AMERICAN THEATRE2 min read
From the Executive Office
As our annual season preview issue is going to press, we are in a time of tremendous change in our country, in our theatres, and at TCG. Kelundra Smith has been named director of publications, with advertising, American Theatre, ARTSEARCH, and TCG Bo
AMERICAN THEATRE2 min read
Voces Y Votos
This presidential election year unexpectedly immersed us in coconut tree brat summer (thanks, Kamala), and there’s no telling what comes next. But whither the much-contested Latine vote? Two recent comedies investigate, with performances in hot-topic
AMERICAN THEATRE2 min read
L. Nyrobi Moss
I start by being grateful for my life and what I get to do, because I ran nonprofits for 30 years. I remember that even when I’m annoyed with nonprofit theatre, I get to do this. Dr. Shirlene Holmes. She passed last year. When I transferred from Miam
AMERICAN THEATRE3 min read
From the Editor
Believe it or not, one of my favorite natural anti-depressants (aside from Trader Joe’s root beer float bars) is on Facebook. Every week we post two questions on American Theatre’s page: On Friday, we ask followers what show they plan to do or see ov
AMERICAN THEATRE1 min read
American Theatre
Kelundra Smith, Director of Publishing Rob Weinert-Kendt, Editor-in-Chief Jerald Raymond Pierce, Managing Editor Gabriela Furtado Coutinho, Digital Editor Nsenga Burton, Guest Editor, Theatre Futures Amelia Merrill, Contributing Editor Tara McCarthy,
AMERICAN THEATRE2 min read
Ride Or Die
In June, five motorcyclists set out from Denver into Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. They followed a slender road into a box canyon up to an elevation of 9,000 feet, where they met with Creede Repertory Theatre interim artistic director Kate Berry. The s
AMERICAN THEATRE2 min read
Katie Forgette
It’s opening night of Death of a Salesman at the Teacup Theatre in the West Village. Before the curtain goes up, one of the actors suffers a break with reality, hallucinating and talking to a dead relative…and it’s not the guy playing Willy. People w
AMERICAN THEATRE1 min read
Top 20* MOST-PRODUCED PLAYWRIGHTS of the 2024-25 SEASON
(*23 DUE TO TIES) Kate Hamill (18 productions) Rajiv Joseph (18) Jeffrey Hatcher (16) James Ijames (16) Heidi Schreck (16) Eboni Booth (13) Rick Elice (13, 11 co-writes) Lauren Gunderson (13, 4 co-writes) Frederick Knott (13) August Wilson (13,
AMERICAN THEATRE63 min read
Season Preview 2024-2025
Cold Case, Cathy Tagnak Rexford; dir.: DeLanna Studi, Sep 6-22 (Juneau), Oct 11-20 (Anchorage) Full Contact, Ariela Estrada; Dec 6-22 (Juneau) The Thanksgiving Play, Larissa FastHorse; Feb 28-Mar 16, 2025 (Juneau), Apr 4-13, 2025 (Anchorage) Dial M f
AMERICAN THEATRE65 min read
Salesman 之死
Salesman 之死 had its world premiere at the Connelly Theater in New York City on October 10, 2023, produced by Yangtze Repertory Theatre (Chongren Fan 范崇人, artistic director; Sally Shen 申羽, executive director; Yining Cao, producing associate) in associ
AMERICAN THEATRE8 min read
Building a SENSORY-INCLUSIVE Future
Every time the disabled dance ensemble Kinetic Light wraps up a production, they leave a wave of change in their wake. That is always their plan. Before the ensemble agrees to perform at a venue, they talk access. The venue must have or establish acc
AMERICAN THEATRE9 min read
How DoYou MANAGE?
