By ROY BERKO For the last several years more and more attention has been placed on The Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements, woke language, microaggressions, radical feminism, transgenderism, Critical Race Theory and aggression against Asians. They have become issues for laws, politics, education, media and the arts. After almost two-years of non-live production, the […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) With the opening of The Addams Family musical last week, director Leslie Castay added a new company, the Jefferson Performing Arts Society (JPAS), and a new venue to her repertoire. Castay, a former Broadway performer and cabaret star, had been quite busy directing projects prior to the […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) When Bryan Batt steps on the stage of Le Petit Theatre du Carré as the star of the one-man play Dear Mr. Williams, he is literally living two lifetimes, his own and that of revered playwright and poet Tennessee Williams. Developed and workshopped since its inclusion as […]
By ROY BERKO The death penalty carries the inherent risk of executing an innocent person. Since 1973, more than 186 people who had been sentenced to death have been exonerated. Research by the National Academy of Science indicates that about 4.1% of the people currently on death row are likely to be innocent. The Exonerated, now […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) When it was announced that Ricky Graham would be in the director’s chair for Hello, Dolly! at Rivertown Theaters for the Performing Arts several months ago, there was anticipation this could have been one of the best versions of the Jerry Herman classic to ever grace a […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) With its most recent production of God of Carnage, the Jefferson Performing Arts Society has taken the wraps off Yasmina Reza’s controversial work first seen here at Southern Rep in 2011, less than five years after its original premiere in French in December of 2006. This production […]
By JACK LYONS When it comes to original stories made into movies and TV films about the subject of love and marriage, one would be hard pressed to ignore the angst-filled dramas of the great Swedish filmmaker and writer-director Ingmar Bergman. Bergman brought to the screen his series of reality-based films about the lives of […]