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      Competition: Win Tickets for My Soulmate’s Husband’s Soulmate

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      The Old Red Lion Theatre, 20 & 21 March

      Southampton-based new writing theatre company Mudlarks Theatre are touring their production My Soulmate’s Husband’s Soulmate to London, Tetbury and Bristol, having already played in Bath recently. And the lovely company are giving you the chance to win a pair of tickets for either of its London dates next week.

      What’s it all about?

      [embedded content]

      One day the world wakes up just knowing that soulmates exist. Not only that, but the lucky ones also know exactly where to find theirs.

      Erin and Adrian are happily married when Johan arrives on their doorstep. He is Erin’s soulmate. Neither Adrian or Erin know quite what to do with him.

      The three depart on a road trip to find Adrian’s soulmate – the trouble is: he’s not quite sure where to start.

      An upbeat but bittersweet black comedy about fate, romance and the ways we’re taught to think about love.

      How do I enter the competition?

      There are four ways to enter, and the great news is you can enter via all four if you want. All you need to do is follow the below instructions. For entires via Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, don’t forget to tag someone in who would make an ideal soulmate (they don’t have to be your perfect soulmate, just someone nice).

      Email us at competitions@everything-theatre.co.uk with “My perfect soulmate is” in the subject lineShare our Facebook post which you can find on our page here and comment below the original post “My perfect soulmate is” and tag a friend.Quote tweet this Twitter post with the phrase “My perfect soulmate is” and tag a friend.Like this Instagram post and comment “My perfect soulmate is” and tag a friend.

      Where is the show playing, and how can I buy tickets?

      20 & 21 March: The Old Red Lion Theatre Book here. Tickets are just £13 (£11.50 concessions).1 April: Tetbury Goods Shed. Tickets are just £10 from here. 12 & 13 April: Bristol’s Alma Tavern and Theatre. Tickets are just £11 from here.

      Terms & Conditions

      The prize is for two tickets to a performance of My Soulmate’s Husband’s Soulmate on either 20 or 21 March 2022. No alternative dates or cash alternative is available.

      Competition closes at 12am (noon) on Thursday 17 March 2022. Winner will be selected at random from all eligible entries, and will be notified by 5pm on the same day. As the show is next weekend, the winner has one day to accept the prize, provide contact details and confirm which date (Sunday or Monday) they wish to attend, otherwise a new winner will be chosen at random.  All additional expenses are the responsibility of the prize winner. Editor’s decision is final. More

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      Interview: Raising his Voice on Stage

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      Akshay Gulati talks about the upcoming tour of The Rise and Fall of Little Voice

      Akshay Gulati may be a fairly new name to many, but you are bound to know his mum, Shobna Gulati, who has been in everything from Coronation Street to Dinnerladies and Doctor Who! Akshay is determined to make us aware of his own career, and his next role as Billy in The Rise and Fall of Little Voice is a big step in achieving that. However, he can’t quite escape his mum yet, as she will be playing Mari in the same play. We thought we’d have a chat with Akshay, and yes, we had to ask about Doctor Who, because some of us are a little fanatical about it!

      Hi Akshay, it’s probably best to get this out of the way from the start; how cool is it having a mum who has been in Doctor Who? Surely the street cred from that alone is all you need?

      Don’t hate me, but I’ve never really been into Dr Who. Ma is always working on exciting projects, and Dr Who is just one in a long list of fantastic credits.

      [Interview paused while we decide if we want to go on after that bombshell]

      So more seriously, what’s it like working with your mum in the play?

      It’s lovely. Ma has always brought me to rehearsal rooms and on set from a very young age, and we’ve always had a close relationship, so working together in this context is easy.

      You starred in a previous adaption of Little Voice at Bolton Octagon; did you play Billy there as well, and did that help with getting the role in this touring production?

      I did indeed play Billy in the 2019 Bolton Octagon production of Little Voice. I try to approach every meeting or audition with the mindset that I’m the best person for the job and it just so happened with this one that I’d also recently performed the play so was pretty qualified (I think) to play the part.

      Is The Rise and Fall of Little Voice a play you were very aware of prior to the Bolton production; have you seen any other staged versions? 

      I’ve been studying acting for a long time so was definitely aware of the play – you can’t do GCSE drama without coming across Jim Cartwright plays. I also saw a brilliant production of Little Voice at the Bolton Octagon in 2012

      Most people will know Ewan McGregor best as Billy, the role he played in the film. How daunting is it to play a part that has such a name attached to it? And have you watched the film to see how McGregor plays it?

      No, I don’t find it daunting at all. Ewan McGregor is a fantastic actor but I feel he and I operate in different lanes at the moment. I’ve never seen the film and wouldn’t want to until after the run is over, as I wouldn’t want to be influenced in any way by someone else’s interpretation of the role.

      What is it like working with actors – including your own mum – with some big credits to their name? Is it the best way to improve and better learn the ropes?

      Learning from experienced professionals on the job is so much fun and I’ve been lucky enough to have met and worked with many brilliant actors in my career so far.

      The play is now 30 years old; do you think it’s such a classic play that it stands the test of time?

