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Under Aaron Cromie’s creative direction, Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre’s production of LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST captures the playfulness of the Bard’s early comedy in a fluid romp.
View More LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST (Philly Shakes): Cromie finds a feast of language and comedy
You step off the tour bus, the smell of exhaust replaced first with fresh air, then with the sugary smell of grapes. You sit around…
View More The Second Annual One-Minute Play Festival (InterAct): Tipsy on Theater: Wine-tasting 90 plays and a night-out in Philly without a hangover
Daniel Talbott (You Know My Name: A Daniel Talbott Trio) and Kathleen Warnock (Some Are People), two of the playwrights with work in this year’s GayFest!, happen to be old friends and professional colleagues. These two unique personalities interview each other about their participation in Quince Productions’ festival, their writing habits, and a slew of other topics from desserts to dreams.
View More Playwright on Playwright: Two charming people interview one another
In the second of her three-part series on the Walnut Street Theatre, Katelyn Behrman looks at how the Walnut puts together its season of popular productions, and considers the opportunities presented by the second stage and rented facilities.
View More The Walnut Street Theatre: Part 2, Crafting a Popular Season
Phindie will provide more Philly Fringe Festival coverage than any publication in the world! Coverage begins with 15 picks from star Phindie writer Deb Miller.
View More Deb Miller’s 15 Top Picks for the 2014 Philadelphia Fringe Festival
In the first section three-part series, Kathryn Behrman sits down with Walnut artistic director Bernard Havard and other local theater folk to consider the playhouse’s commitment to popular entertainment.
View More The Walnut Street Theatre: Part 1, The People’s Playhouse
Director Patrick Mulcahy takes a modernist approach to the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival’s production of MACBETH, with a 20th-century minimalist aesthetic that compels the audience to focus on the emotions and actions of the characters and the power of the playwright’s language. It’s stark and intense, and also, at times, oddly anachronistic and comical, performed in attire that suggests a peculiar mash-up of wartime Berlin and dance club chic, military and punk.
View More MACBETH (Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival): A Minimalist Vision
A post-modern fusion of Pop art with opera, ANDY: A POPERA, a work-in-progress by the Bearded Ladies Cabaret, explores the enormous fame and legacy of Andy Warhol, with elements of both tragic opera and opera buffa. The synthesis reflects in part the ambiance of Warhol’s Factory in the Sixties.
View More ANDY: A POPERA (The Bearded Ladies Cabaret): The Enigma of Warhol
With WE ARE BANDITS, director Rebecca Wright and Applied Mechanics are working against a brutal opponent: American cynicism.
They’ve turned the third-floor space of Asian Arts Initiative into what looks like a sprawling, minimalist installation piece. Tables, chairs, and little else delineate various spaces throughout the basketball-court-sized venue, including a city square, the apartments of various characters, a rooftop, and a church.
View More WE ARE BANDITS (Applied Mechanics): People like us don’t meet
The Bearded Ladies extend their proverbial 15 minutes of fame this week with the opening of their cabaret residency of ANDY: A POPERA in the…
View More 15 Questions in 15 Minutes with John Jarboe
Zeus has decreed that Muses from Mount Olympus are not allowed to fall in love with mortals – that includes the Muse Clio and a boy from Venice Beach. Therein lies a story of forbidden love, gumption, and sly swipes at certain Hollywood movies — especially XANADU (Universal Pictures, 1980).
View More XANADU (Mazeppa Productions): A campy, aMUSEing musical
Sebastian Cummings has always been a little edgy. A military brat, a black man in the white suburbs, a Jamaican American in African American black society, a gay…
View More Sebastian Cummings talks about LIFE ON THE FRINGE
People’s Light & Theatre Company pairs Itamar Moses’s uber-witty historical farce BACH AT LEIPZIG with the zaniness of director Pete Pryor in a hilarious, intelligent production.
View More BACH AT LEIPZIG (People’s Light): 60-second review
Wednesday, July 16th, The Bearded Ladies and Opera Philadelphia will lay down stakes in the lobby of the Wilma Theatre, and, for two short weeks, perform an hour-long cabaret inspired by the outrageously influential life of Andy Warhol. Featuring original music by Heath Allen.
View More The Bearded Ladies and Opera Philadelphia present Stage 2 in the development of Warhol-inspired ANDY: A Popera
This mighty peculiar story opens with a grown up George looking back at 1929 and singing, “Did ya ever have one of those years?” His parents have one foot in the poorhouse, as their only prosperous relative has just stinted them in his will. When eight-year-old George has the chance to take performance lessons from the surviving member of an old vaudeville act, he shows inexplicable ability beyond his years. Parental hopes for financial resurrection ride on little George singing and dancing his way to Hollywood.
View More HERRINGBONE (Flashpoint Theatre Company): A remarkably strange solo musical, about a boy … with a problem
Greek mythology meets roller-disco in XANADU, a spirited send-up of American pop culture circa 1980, based on the preposterous movie of the same name starring Olivia Newton-John. Mazeppa’s exuberant production of the award-winning musical-comedy (book by Douglas Carter Beane, music and lyrics by Jeff Lynne and John Farrar) delivers an uproarious parody of both disco culture and the cult-classic film.
View More XANADU (Mazeppa Productions): A Flop of a Film, but a Smash of a Show!
While “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,” something is wonderful in the state of Delaware! With its unsurpassed examination of the human condition, profound emotions, and exquisitely beautiful language, HAMLET is considered by many (myself among them) to be the world’s greatest play by the world’s greatest playwright.
View More HAMLET (Delaware Shakespeare Festival): “’Fore God, my lord, well spoken . . .”
Lately I’ve been thinking about that “worthwhile strategy” in regards to making a living as a theatre artist. Too many of my colleagues can’t afford to get sick, and certainly can’t afford to start a family. An interview with Charlotte Ford (revealing she’s stepping away from theater to go back to school for speech pathology) seems to have sparked a vigorous public debate about how difficult it is to make a living as an artist, and what can be done about it.
View More Sustainability and the Artist
The Who’s 1969 concept album TOMMY kicks ass. It’s a real rockists rock album, from the golden age of British rock. The 1975 movie and 1993…
View More See Me, Feel Me: New guys New Cavern rock out THE WHO’S TOMMY
Contrasting the giddy inconstancy of youthful passion with the unconditional love for and the stolid fidelity of a pet dog, THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA—one of the Bard’s earliest works—is a delightful rom-com/bromance (descended from the medieval genre of male friendship literature) that offers the perfect entertainment for a summer audience. And the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival’s production, as directed by the ever-masterful Matt Pfeiffer, strikes the perfect balance between the comedy’s irrepressible fun and playfulness and its more serious message about regret, repentance, forgiveness, and camaraderie.
View More THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA (Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival): Fickle Love and an Irresistible Canine