TDF

By MARK BLANKENSHIP At the moment, Thomas Bradshaw may be the most divisive playwright in New York. For every foundation that’s giving him an award, there’s a group of audience members who are walking out on his plays. For every critic praising him, there’s another who’s deriding him as a provocateur. But however they respond, […]

Pete Mannion still remembers his first visit to the TKTS Discount Booth in 1976. He and his whole family boarded the LIRR from Bayside, Queens for a Saturday in the city. After a visit to a beloved aunt on the East Side, the Mannions headed for Times Square and picked their entertainment for the day. […]

The long run of Lynn Nottage’s extraordinary Congo-set drama Ruined—roughly eight months, if you count its start at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre last fall before it came to Manhattan Theatre Club in February—is finally taking its toll on actress Condola Rashad, 21, who makes her professional debut in the role of Sophie, a pretty young singer […]

by: Linda Buchwald @rockofages RT What is the worst 80s catch phrase? “Man I love being a turtle!” (via @JessicaWellsRH) Were live from the Tonys Preview Concert where @thetonyawards is tweeting Saycon’s outfit. NATALIE – @Henry, UM, I’m practicing for my recital on Tuesday.  Will call later. These phrases may read like a foreign language, […]

Imagine a play about a dysfunctional family gathering to sort through the wreckage after the aging patriarch has suddenly left the scene. After partly reverting to their childhood roles and reliving old squabbles, the absent father’s adult children begin to realize the need to get past blaming everything on their parents. Yes, Lloyd Suh’s new […]

I Am From El Café, the first play presented at Landmark High School in midtown Manhattan, boasted a cast of twelve actors, who also doubled as playwrights and directors. The play was a 30-minute piece which touched the social, academic and familial problems faced by today’s teens. These students were participating in TDF’s new Youth […]

They say timing is everything in show business, and Epic Theatre Ensemble’s A More Perfect Union, which opens this week, definitely has timing on its side. Vern Thiessen’s new play follows the complicated politics of the United States Supreme Court, a subject that’s freshly in the news with the announced retirement of Justice David Souter, […]

Jeffrey Richards may not have been born in a trunk, but he was certainly born to the theater: His mother, Helen Stern Richards, was a longtime Broadway general manager and press agent. And now her son is one of New York’s preeminent producers and press agents himself, and he’s possibly among the busiest men in […]

Neil Pepe has had an extremely busy year: The artistic director of Atlantic Theater Company, in 2008 Pepe directed one Atlantic main stage show (Jez Butterworth’s Parlour Song) and two Atlantic Stage 2 productions (Ethan Coen’s Almost an Evening and David Pittu’s What’s That Smell: The Music of Jacob Sterling). Two of them (Smell and […]