      Jim has created such wonderful human characters that are a joy to play and I feel that certain themes in the play are more relevant now than ever.

      The play tours for nearly four months solid; how daunting is that for a young actor? Is it four months living out of a suitcase?

      I’ve never toured before so can’t really say what it’s going to be like, but I’m more excited than anything; really looking forward to playing some theatres that I’ve always dreamed of playing since I was little.

      And finally, have you had the chance to think beyond July yet, and what you might be doing next?

      When the tour is finished I’d love to travel somewhere and finish writing an album I’ve been working on, but otherwise I haven’t given it much thought. It’s still quite a ways away!

      Thanks to Akshay for taking time to chat with us, although we are still reeling from the Doctor Who confession!

      The Rise and Fall of Little Voice opens in Southampton on 23 March, and then tours nationally until 16 July. Further information, including all tour dates, can be found via the below link. More

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      Interview: Two thousand years in one night at Questors

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      Director Richard Gallagher on bringing Loveplay to Questors Theatre

      We’re becoming quite good friends with the team at Questors Theatre now we’ve made their acquaintance. And what a great bunch they are, supporting the local community as well as being a place for students to learn more about theatre. So, we had no hesitation in spending some time chatting to Richard Gallagher, who as well as being a teacher in their academy turns his hand to directing his young charges in their upcoming revival of Moira Buffini‘s Loveplay, first performed in 2001.

      What is it that attracted you to Loveplay?

      Choosing a play for The Questors Student Group (acting students aged 18-30) is always a bit like doing a Rubik’s Cube. My first consideration is ‘Are there enough parts?’ The second ‘Are those parts all good enough to give everybody a fair crack of the whip?’ Plays with large casts are getting fewer and fewer so we frequently – not always – look for multiple-role plays that can be flexible. Loveplay is such a one. Then there are thoughts about artistic merit and ‘bums on seats’: happily, this play suits that as well. Frequently, we have to keep going back to square one, but Buffini’s play attracted me because of the superb writing, the humour, the observation and it has some really excellent parts for our cast to attack.

      The play spans 2,000 years and ten separate moments in that time; how difficult is it to direct a play like this, when your actors are asked to perform such varying roles?

      Our cast have worked extremely hard on varying their roles and finding the movement, vocal and personality differences that make them distinct. The two thousand years thing looked daunting at first but I decided to keep it very simple. There is almost no stage furniture and we are performing in traverse (audience both sides of a sort of ‘corridor’). Ant Griffiths (our Associate Director) and I have been working in conjunction with voice and movement tutors and also with The University of West London to find a shape for the production. In the end, each different era provides us with a neat one-act play and brilliantly drawn characters that kind of ‘act themselves’. It’s been a really rewarding rehearsal period and we haven’t found it difficult at all.

      Are there going to be some frantic costume changes going on as you flick from one scene to the next?

      When I cast the piece, I was very aware of costume changes. Although incredibly quick changes are doable where they first seem impossible, fortunately, there is ample room to change for each actor. Our wardrobe department have provided us with an impressive range of costumes and I am delighted with their, always excellent, work.

      And how easy it is to ensure the time frames are made clear to an audience? Are you going to be using any little tricks to tell us when we are?

      As I said, my motto has been ‘keep it simple’. Thames Valley University students are working on animation, which will be projected. I haven’t seen the results of their labours yet, but I’m confident they will give us something really exciting. The other marker for period is, of course, the varying costume styles.

      What is it that binds all these completely different moments together then? 

      Binding together the scenes is a rape that happens in Scene Two. The actor playing the woman who’s been raped plays other characters that keep hearing the sounds of this woman’s distress. ‘Is it a ghost?’ ‘Is it a reincarnation?’ We never know, but references are frequently made to the fact that this plot of land has changed over the years and ‘it might be haunted’. Overall, the ‘bond’ between different scenes is the human condition: that search for a partner and/or physical gratification that is in the DNA of most of us. Buffini is also at times quite scathing about the way men have treated women over the years. I think the women come off best in the piece, but it’s not a heavy-handed feminist message and she does give us same sex coupling and genuine love. The play builds to this and leaves us with an optimistic message.

      The play is performed by The Questors Student Group; can you tell us a little about that?

      This is the 75th year group of the Questors Academy (as we now call it). Group 75 are waiting in the wings and will be performing their productions next year. I believe it was set up all that time ago to give the then members some training and to expand their technique. Later, it became a unique part-time drama course, working in a similar way to most drama schools but giving people the opportunity to work at evenings and weekends and, therefore, hold a job down during the day. It’s very intensive and time-consuming (obviously), but it pretty much covers everything that any drama school course does. The first and second years can both be done together, but should anybody want to do the first year and leave it there, that is perfectly fine and we hope they still go forward with a range of transferable skills that may or may not lead them into theatrical careers.

      You’re acting tutor for Questors Academy, so are the performers people you have been working with for a while?

      I am the second year tutor. In the case of Group 74, I knew them in their first year but, because of COVID, it’s been a three year timeframe, rather than the usual two. I get to know them all when they’re in the first year but don’t start teaching them till the autumn/winter term, where we do short excerpts from a range of plays, punctuated by workshops. The winter/spring term is taken up with rehearsals for a studio play and then we have a short break before going into our summer production in the Judi Dench Playhouse.

