By AARON KRAUSE WEST PALM BEACH — What’s a casket doing in poetess Emily Dickinson’s bedroom on a cold, snowy night in January, 1864 Amherst, Mass.? And why is it empty – or is it? You need only look on Palm Beach Dramaworks’ stage to receive the answer. There, along with Dickinson, stands Edgar Allan […]
By AARON KRAUSE MIAMI — The people who birthed us can seem the most familiar and foreign individuals…at the same time. But what if you could make better sense of this and more with a special ability you possess? If you’re someone with cartoonist Alison Bechdel’s talent, you’re lucky in that way. Art’s power to […]
By AARON KRAUSE Playwright Lauren Gunderson is officially the first repeat winner of a prestigious award from a group of theater critics. Four years after she received a top award from the American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) for her play I and You, the writer recently won the same honor. This time, Gunderson’s play, The […]
GLENN LONEY, a Renaissance man of arts journalism who interviewed hundreds of major artists of the 20th Century around the world and across genres, died April 16, at his home in New York City at age 89 after battling brain and lung cancer for a year. His lifetime as a critic and feature writer spanned […]
By ROY BERKO George Bernard Shaw’s views on religion may be summarized by his statement, “People believe anything that amuses them, gratifies them, or promises some sort of profit.” He showcased his anti-organized religion and doubt of God in his The Adventures of a Black Girl in Her Search for God,” a novella he wrote […]
By ROY BERKO Stephen Karam is one of a new breed of contemporary American playwrights. His The Humans, the Tony Award-winning Best Play of 2016 (and a Pulitzer Prize finalist) is now on stage at the Connor Palace Theatre. The young Lebanese-Irish-American writes plays about the human experience that should not be as funny as they […]
By AARON KRAUSE WILTON MANORS, Fla. — In a way, The Radicalization of Rolfe is to The Sound of Music as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is to Hamlet. Consider: In Rosencrantz and Radicalization, the playwrights imagine what minor characters might be talking and thinking about when we don’t see or hear them in the […]
By HERBERT SIMPSON It’s only a few months before the 26th anniversary of the first American appearance of Edward Albee’s masterpiece, Three Tall Women, yet we’ve seen surprisingly few revivals. It’s admittedly difficult to perform, but hundreds of our high schools have performed the extremely demanding constant dance numbers of A Chorus Line without even one cast member […]
By ROY BERKO Noted for her witty and compassionate prose, Paula Vogel, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Oldest Profession, is now on stage at convergence-continuum. She writes with warmth about subjects which are often the object of repulsion. In probably her best play, How I Learned to Drive, which was recently staged at Cleveland Play […]