Tag: Lantern Theater Company

Articles and reviews of Philadelphia’s Lantern Theater Company.

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The fault, dear Brutus, Act III: Makoto Hirano interviews Lantern AD Charles McMahon about “Super Racist” Julius Caesar

Christopher Munden May 2, 2014 No Comments

Makoto Hirano asks Lantern artistic director Charles McMahon some tough questions about the “Super Racist” Julius Caesar. And a clearly contrite McMahon does his best to explain the process that lead to the company’s misguided choices.

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The fault, dear Brutus, Act II: Interview with Makoto Hirano about “Super Racist” Julius Caesar

Christopher Munden March 28, 2014 1 Comment

You may have seen the Lantern Theater Company’s JULIUS CAESAR, which recast Shakespeare’s political tragedy in Feudal Japan. You may also have seen the open letter that local playwright and performer Makoto Hirano hand-delivered to The Lantern on “How to Stage Your Show Without Being Super Racist,” which he signed “Makoto Hirano, Dance-theatre artist, actual Japanese person, and actual Samurai descendent,” reposted on Phindie with Hirano’s consent.

View More The fault, dear Brutus, Act II: Interview with Makoto Hirano about “Super Racist” Julius Caesar
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The fault, dear Brutus, is Super Racism: Makoto Hirano Criticizes Lantern’s Julius Caesar

Christopher Munden March 9, 2014 3 Comments

“Will it be in yellow face,” my friend asked when I told him about Lantern Theater Company’s decision to stage Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in feudal Japan, when what the meant was “in kimonos with some Japanese screens and music” seemed somehow culturally tone deaf.

View More The fault, dear Brutus, is Super Racism: Makoto Hirano Criticizes Lantern’s Julius Caesar
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JULIUS CAESAR (Lantern): Political persuasion in feudal Japan

Christopher Munden February 15, 2014 5 Comments

If William Shakespeare was alive today he’d be a …. well, he’d probably be a poet and playwright, but he’d also make a damn good political speechwriter. The crux of his JULIUS CAESAR, now in an accessible production by Lantern Theater Company, comes in a speech following the title character’s assassination.

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Joe Guzmán and Forrest McClendon in THE TRAGEDY OF JULIUS CAESAR at the Lantern, with set design by Meghan Jones (Photo credit: Mark Garvin)
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On the Universality of Shakespeare: Roman History through a Shoji Screen in the Lantern’s THE TRAGEDY OF JULIUS CAESAR

Debra Miller February 13, 2014 1 Comment

Director Charles McMahon, founding artistic director of the Lantern Theater Company, asserts that all of Shakespeare’s plays, whenever or wherever they’re set, are in fact observations about contemporary England. By shifting the locales to places outside of his homeland.

View More On the Universality of Shakespeare: Roman History through a Shoji Screen in the Lantern’s THE TRAGEDY OF JULIUS CAESAR
Charlie DelMarcelle, Geneviève Perrier, Amy Smith, and Doug Hara in the Lantern’s A CHILD’S CHRISTMAS IN WALES (Photo credit: Mark Garvin)
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A CHILD’S CHRISTMAS IN WALES (Lantern): Idyllic visions of a holiday past

Debra Miller December 12, 2013 No Comments

Lantern Theater Company’s world premiere adaptation of A CHILD’S CHRISTMAS IN WALES by Charles McMahon and Sebastienne Mundheim, the inventive “interdisciplinary performance-maker” who designed the production and also directs, captures all the warmth, nostalgia, and childlike wonder of the original, employing live actors, puppets, miniature houses, plastic-bag clouds, and exhilarating snow flurries to transform Thomas’s descriptive language and idealized memories into an enchanting theatrical vision.

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