      Are there any performers we should be looking out for as future stars of the stage? Of course, we’d perfectly understand if you didn’t want to single out any one in particular, so maybe, any past students we may have seen?

      One can never predict how students’ careers might unfold. We are not looking to necessarily push people into the profession: some ex-students are quite happy joining The Questors acting company and, of course, some want to go to a full-time drama school; others have, in the past, fallen into TV work, fringe theatre, film etc. I was very proud to see one of my past students in The Mousetrap a year or two ago and do sometimes see people on TV. Other students go into different jobs in theatre or screen such as one great friend of mine who has found her talent for direction and is currently working in the West End as an assistant director for Disney.

      Finally, why should we come and see Loveplay? What is it about the show and the venue that we should all be excited about?

      Loveplay is a beautifully written piece of drama that I found instantly engaging. As rehearsals have progressed, we’ve found more and more in it. It can be enjoyed on a superficial level, sure, but it can also give you something to think about. It’s funny, touching, accurate and unusual. I think it’s going to be a really enjoyable evening for our audiences.

      Thanks to Richard for taking time out from his teaching and directing to chat to us.

      Loveplay is on at Questors Theatre 25 March to 2 April. Further information and bookings via the below: More

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      An Exiled Theater With a Warning for Europe

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      The Belarus Free Theater’s members fled repression at home. The company’s latest show imagines a nightmare future of authoritarian Russian rule.LONDON — When the players of the Belarus Free Theater began working on “Dogs of Europe” three years ago, they thought it was a play about a dystopia.Set in 2049, it imagines the continent cut in half by a wall. On one side sits a Russian superstate, where a dictator has eliminated almost all opposition, and where people cannot speak their native languages or even perform folk dances. On the other side sits a Europe that failed to realize the Russian threat, or stop it from absorbing Belarus, Ukraine, the Baltic States and beyond.Yet at a rehearsal in London last month, the day before Russia invaded Ukraine, the play’s nightmare world didn’t feel so far-fetched.Maryna Yakubovich, an actor in the production, which opens Thursday at the Barbican theater in London, said that rehearsing the play had sometimes felt like a premonition. “It’s, like, ‘Oh my God, it’s started to happen,” she said.Nicolai Khalezin, left, and Natalia Kaliada, founders of the Belarus Free Theater.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesNatalia Kaliada, one of the Belarus Free Theater’s founders, said that when she and her husband, Nicolai Khalezin, decided to stage the play, they thought it would be a “warning shot” about the dangers of undemocratic leaders left unchecked. But planned performances in London and New York in 2020 were postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic. Now that warning shot appears to be too late.As the war in Ukraine enters its third week, the Belarus Free Theater’s performance may seem accidentally timely. But it is only the company’s latest attempt in its 17-year existence to warn about rising authoritarianism in Eastern Europe.The company knows those dangers all too well. Since forming in 2005, it has faced repression in Belarus, which is ruled by President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, who is known as “Europe’s last dictator” in part for his government’s clampdown on opposition and its stifling of free expression. The troupe has long been effectively banned from performing in Belarus, but it continued to do so in secret venues in Minsk, the capital, even after Kaliada and Khalezin were forced into exile more than a decade ago. The couple settled in London — where they developed close ties to theaters including the Young Vic and the Almeida — but continued rehearsing with actors in Belarus via Skype.Those clandestine shows, in venues including a converted car garage that once belonged to the American Embassy, also won the troupe high-profile supporters in the United States. In 2015, The New York Times’s chief theater critic, Ben Brantley, visited the company in Minsk, and praised its “spirit of defiant, exultant fraternity” adding that this was something “you rarely find among the young these days in money-driven, shockproof Manhattan.”A rehearsal of “Dogs of Europe” in London this month.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesNow, even that window to perform in Minsk has closed. The theater’s entire 16-member acting troupe fled Belarus last year to avoid potential jail time for opposing Lukashenko’s regime.The Belarus Free Theater was now homeless, Kaliada said. “We are refugees.”She added that she had hoped its members would be granted asylum in Britain, so they could set up a refugee-led theater there, but the process can take years and asylum applicants are almost always banned from working. After its four-performance run at the Barbican, the company would most likely set up base in Warsaw, a city with numerous refugees from both Belarus and Ukraine, Kaliada said, but added that a final decision had not yet been made.The company’s finances are precarious, Kaliada said, though she had a clear vision for the future. As well as finding a performance space, the company would establish a school where its members could give acting classes to refugee children, she said. All of its future plays would be live-streamed back to Belarus, so the company would keep reaching people there.“It’s a pretty tough time,” Kaliada said. “We’re trying to solve many issues at once.”The company’s experiences over the past two years show how quickly fortunes can change in Eastern Europe. In August 2020, Belarus — a country of some nine million people — looked on the verge of a turning point after Lukashenko declared victory in a vote widely dismissed as fraudulent, leading to mass street protests. It was a “beautiful, powerful,” moment, Kaliada said: It felt like her country was waking from a bad dream, she said.Then a brutal police crackdown against the protesters brought those hopes to an end.Sveta Sugako, left, the Belarus Free Theater’s production manager, and Nadia Brodskaya, its general manager.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesSeveral of the company’s actors were arrested during the period of repression around the election. Sveta Sugako, the company’s production manager, said she spent five days in prison in a tiny cell with 35 other women. None of them were given any food or drinking water for three days, she added. After Sugako refused to sign a confession saying she had taken part in the demonstrations, a police officer grabbed her and choked her, she said.Sugako said she had not wanted to leave Belarus, even after that experience. “I was ready to sit and wait in jail,” she said, but other Belarus Free Theater members persuaded her to go, pointing out that the company had no future if all of its actors were behind bars.Russia-Ukraine War: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 4On the ground. More

