Raven Snook

Circus Amok’s latest show marks 25 years of public fun (with a message) — When my then-three-year-old first saw Jennifer Miller, she blurted out, “You’re a girl with a beard!” It’s an exclamation the Circus Amok founder has gotten used to hearing over the decades, whether she’s onstage or off. A performer, playwright, Pratt professor, […]

Though the Off-Broadway musical comedy Pageant could be described as a beauty contest with drag queens, you should banish all images of RuPaul’s Drag Race from your mind. While it’s true that the show’s six sparkly contestants, all vying for the coveted title of Miss Glamouresse, are played by men in women’s clothing, they’re not […]

Drunk Shakespeare, Shakespeare in the Parking Lot, the Accidental Shakespeare Company: the Bard’s plays are constantly being reinterpreted in unusual ways. Even in this offbeat company, however, the Puppet Shakespeare Players stand out. In Puppet Titus Andronicus, now at the Beckett Theatre, one of Shakespeare’s most notoriously bloody tragedies is reimagined by kooky felt creatures […]

Although the Peccadillo Theater Company’s new comedy Drop Dead Perfect sends up a wide range of American cultural touchstones—from The Glass Menagerie to I Love Lucy to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? —its greatest inspiration is arguably the high-camp, cross-dressing work of Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company. As with Ludlam classics like The Mystery of Irma Vep , Drop Dead Perfe

I heard Annie Golden’s voice before I ever saw her. Her song “Hang Up the Phone”—a bizarrely peppy ode to romantic jealousy—made quite an impression on me as an adolescent when I heard it in John Hughes’ movie Sixteen Candles. I played it over and over and over again (on LP!), and I fell for […]

King Kirby celebrates a forgotten legend — Why do some artists become household names while others toil away in obscurity? That question’s at the heart of King Kirby, a bio-play by husband-and-wife writers Fred Van Lente and Crystal Skillman that dramatizes the life and career of prolific comic book illustrator Jack Kirby. If you’re furrowing […]

Now at 3-Legged Dog’s 3LD Art & Technology Center, the trippy hour-long show features shadows walking independently, bodies flailing in midair, and other impossible-to-believe visuals. All of these haunting special effects come courtesy of the Musion Eyeliner , a high-definition video hologram projection system that conjures 3D images live on stage. But even though the technology seems cutting

— Brooklyn-based playwright and performer Oni Faida Lampley always used her personal life for inspiration. So when she was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 37 in 1996 (in the midst of nursing her infant child and on the cusp of her first significant movie role in Lone Star ), it was almost inevitable that she would write about it.