As SPEAKING IN TONGUES opens, two couples are about to cheat on their partners. Their dialog develops in unison; each pairing uttering the same lines.…
View More Bleak Complexity: SPEAKING IN TONGUES at the Walnut’s Independence on 3
Category: Theater
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One Woman, Many Voices: LET ME DOWN EASY at PTC
There are many voices in this nation’s health care debate, and Anna Deveare Smith could probably act out them all. In LET ME DOWN EASY,…
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Five Technical Things About Ancient Roman Comedic Stages You Were Dying To Know
We know about the plays, at least if we have read them. But how much do we know about ancient stages? We’ve asked PPAA classics…
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BCKSEET Productions’ Losing the Shore
You never expect lighthearted comedy when going to a show by BCKSEET Productions. Argentine prison dramas, biting Edward Albee plays, and a Christmas show depicting Santa…
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Updike’s guide to reviewing
Submit to whatever spell, weak or strong, is being cast. Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his…
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Lessons from Newt Gingrich: or how we in the theatre and dance communities can stop acting like losers and learn to make the nation love us
How often have you heard that performing arts are dying, that we’re a niche market, that you can never make a living off of it,…
View More Lessons from Newt Gingrich: or how we in the theatre and dance communities can stop acting like losers and learn to make the nation love us
It’s The End of the World As We Knew It: New City’s PTERODACTYLS at the Adrienne
PTERODACTYLS takes place in a sterile Main Line living room (set design Cory Palmer), a fitting setting for a work reminiscent of Victorian drawing room…
View More It’s The End of the World As We Knew It: New City’s PTERODACTYLS at the Adrienne
The New and Old of It: Interview with BCKSEET’s Gregory DeCandia
BCKSEET Productions has staged more than thirty plays in their eleven-year history, about half of those in Philadelphia, the city the company has called home…
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California Fresh: New theater company launches in Kensington arts space
The back streets of Kensington may not have much in common with Hollywood
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It’s “theater”
Philadelphia is in the United States, so I’ve decided that theater should be spelled theater, not the English/French theatre. Right.
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THE CRUCIBLE (Tri-County Performing Arts Center)
Like many people, I was introduced to THE CRUCIBLE in a high school English class. The teacher dutifully told us that it was a play…
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LIEUTENANT OF INISHMORE by Theatre Exile at Plays and Players
Playwright Martin McDonagh delivers a powerful political message in the most palatable of pills
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How To Succeed In Comedy With Really Trying: Interview with The Waitstaff’s Sara Carano
For seven years Sara Carano has been a member of The Waitstaff, a Philly-based sketch comedy troupe that has proven to be one of city’s…
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What I learned from GQ this time around
Having been inspired last time around to write one of PPAA’s most popular articles “What Learned From GQ Today,” I thought I might mine the current issue…
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Don’t worry folks, he’s not like that in real life (or so he claims): Interview with Blasted’s John Jezior
Actor John Jezior has become well known to Philadelphia area audiences through his work on Shakespeare productions; he has performed in nearly half of the…
View More Don’t worry folks, he’s not like that in real life (or so he claims): Interview with Blasted’s John Jezior
“Great Expectations” at Curio Theatre
Charles Dickens asked in his will that no memorials be erected to him and so the life-size sculpture of the author in Clarke Park in…
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Sarah Kane’s Controversial Play ‘Blasted’ Comes to Philadelphia’s Luna Theater Company
That playwright Sarah Kane looked on the world as a pretty bleak place was confirmed by her 1999 suicide (at the young age of 28). But her…
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Philly needs an Equity Showcase—sound the horn!
I was producing a Fringe show last year, and I had an Equity actor (Actors’ Equity is the union for theatre actors). No problem, my…
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What the fuck are they teaching our kids? Interview with UArts student Jessica Rodriguez
I’m interested in the growth of The University of the Arts (UArts) and how its graduates have been sticking around and building their performing arts…
View More What the fuck are they teaching our kids? Interview with UArts student Jessica Rodriguez
Can we get Cliff Lee to a play?
Cliff Lee made an appearance at the Philadelphia Auto Show, and it was the top story on the evening news. (Since this is a performing…
View More Can we get Cliff Lee to a play?