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      LeBron Fandom, and the Making of a Friendship in ‘King James’

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      Rajiv Joseph’s new play, which chronicles the bond between two LeBron James fans over 12 years, is having its world premiere at Steppenwolf in Chicago.CHICAGO — When the actor Glenn Davis talks about his new play, “King James,” he gets some variation on this question: “So, are you playing LeBron James?”Not quite.“I’m 5-10,” Davis said, laughing. “He’s 6-9.”And there’s also this: James, the basketball superstar who broke hearts in Cleveland when he left to play for Miami 12 years ago, is not the protagonist of Rajiv Joseph’s “King James.” Rather, the play, which is having its world premiere at Steppenwolf Theater Company here, tracks the friendship between two young men in Cleveland, Shawn (played by Davis) and Matt (Chris Perfetti of “Abbott Elementary”), over a dozen years.Told in four quarters that span James’s rookie season to his championship season with Cleveland in 2016, “King James,” directed by Kenny Leon, explores how fandom can create a lifelong connection between two people who otherwise have little in common.“Rajiv’s first draft had a lot of basketball in it,” said Davis, 40, a longtime friend of Joseph’s and for whom the role of Shawn was written. “But as each new draft came in, the specifics about basketball began to disappear because Rajiv wanted to make sure this play was about friendship.”“Sometimes a love of the game is the only way people who have difficulty expressing their feelings are able to articulate them,” said Rajiv Joseph, the playwright.Lyndon French for The New York TimesKenny Leon is directing his first Steppenwolf production, and said he’s cherishing the opportunity to help develop Joseph’s work.Lyndon French for The New York TimesThe play, which is in previews and will open March 13, was originally slated for Steppenwolf’s 2019-20 season before the pandemic forced its postponement. It now arrives at the same time as several basketball-themed TV projects, including Adam McKay’s HBO mini-series “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty,” about the team led by Earvin “Magic” Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in the 1980s, and the upcoming Apple TV+ documentary mini-series “They Call Me Magic,” about Johnson’s life on and off the court.In “King James,” Joseph uses James’s career as a window to examine the emotional nature of fandom, and how it can facilitate relationships and increased openness among people, particularly young men.“At least in the sort of heteronormative world in which I grew up, it was a struggle for young American men to communicate emotion,” Joseph, 47, said over coffee at Steppenwolf’s Front Bar before a recent rehearsal. “Sometimes a love of the game is the only way people who have difficulty expressing their feelings are able to articulate them.”Growing up in Cleveland in the 1980s and ’90s, Joseph was surrounded by passionate sports fans.“We were a Cleveland family — we watched the Cavs, we watched the Indians, we watched the Browns,” he said. “And all of our moods fluctuated accordingly.”In the play, LeBron James’s infamous “Decision” announcement looms large for two fans of the Cavaliers.Lyndon French for The New York TimesHe began writing “King James” in the summer of 2017, a year after James had led the Cavaliers to the championship, making them the first Cleveland team to win a major championship in 52 years. He drew from his experience as a Cleveland native inundated with the reactions of friends and family to “The Decision” — a live prime-time special in 2010 in which James, a free agent after seven seasons with the Cavaliers, announced he was leaving his hometown team to “take my talents to South Beach,” as James infamously put it.“I thought this would be an interesting way of exploring my own relationship with LeBron,” said Joseph, a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2010 for his play “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo.” (He previously collaborated with Davis on that production, which ran on Broadway in 2011.) “This play is a sort of alchemy of stories I’ve heard, conversations I’ve had with people and the general sense of being a young person in Cleveland Heights and those heightened emotions that come out when you start arguing about sports.”The cast and creative team of “King James” had widely varying basketball knowledge — and loyalties. Davis, who was a high school basketball player in the Chicago area but gave up the sport to pursue a theater career, is a lifelong Bulls fan. Leon, who grew up in Florida, has been a Los Angeles Lakers fan for 35 years. Perfetti, 33, who is from upstate New York, grew up in a home “where there was always some sports game on television,” but he didn’t begin following basketball seriously until about six months ago.They watched James’s announcement together — which was Perfetti’s first time seeing it. But, for Joseph and Davis, the special was a reminder of a milestone moment in the basketball world, one in which every fan remembers where they were and what they were doing when they found out.