KENNETH JONES

Playwright Tanya Barfield may live her life from Event A to Event B to Event C, but she says dream logic ruled when she was conjuring up a 45-year romance for Bright Half Life, her two-character play now being presented by The Women’s Project Theater at City Center Stage II. “The play was always nonlinear,” […]

By KENNETH JONES Welcome to Building Character, our ongoing look at performers and how they create their roles It’s a wonder that actress Christina Bianco doesn’t struggle with nightmares about the dozens of characters she plays in Off-Broadway’s one-woman comedy Application Pending. You imagine that keeping all of them straight haunts her fevered mind. “This […]

It seems inevitable that at some point in a playwright’s career, the imagination will be tugged homeward toward the people, places, and conflicts responsible for shaping the writer. Look at Eugene O’Neill’s plays set in Connecticut, August Wilson’s in Pittsburgh, Horton Foote’s in Texas. Mat Smart, who was born and raised in Naperville, IL, thirty-five […]

Welcome to Building Character, our ongoing look at performers and how they create their roles The ghost of Konstantin, the tortured young playwright whose diva mother withholds her love in Chekhov’s The Seagull, seems to haunt Donald Margulies’ The Country House, now on Broadway from Manhattan Theatre Club. In the new play, the broken artist […]

By KENNETH JONES There is nothing particularly warm, welcoming, or homey about the setting of Brett Neveu’s The Opponent, a two-character play about a young boxer sparring with an older trainer in backwater Louisiana’s Rock and Anvil Boxing Gym. The paint is peeling. The equipment is old. You can almost smell the mold and sweat. […]

By KENNETH JONES