ERIC GRODE

Inside Wolf Hall’s Tony Award-winning design — “Stuff that touches the skin deteriorates the fastest.” Susan Checklick is calling from backstage at the Winter Garden Theatre. That evening’s performance of Wolf Hall is under way, and she is staring at 12 laundry baskets full of fabric scraps. Before the week is over, possibly before the […]

Notes from the costume designer and wardrobe supervisor — Any parent – and anyone who has been parented in their lives – knows that keeping kids’ clothes off the floor and free from stains is a full-time job. Now picture more than a dozen children, each changing their (rather expensive) outfits every half hour for […]

Laura Eason’s latest play channels the indie rock spirit — Of the two old-guard creative types grumbling their way toward obsolescence in Laura Eason’s most recent plays — the world-weary (female) writer in Sex With Strangers and the mulish (male) rock-club owner in The Undeniable Sound of Right Now — the former would seem to […]

By ERIC GRODE Move over, August Wilson. Damon Chua is halfway toward replicating your century-spanning theatre project. True, Chua doesn’t focus on one specific geographic area, à la Wilson’s beloved Hill District of Pittsburgh. And the definition of “century” got a little fuzzy when he set one of his plays in the 2000s. “Also, I […]

By Eric Grode “I really had to decide as a playwright what I believe happened in that car.” Catherine Filloux is describing an actual 1963 Oldsmobile that drove down an actual Alabama road 49 years ago. And many things that happened in that car is preserved in FBI records, which Filloux read while writing her […]

That’s certainly the case with playwright James McLure, whose work is finally back in town after decades of playing everywhere else.

The high-flying life of Pippin ‘s stage manager — Stage managers have been described as the air-traffic controllers of the stage. That’s especially true when the traffic is actually up in the air. Such is the case with the circus-infused revival of Pippin , which continues to pack audiences into the Music Box Theatre. Calling the shots backstage is Michael J. Passaro, who as production stage man