“It was traumatic,” Joseph said. “But when you watch LeBron from then, you realize he was such a different person than he is now — like we all are. If any of us look back at when we were 25, I bet we’d kind of wince at some of the things we did and said.”“Rajiv reminds me of August,” Leon (above left, with Joseph) said, referring to August Wilson. “Even if I’m hating a moment, he can embrace that and go down the hall and rewrite it.”Lyndon French for The New York TimesThis is Leon’s first time directing at the Steppenwolf Theater. When he was contacted last October, Leon, a Tony-winning director whose most recent Broadway production was “A Soldier’s Play” in 2020, already had about a half-dozen projects in the works, including upcoming Broadway productions of Adrienne Kennedy’s “The Ohio State Murders,” starring Audra McDonald, and a revival of “Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death,” Melvin Van Peebles’s 1971 musical. (Leon, 66, is also the co-founder and artistic director emeritus of True Colors Theater Company, which is based in Atlanta.)But he said he jumped at the chance to oversee the production after its previous director, Anna D. Shapiro, resigned as the Steppenwolf’s artistic director in August. (Davis and Audrey Francis, both Steppenwolf ensemble members, replaced Shapiro as artistic directors.)“You don’t get a lot of opportunities to work with a living playwright on a new play that you think is beautiful and will have a great life,” Leon said as he nursed a cocktail after a rehearsal late last month. “The last time was when I worked with August Wilson on his last play, “Radio Golf,” leading up to the Broadway production [which opened in 2007].”The value of having Joseph in the room for rehearsals, Leon said, was that if he didn’t understand a character’s motivations for doing something, he could ask.“A lot of Rajiv reminds me of August,” Leon said. “I can tell him what I feel. Even if I’m hating a moment, he can embrace that and go down the hall and rewrite it.”And there were plenty of nips, tweaks and tucks to the script in the month leading up to the first performance. It was especially helpful, Joseph said, to have Perfetti’s perspective as an N.B.A. outsider in a play with some deeply insider references. (The Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert’s use of Comic Sans font in his letter to Cleveland fans after James’s departure, in which he lambasted James for his “disloyalty,” gets a shout.)“There’s lots of lines in the play where he was like, ‘Why am I saying this?’,” Joseph said of Perfetti. “And some of those lines were cut because of that.”“King James” plays out in four quarters, from LeBron James’s rookie year to his championship season with Cleveland in 2016. After Chicago, the play will have a run in Los Angeles.Lyndon French for The New York TimesBut audience members don’t need to be basketball fans to understand the larger points. The play’s first quarter, for instance, ends with Matt and Shawn — who to that point had been strangers — making plans to attend a season of Cavaliers games together. The action then picks up six and a half years later, when the two men are best friends.“With my best friend, the first and second quarter in our relationship feels like it went by that quickly,” Davis said. “That’s how it happens, you know?”Though Matt is white and Shawn is Black, Joseph decided not to make race a focal point of the show — at least, not right away. It eventually factors into their reactions to James’s return to Cleveland in the third quarter, but Joseph said that, having grown up in the diverse suburb of Cleveland Heights — where the play takes place — it “just made sense to me, before I even knew what the play would be about, that it would be a Black guy and a white guy.”“I didn’t anticipate any kind of racial tension in the play,” he said. “But the more I thought about what I was writing about, it just comes out and you allow for the story that wants to be told.”Following its five-week run here, “King James,” commissioned by Steppenwolf and the Center Theater Group of Los Angeles, will transfer to the Mark Taper Forum there in June, with Davis and Perfetti reprising their roles, and Leon again as director. Both Leon and Joseph are hoping for an eventual Broadway transfer, too.It will be special, everyone involved agrees, to present the show in the city where James currently plays. But Leon said it’s important to remember that “80 percent of the audience will be the same,” referring to the audience members who will not be passionate fans of the local team. “We’re going to try to strike those universal chords,” he said. “That’s what makes the play work. Somebody has to be able to say ‘Oh, that’s how I treat my friend’ or ‘That’s how it was when I didn’t see my mother for 10 years.’”Joseph, who has never met James, said he would be “thrilled” if James were to see the show during its Los Angeles run, which will coincide with the N.B.A. finals.“But, on the other hand, I hope he can’t come because he’s still playing,” he said. More

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      Dominique Morisseau Asks: ‘What Does Freedom Look Like Now?’