In November 2022, Lisa Smith was weighing whether to continue stage managing or to scale up her part-time job at a gardening center into a full-time gig. She’d been stage managing in the Twin Cities for 20 years, 15 of those as a member of Actors’ Eq
AMERICAN THEATRE7 min read
Jeremy Tiang: Translation And Transformation
Over the summer, Jeremy Tiang spoke with Shayok Misha Chowdhury, whose play Public Obscenities was a multilingual Off-Broadway hit in 2023, about the development of Salesman 之死. MISHA: Can you tell me a bit about how this piece came to be? JEREMY: M
AMERICAN THEATRE1 min read
From the Archives
Justine Bateman in Frank Wedekind’s “Lulu” at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, directed by Sharon Ott from a translation by Roger Downey, in the fall of 1989. (Photo by Ken Freidman)/. Director Jerry Zaks and playwright Christopher Durang on the set of “B
AMERICAN THEATRE4 min read
We Can WORK IT OUT
Scenic design is not just visual but tactile, and written descriptions are no match for photo or video documentation. Accordingly, books about design sometimes lack the energy that sparks from seeing the art itself. Two new books on designers and pr
AMERICAN THEATRE1 min read
Contributors
(SHE/HER) is now a theatre professor at Ohio’s Bowling Green University, but she started out as a stage manager at Minneapolis’s Theater Mu in the late ’90s. Her academic research has since focused on stage management, gender, and invisible labor. La
AMERICAN THEATRE2 min read
Remembrance As Resistance
At first, even playwright Neena Beber was a bit skeptical. After all, the 60-page journal of Rutka Laskier, a 14-year-old Jewish girl living in Poland in 1943, might not seem like the ideal subject for musical theatre. But after hearing the music com
AMERICAN THEATRE2 min read
Perfect Prop Pie
The musical Waitress charmed Broadway audiences in its 2016-21 premiere run. Now regional theatres are dipping their spoons for a taste. The story of Jenna, a young woman stuck in a bad marriage and a deadend job at a small-town diner who finds solac
AMERICAN THEATRE1 min read
Top 10 * MOST-PRODUCED PLAYS of the 2024-25 SEASON
(*11 DUE TO TIES) What the Constitution Means to Me  by Heidi Schreck (16 PRODUCTIONS) Fat Ham by James Ijames (14) King James by Rajiv Joseph (14) Primary Trust  by Eboni Booth (13) Jersey Boys by Marshall Brickman & Rick Elice (book), Bob Gaudio (m
AMERICAN THEATRE10 min read
The UNDISCOVERED Country
In a large, adobe-clad art gallery in the heart of Santa Fe, N.M.’s historic district, I walk into a cluttered, industrial-looking room and intrude on an argument between Hamlet and Horatio. I slip into one of a handful of flimsy plastic chairs strew
AMERICAN THEATRE7 min read
Tales From BEHIND the Scenes
Theatre magic isn’t just onstage. It can be found in every corner of the operation, from the bustling box office to the resourceful props department. In the stories of five front-of-house and behind-the-scenes stars, we’re reminded that sometimes the
AMERICAN THEATRE2 min read
Eddie And ‘Carol’
No ghosts disrupt his sleep to show him the error of his ways, but Eddie—a semi-successful regional theatre actor appearing in various roles in A Christmas Carol over successive years—travels through time and, in effect, receives messages from his p
AMERICAN THEATRE3 min read
From the Executive Office
In our industry, we spend a lot of time thinking about the now. The urgency of scarce funding, political whims, and butts in seats often does not allow for much dreaming. However, with this future-focused issue, I invite you all to dream of a brighte
AMERICAN THEATRE12 min read
The Other Side of SUMMER
Snakes on the sidewalk. No, it’s not a new Samuel L. Jackson movie. The snakes are real, and are just one of the seemingly endless challenges facing summer theatre companies and festivals as they struggle toward recovery after 2020. Snakes—and skunks
AMERICAN THEATRE4 min read
The Lasting Change WE NEED
In their seminal anthology, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, INCITE, a network of radical feminists of color, defines the nonprofit industrial complex as a system of relationships among the state (local and
AMERICAN THEATRE4 min read
Start With JUSTICE
In the mid-20th century, John McGrath was a screenwriter and playwright working with England’s Royal Court Theatre, which enjoyed a reputation for staging “dangerous” and “vital” works, often about that great mass of people known as the working class
AMERICAN THEATRE3 min read
From the Editor
One way to think of theatre is as a living bridge between the past and the present: It is by definition always happening right now, but it has been rehearsed, constructed, premeditated, with words and actions that were scripted anywhere from weeks to
AMERICAN THEATRE7 min read
Luis Alfaro: The Joy Of Not Knowing
Luis Alfaro’s play The Travelers tells the stories of six inter-dependent Carthusian brothers at a crumbling monastery in central California. Here Luis speaks to longtime collaborator Sean San José, artistic director of Campo Santo and now the Magic
AMERICAN THEATRE4 min read
Engineering an ARTISTIC SCIENTIFIC METHOD
I have always been interested in new ways of thinking about the world around us. In an Elinor Fuchs Visit to a Small Planet kind of way, I have always put the world in front of me and tried my best to figure out how to shape it so that it tells the s
AMERICAN THEATRE2 min read
Kecia Lewis
FIRST THEATRICAL MEMORY? Being told that I was cast in Dreamgirls right after I auditioned for Michael Bennett and Michael Peters in June 1984. They were looking for the person who would understudy Effie in the company. I was 18 years old. LAST MEMOR
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