TDF

Summer in New York is a season of street fairs, outdoor concerts–and theatre festivals. From international imports to Off-Off-Broadway experiments, there’s something for every theatregoer, and every price range. The festival season has already begun, so here’s a quick guide to three that are worth your attention. Lincoln Center Festival This extraordinary international festival of […]

“If somebody’s not willing to do anything to get what they want, they probably shouldn’t be in a play,” says Harriet Harris, stating the sound dramatic principle that’s driven several of her most memorable characters: a grasping talent agent on Frasier, a scheming neighbor on Desperate Housewives, a ruthless white-slavery mastermind in Thoroughly Modern Millie […]

It’s classic bit of showbiz advice that still hard to argue with: “You gotta have a gimmick/If you wanna get a hand.” So our question for Alison Fraser, the veteran musical theatre actress who will dispense this pearl of wisdom as the stripper Tessie Tura in Encores! Summer Stars’ production of Gypsy at City Center […]

Linda Hamilton is trying to engineer a wardrobe malfunction. “We’re having a little struggle with a scene at the end where the costume is ripped from my body,” confesses Hamilton, who has played her share of tough cookies in the Terminator films and in the TV series Beauty and the Beast and who is in […]

Acting is a form of interpretation, but interpretation is not acting. Such is one of the key lessons offered by the Interpreting for the Theatre institute, an annual summer intensive held by the Theatre Development Fund at Juilliard School, at which up to 20 interpreters for the deaf and hard-of-hearing from all over the United […]

“I would never use those words, but I don’t object to them,” says playwright Sarah Ruhl, referring to a pair of adjectives often applied, and not always admiringly, to her form-defying plays: “wacky” and “quirky.” Though she claims not to read reviews, she has certainly heard these words directed her way, but, she insists, “I’d […]

How many graduation ceremonies have you attended that consisted not of an endless parade of names and mortarboards but a series of original plays, penned by students and performed by professional actors? Or how about a series of insightful, inspiring speeches and discussions among hundreds of budding teenage theatre aficionados? Such were the elements of […]

“The landscape changes around every bend,” says Anne Stone Crow of the lovely, unpredictable highlands of Scotland, where you’re just as likely to find a well-preserved castle, a salmon preserve, a field full of contented sheep or a placid, sandy beach full of sunbathers. “That was beautiful, and a big surprise,” she says of the […]

How does an accomplished actor-singer play a composer who wasn’t a singer? Wait, there’s more: The character in question is German, and he’s singing English lyrics he didn’t write, in a stitched-together anthology show that tells the intertwined story of him and his famous muse. With Kurt Weill, one half of the complicated couple at […]