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      Her new play, “Confederates,” straddles two eras, exploring what liberation means to a present-day academic and an enslaved woman in the 1860s.In 2016, Penumbra Theater and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival commissioned Dominique Morisseau to write a play as part of the American Revolutions: the United States History Cycle. The remit: to create a work about the Black experience of the Civil War.Morisseau had one question: “What were the Black women doing?”“Confederates,” her new play at the Signature Theater, is one answer. Toggling between the present day and the 1860s, the play — now in previews, with a premiere on March 27 — follows Sandra, a superstar academic played by Michelle Wilson, and Sara (Kristolyn Lloyd), an enslaved woman who spies for the Union Army. While the title evokes the Confederacy, it also teases a bond between the two women.“This is what it means to be at this institution,” Sandra says. “To know deep in your core that there will never be justice for you here.”From left: Andrea Patterson, Kristolyn Lloyd and Elijah Jones in “Confederates,” opening March 27 at the Signature Theater in Manhattan.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSara echoes her: “This what it means to be in a peculiar institution. Under its boot, everybody yo’ enemy.”Even as “Confederates” evokes dramatic works as varied as Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s postmodern drama “An Octoroon,” Adrienne Kennedy’s devastating tragedy “The Ohio State Murders” and David Mamet’s academic two-hander “Oleanna,” Morisseau renders each scene in her distinctive empathetic, tragicomic style.Rather than focusing on oppression, the play explores Black women’s agency and the different forms that liberation can take from one era to the next.“Getting free in the past, it’s just getting free,” Morisseau said. “Like, you’re literally in bondage. Getting free in the present is a very different thing. What does freedom look like now?”Morisseau was speaking from an apartment in Midtown Manhattan, near both the Signature and Broadway’s Samuel J. Friedman Theater, where her play “Skeleton Crew,” part of a trilogy of works set in her native Detroit, recently wrapped. Her 15-month-old son napped in the next room.During a 90-minute video call, she discussed “Confederates,” which will also be presented at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in August, as well as microaggressions, macroaggressions and what empowerment looks like for her. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.In “Confederates,” Sandra and Sara are living about 160 years apart. What joins them?They’re united in the history of Black women fighting for freedom. They’re united in being the most socially expendable.Sandra, the professor, is subject to frequent microaggressions. For Sara, the enslaved woman, the danger is physical and more overt. Do you understand these threats as related?The kind of racism that Sara experiences — you could be hanged, you could be dragged, you could be murdered — that overt racism is not most people’s experience of racism. There is the kind of racism that breaks the body, that attacks the body. Then there’s the other kind that kills the spirit. The one I engage with the most often is the latter. But the micro always leads to the macro. Microaggressions lead into aggressive actions.Eventually, all of these are harmful and deadly.In your research, did you find many examples of Black women spying for the Union?I did not find lots of examples. I would find little pieces. Those kinds of stories are under-told. But they tell me that we were not passive. We were never passive.Brandon J. Dirden and Phylicia Rashad in Morisseau’s “Skeleton Crew,” whose run just ended at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesYou have written plays set in the 1940s, the 1950s, the 1960s, the ’00s. Did you know that you would eventually write about the 1860s?I never thought about it, to be honest. When I was approached to specifically write about this era, I said to myself, I don’t want to just write about slavery. That’s not what I’m interested in. I am, however, interested in Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, the phrase coined by Dr. Joy DeGruy, which is the impact of being descendants of the enslaved and the traumas that have happened since, without treatment or healing.When you accepted the commission, were there certain stories or stereotypes that you wanted to avoid?I didn’t want to show defeat or agreement with the enslaved culture. There is no agreement.As an undergraduate, did you experience institutional racism?My experience at school taught me that no one’s here to protect me. There’s no agency for me here. I’m going to have to do for me in school, if I want to not be squashed, if I want to see myself as an artist.Theater can also be a racist space. I remember an essay you wrote in 2015 about white privilege, with the headline: “Why I Almost Slapped a Fellow Theater Patron, and What That Says About Our Theaters.” Has theater changed since then?I have actively worked to shift that culture at least around my own work. I have a Playwright’s Rules of Engagement insert that I put inside the program of every show that I do. Because I was policed for my own laughter. [The insert includes instructions such as, “You are allowed to laugh audibly” and “This can be church for some of us, and testifying is allowed.”]I have seen attempts to diversify boards, to have a wider outreach to donors. Then there’s the bottom-up approach: I would like to see more artists taking more agency over themselves and their art. There’s a culture of silence that has been perpetuated. There’s this feeling of expendability that artists get. Like, you cannot speak up, because you will then not have jobs anymore. And that’s crazy.“There are young artists looking at me, watching me. I’m trying to bring up those artists,” Morisseau said, referring to efforts she’s made to counter harmful behavior in the industry.Lanna Apisukh for The New York TimesLate last year, you spoke up. You pulled your play “Paradise Blue” from the Geffen Playhouse, saying that Black women who worked on the show had been “verbally abused and diminished.” What empowered you to do that?I’ve always been an activist. I just inherently have not ever been OK with things that aren’t right. What made me feel even more empowered in this moment is that I am now visible. And there are young artists looking at me, watching me. I’m trying to bring up those artists. So there is not a chance in hell that I can watch harmful behavior happen and be unaccountable. I will not write about Black women being harmed and learning to take agency for themselves — that’s what “Paradise Blue” is about — I’m not going to have that onstage and the opposite happening for them offstage.I’m not trying to create a culture of people pulling their plays. This is one of the hardest decisions you should have to make as a playwright. It was brutal. It was exhausting for me. I never want to have to do that again.Before the pandemic you made your Broadway debut, writing the book for “Ain’t Too Proud.” Did that change anything for you?“Ain’t Too Proud” happened, a MacArthur happened, quite a few things happened, right at the same time. It’s brought more faith about me as an artist from institutions. I don’t know if I’m a safe bet. I don’t think I’m a safe bet. But I’m worthy of a bet in general. I’m enough of an interesting voice. I’m definitely asked to write more musicals.And what did it mean to have “Skeleton Crew” move to Broadway?With Broadway comes more resources behind your work. I remember when I first saw “Ain’t Too Proud” staged, I was like, everybody deserves all those resources behind their imaginations, just once in their life. To be able to get it twice in my life is amazing.“Skeleton Crew” will always be one of my favorites because I know where it came from. I know where I was when I wrote it and I know who I wrote it for. The biggest thing for me, as a Detroiter, is to make Detroit visible. We had Detroit night on Broadway. It was like a family reunion up in there. It was the most Detroit behavior I’ve ever seen on Broadway. It was epic. More

