TDF Stages Archive
An online theatre magazine
Read about NYC’s best theatre and dance productions and watch video interviews with innovative artists
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The Legendary Carmen de Lavallade Reflects on Her Career
Susan Reiter covers dance for TDF Stages.
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Looking for Light in Our Country’s Darkness
On the surface, Lucy Thurber’s new drama The Insurgents, now at the Labyrinth Theater Company, recalls her previous work. Like last year’s Obie-winning five-play cycle The Hill Town Plays, which chronicled the turbulent life of an author who (like the playwright herself) escaped an upbringing of poverty and strife in a small northeast town, The […]
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Which Musical Theatre Legends Need a New Show?
Welcome toGeek Out/Freak Out, where theatre fans get super enthusiastic about things. This week, Mark Blankenship geeks out (via Google Doc), with Jennifer Ashley Tepper, who is both a musical theatre historian and a producer. Jennifer’s new book, The Untold Stories of Broadway: Volume 2, is an oral history of eight Broadway theatres, as told […]
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Just Move the Car and Stage the Play
By MARK BLANKENSHIP It’s no accident that The Groundling takes place in a guy’s garage. Marc Palmieri’s new comedy, now at Axis Theatre, follows Bob Malone, a landscaper who’s so moved by an outdoor performance of Love’s Labour’s Lost that he decides to write his own play about his marriage. He mostly casts his friends and […]
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Would You Have an Affair for the Sake of Your Memoir?
Anna Camp plays an artist in crisis in Verité — “This play is definitely keeping me up at night,” says Anna Camp, the star of Verité, Nick Jones’s unsettling new comedy at Lincoln Center’s Claire Tow Theater. Specifically, she’s unsettled by the decisions her character makes about balancing her family life with her career as […]
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How Is She Playing 40 People At Once?
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 […]
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Why Does “Into the Woods” Keep Coming Back?
Welcome to Geek Out/Freak Out, where theatre fans get super enthusiastic about things. This week, Rachel Carpman, a writer and dramaturg, geeks out (over the phone) with Ethan Heard, freelance director and Co-Artistic Director of Heartbeat Opera. Today’s Topic: INTO THE WOODS! __ Rachel Carpman:Let’s freak out about the Into the Woods movie for a […]
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She’s Destroying My Career, But We’re Still Friends
By MARK BLANKENSHIP Welcome to Building Character, our ongoing look at performers and how they create their roles You might assume that Tonya Pinkins focuses on the conflict in Rasheeda Speaking. After all, Joel Drake Johnson’s play, now in a New Group production at the Signature Center complex, basically turns a Chicago doctor’s office into […]
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A Simple Game With Terrible Consequences:
What starts as a simple game of dice explodes into rage, torture, and revenge in Shesh Yak, now at Rattlestick Playwright’s Theatre. And it’s not because someone lost a bet. In Syrian-born writer/performer Laith Nakli’s new drama, Jameel (Zarif Kabier) invites Syrian expatriate Haytham (Nakli) to stay with him during a visit. The two are […]