz —
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Climbing a Mountain With Gertrude Stein
Ripe Time turns a Stein story into a fable for grown-ups and kids —
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Plato the Secret Playwright
Director Alec Duffy has a reputation for theatrical high jinks. In the last few years, he has staged a John Cassevetes film , created a choir piece out of No Exit , and even made a wild evening by blending Schubert, music history, and alcohol.
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They Were Dared to Write These Plays
In the very best way, Taxdeductible Theatre’s Dare Project reminds me of a game my friends and I invented in high school.
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Living the Asteroid Life
A play set on an asteroid may call to mind green alien heads, Trekker aesthetics, and campy space humor. But Mac Wellman’s Muazzez , running through January 17 at the Chocolate Factory in Long Island City, is no standard piece of science fiction. Featuring Wellman’s long-time collaborator Steve Mellor, the show is sparsely staged—the actor is simply seated at a table with a chair—but dense wit
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Teddy Roosevelt and Elvis Fight Over America’s Soul
Sometimes the unused scraps of one show become the starting point of another. For the award winning, Brooklyn-based ensemble the TEAM, that’s exactly what happened with RoosevElvis , now playing at The Bushwick Starr through Nov. 3. RoosevElvis (pronounced “Rose-of-Elvis”) takes on two titans of American history, Teddy Roosevelt and Elvis Presley, and emerged from the research and rehearsal proces
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Dance Is an American Philosophy
“I do a lot of moving from one discipline to the next, but I feel like there is a lot of consistency with what I am trying to do,” says Karinne Keithley Syers, a multidisciplinary artist whose work involves playwriting, performance, music and sound, dance, and academic scholarship. (She’s currently getting a PhD in English from the CUNY Graduate Center with a focus on 19th-century American literat