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      ‘This Space Between Us’ Review: A Do-Gooder Faces a Chorus of Resistance

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      Peter Gil-Sheridan’s comedy for Keen Company raises a range of topical issues but fails to cover new ground.Liberals are often criticized for their hand-wringing and failure to walk the walk. But the progressive lawyer at the center of Peter Gil-Sheridan’s “This Space Between Us” intends to lead a life of purpose. “Maybe we could all stand to feel a little more guilty,” he says, without telling us exactly why.His career move from cushy corporate job to international aid work, which rattles his loved ones, could be a compelling, if familiar, indictment of modern-day complacency. But there is neither urgency nor bite in the fallout of his decision, which the playwright uses as a jumping-off point for tired topical debates that rarely get off the ground.“This Space Between Us,” an occasionally amusing but stalled new comedy that opened on Wednesday night at Theater Row, begins, ironically enough, at the races, where Jamie (Ryan Garbayo) delivers the news to his family. His dad (Anthony Ruiz), a conservative Cuban immigrant whose small business recently went bankrupt, doesn’t get how Jamie could give up easy money. Neither does his mom (Joyce Cohen), who says that if they fall on hard times she and her husband may have to work at Home Depot to get by without his help. His boyfriend, Ted (Tommy Heleringer), and his best friend Gillian (Alex Chester) selfishly don’t want to lose him when he is ultimately relocated to Nairobi. His aunt Pat (Glynis Bell), both supportive and wise, tells him to go with God (she’s a nun).Subsequent scenes offer different contexts for clashing opinions, mostly cross-generational, about what people are allowed to say these days and why others might be offended. The play’s title largely seems to refer to the gap in understanding that widens as history barrels forward and people scramble to keep up.“I’m from another time,” Jamie’s father says as he tinkers with his broken watch. “Why doesn’t anyone know how to laugh anymore?”Various points of view collide but these moments fail to generate tension or momentum. Ted is hospitalized with a bad cold, seemingly for the sake of revealing to Jamie’s family that Ted is H.I.V. positive, and explaining what it means that his viral load is undetectable. Jamie and Gillian, who are both mixed race, briefly argue about what it means to pass as white but not identify with white culture. Sister Pat is made to answer for the homophobia of the Roman Catholic Church.All the while, Jamie’s motivation for changing careers doesn’t seem to get much deeper than his vague desire to do good. He even goes as far as to ask, in so many words, how anyone could throw a party when there are people starving in Africa, the continent often serving here as a stand-in for global misfortunes.This Keen Company production, directed by its artistic director, Jonathan Silverstein, is pleasantly modest but almost too straightforward. Though the furniture changes, one hulking constant is a racetrack scoreboard that spans the back of the stage, limiting an already tight playing space with a too obvious metaphor. (The set design is by Steven Kemp.) Between scenes, chyrons on the scoreboard display an assortment of headlines — a natural disaster in Bangladesh, racist remarks from Mitch McConnell — that contribute to the generalized atmosphere of bad news.The theater sporadically goes dark as Jamie is spotlighted mid-action, looking out at the audience to the sound of a heart beating (lighting design is by Daisy Long, sound by Luqman Brown). It’s a play for drama and connection, for the audience to identify with someone who’s voiced a general dissatisfaction with the status quo.But real-world problems, overwhelming as they may be, have stakes, specificity and individual flavor. Bridging the space between us takes not just naming, but inhabiting them.This Space Between UsThrough April 2 at Theater Row, Manhattan; bfany.org. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. More

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      Onstage, the French Election Is a Landslide Win for Cynicism

