Category: Directing
A Flop Play by a Pulitzer Prize Winner Gets a Second Life
By JOSE SOLÍS
Why the Spanish-language production of Robert Schenkkan's Building the Wall is scarily relevant
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A week before the 2016 presidential election, Pulitzer- and Tony-winning dramatist Robert Schenkkan (All the Way) angrily banged out the dystopian two-hander Building the Wall, a future history play about what might happen to immigrants under a Donald...
A Play about Family, History, Genocide and Rock 'n' Roll
By CAROLINE CAO
Obie winner Chay Yew on directing Cambodian Rock Band at Signature Theatre
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A few years ago, when Lauren Yee approached Chay Yew about directing the world premiere of her play Cambodian Rock Band at South Coast Repertory, he couldn't envision how it would work on stage. The puzzle of figuring it out is exactly why he signed on. "I always look at...
Think You Know Frankenstein? You've Never Seen Him Like This
By REGINA ROBBINS
African American actress Stephanie Berry plays the creature and his creator in this new production at Classic Stage Company
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The original mad scientist story, Frankenstein, is alive on stage once more, but this stripped-down interpretation is a bold new experiment. Tristan Bernays' two-actor adaptation of Mary Shelley's iconic 1818 tale—which...
Why 'A Soldier's Play' Belongs on Broadway
By REGINA ROBBINS
Tony-winning director Kenny Leon on his new production of the Pulitzer-winning drama
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Director Kenny Leon didn't see Negro Ensemble Company's original mounting of A Soldier's Play in 1981, but he's "pretty sure it was worthy of being on a Broadway stage." After all, it was a landmark production for the groundbreaking black theatre, a critical and...
Mining Tragedy Out of His Home State
By SANDY MACDONALD
Playwright Samuel D. Hunter and director Davis McCallum discuss their latest collaboration at Lincoln Center
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Who could have predicted a decade ago that Samuel D. Hunter, an Idaho-bred playwright whose oeuvre is set in his home territory, would take New York City by storm? Probably director Davis McCallum, who first met Hunter in 2010 when they...
When Stephen Adly Guirgis Asked Him, He Couldn't Say No
By JANICE C. SIMPSON
Veteran actor-producer John Ortiz on making his directorial debut with Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven
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John Ortiz cofounded the LAByrinth Theater Company with a group of actors in 1992. As the company's artistic director for much of the last three decades, he has helped develop and produce, and frequently performed in more than 250 plays....
A Rare Chance to See One of the First Immersive Works of Theatre
By CAREY PURCELL
María Irene Fornés' Fefu and Her Friends is finally being revived after four-plus decades
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Like many admirers of María Irene Fornés' rarely performed masterpiece, director Lileana Blain-Cruz discovered Fefu and Her Friends in school. However, unlike many fellow fans, she didn't understand why the pioneering work by the...
Why Bedlam's 'The Crucible' Will Surprise You
By CAREY PURCELL
After a successful engagement last fall, Bedlam's The Crucible is having an encore run at the Connelly Theater from March 27 to April 26.
The lauded theatre company puts its singular stamp on the Arthur Miller classic
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Even before it begins, Bedlam's take on Arthur Miller's The Crucible is meant to jar. The sparse Connelly Theater stage looks...