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      As the presidential vote approaches, theaters and comedy venues are addressing the campaign. Many shows reach a similar conclusion: Don’t trust politicians.PARIS — If elections are spectacles, France’s presidential campaign, caught between voter apathy and war in Europe, has so far struggled to connect with its audience. Yet on French stages, a number of artists are making hay out of the upcoming vote — and the picture is hardly flattering.Across comedy and drama, performers and directors of varied backgrounds seem to agree on one thing: The country’s politicians are uniformly terrible and their performances a little too close to theater to be trusted.Not that the political calendar is headline material in every playhouse. While many prestigious French theaters that receive public funding pride themselves on staging political works, they tend to refer to current events only obliquely. For highbrow theatergoers here, a lack of intellectual distance suggests a lack of taste. Shows actually addressing the presidential campaign are mostly found elsewhere, in smaller venues that rely on box-office revenues.Two of them, the Café de la Gare and the Théâtre des Deux Ânes, are comedy venues. On the nights I attended, they drew large, albeit different, crowds. While visitors to the Café de la Gare skewed younger, the silver-haired audience at the Théâtre des Deux Ânes, in the Pigalle district of Paris, appeared to include many regulars, who cheered for several comedians as soon as they appeared onstage.The jokes were dissimilar, too. At the Deux Ânes, the show “Elect Us” strings together five comic and musical acts, ranging from witty (Florence Brunold’s parody of a history lesson, with “Macron the First” as a Jupiterian king) to downright misogynistic. Every female politician mentioned throughout the performance was described as either an airhead or physically unattractive. Some of their male peers, on the other hand, were more gratifyingly characterized as “too smart” (Macron) or as a Casanova (the far-right candidate Éric Zemmour).Guillaume Meurice in “Meurice 2022” at the Café de la Gare.MagaliThe shows on offer at the Café de la Gare, on the other hand, tried to turn these tropes on their head. “We’ve Reached That Point!,” written by Jérémy Manesse and directed by Odile Huleux, envisions a television debate between two fictional contenders during the next presidential election, in 2027. One of them is a woman, well played by the deadpan Florence Savignat, who maintains a purposely bland persona to avoid personal attacks. In another show at the venue, “Meurice 2022,” the well-known comic Guillaume Meurice — a daily presence on a popular radio station, France Inter — plays a presidential candidate whose patronizing rhetoric is ultimately undermined by the feminist manager in charge of running his events, played by Julie Duquenoy.Still, despite their contrasting values, all these shows portray the French political class as far removed from the audience and its concerns. The historical left-right divide, which has been in flux since Macron won office as a centrist and far-right figures started gaining ground, often gave way onstage to an “us versus them” dynamic, with acts that riffed on the public’s perceived disdain for every presidential candidate.Meurice’s cartoonishly out-of-touch character, for instance, isn’t affiliated with any party. One recurring gag is that every time he mentions another politician, he describes that person as “a personal friend,” from far-left figures to Macron and Zemmour — the implication being that they all belong to the same social group. By way of parody, “Meurice 2022” also offers empty slogans like “The future is already tomorrow” and “Winning now.”From a comedy perspective, it works. Yet “Meurice 2022” speaks to a larger malaise in the country, which “We’ve Reached That Point!” makes even more explicit. The plot revolves around the improbable notion that the two 2027 contenders, unbeknown to them, have been given a newly discovered truth serum before the start of their live debate. When the serum kicks in, suddenly they find themselves blurting out their real feelings about the hot issues of the campaign.Manesse, a shrewd writer, inserts several coups de théâtre along the way, which makes for a genuinely entertaining play. Yet the premise remains that no politician could possibly be telling the truth.From left, Emmanuel Dechartre, Alexandra Ansidei, Christophe Barbier and Adrien Melin in “Elysée” at the Petit Montparnasse theater.Fabienne RappeneauWhen politicians are portrayed as liars, the age-old comparison between politics and theater is never far away — and in Paris, two plays about former French presidents are also leaning into it. “The Life and Death of J. Chirac, King of the French,” directed by Léo Cohen-Paperman, shows Jacques Chirac, the French head of state from 1995 to 2007, as a deeply theatrical figure, as does “Élysée,” a play about the relationship between Chirac and his predecessor, François Mitterrand, who was elected president in 1981.Audience members looking for policy analysis will be disappointed. “Elysée,” directed by Jean-Claude Idée at the Petit Montparnasse theater, is mostly uninterested in Chirac’s and Mitterrand’s politics. The playwright, Hervé Bentégéat, focuses on what they have in common: a wandering eye, for starters, in some cringe-inducing scenes with the only woman in the cast, and the fact that they are “good comedians.” Cue the unlikely bargain they reportedly struck in 1981 to help the left-wing Mitterrand get elected — a cynical long-term calculation for Chirac, a right-wing figure.Julien Campani as Jacques Chirac in “The Life and Death of J. Chirac, King of the French” at the Théâtre de Belleville.Simon Loiseau“The Life and Death of J. Chirac, King of the French,” at the Théâtre de Belleville, is the more compelling show, despite some inconsistencies. It is the first installment in a planned series of presidential portraits, “Eight Kings.” (The president-as-king metaphor has a life of its own in France.) In the opening scene, which manages to be brilliantly funny while recapping Chirac’s life, Julien Campani and Clovis Fouin play overenthusiastic Chirac fans who have created a zany 24-hour theater production about his life. Cohen-Paperman then segues into far more traditional vignettes drawn from Chirac’s youth and career.Campani is impressively convincing in the title role, but “The Life and Death of J. Chirac, King of the French” never really explores what Chirac achieved, or didn’t achieve, as a politician. Instead, it posits politics as a game of chess, with Chirac on the lookout for the next useful move.Learn More About France’s Presidential ElectionCard 1 of 6The campaign begins. More