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      Being Emily in ‘Our Town’: Readers Share Why the Role Mattered

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBeing Emily in ‘Our Town’: Readers Share Why the Role MatteredEmbodying the Thornton Wilder character “helped heal something inside me that I hadn’t even realized had been broken,” says one.Barbara Andres, right, as Emily in a production of “Our Town” in which the young lovers were played by older actors.Credit…Heidi GrunerFeb. 17, 2021Prompted by the publication of “Another Day’s Begun: Thornton Wilder’s ‘Our Town’ in the 21st Century,” Laura Collins-Hughes interviewed eight actors who’ve portrayed the tragic young newlywed Emily Webb. Then we asked readers to share their own experiences playing the part in a drama that continues to be produced in schools and on stages throughout the world. Edited responses follow.I was a small town Texas high school Emily in 1966. I had to talk the speech teacher — we had no drama teacher — into doing it because I loved it and so wanted to be in it. On the Monday after the weekend production, the toughest “hood” in school, a big burly guy complete with cigarettes rolled up in his T-shirt sleeve, came up to me and said I must be a “real good actor” because I’d made him cry. I was so touched, and two years later he was dead in Vietnam. BETHANY PHENEGER, HoustonI played Emily in a summer stock theater in a former barn in the ’80s. There was not a dry eye onstage in the third act. My grandmother could not speak to me due to tears at the end of the show. Now I am facing a life-threatening illness, after living a very full life. The other Emilys I’ve seen — and mine — come back to me. GRETCHEN KEHDE, BrooklynI have often been asked how it felt to be 64 playing 18 in the 2002 Transport Group production. With six decades of life under my belt, I had the advantage of already knowing most of Emily’s thoughts, words, and relationships. Even in her remembering, I could walk through it all, reawakening in my own heart my present tense reality at the same time. My very age brought a resonance to the simplest, most profound thoughts. BARBARA ANDRES, New YorkI read “Our Town” in elementary school but didn’t really understand it at the time. Years later, right after college, our family had to unexpectedly sell my childhood home. It was the first of several deep losses I experienced in early adulthood. When I moved to Los Angeles a few years after, one of my first jobs was to play Emily at Sierra Madre Playhouse. When I came to that speech where she says goodbye, I finally understood what it meant to say goodbye to something and someone you will never see again. And when I said those words every night, I finally said goodbye to my childhood home — the rough red bricks of the front path, my favorite hidden tree which I would climb to read and write in solitude, the sun-dappled kitchen where I first learned to cook. Emily’s words, Thornton Wilder’s words, helped heal something inside me that I hadn’t even realized had been broken. LILA DUPREE, Los AngelesMy mom played Emily in her private high school’s production of “Our Town” — it had to have been about 1953-54. Her family always said she was amazing in the part. The same year as the play she became pregnant and had to leave school. The baby was put up for adoption; my mom returned to school, but life was forever altered. She eventually wed the father of the baby, never graduated high school, had two more children (I’m the youngest) and didn’t appear in a play again until she was in her late 40s when she was cast as Esther Franz in “The Price.”She always talked about “Our Town,” made sure I read it, saw the movie and shared her memories of performing that role often. When she was dying very prematurely in her late 60s, she discussed with her sister what she wanted read and sung at her memorial service. I was surprised to find out after she’d passed that she wanted me to somehow work into my eulogy Emily’s speech from “Our Town.” Of course I did, and for a brief second there, at the lectern in the Episcopal Church of East Hampton, I did get to “play” Emily — conjuring up those stories of when my mom played that part and realizing just why she wanted it read at her memorial. ELLEN DIOGUARDI, Sag Harbor, New YorkAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Theater to Stream: Revisiting ‘Rent’ and ‘Angels in America’

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTheater to Stream: Revisiting ‘Rent’ and ‘Angels in America’Presentations include the 30th anniversary of George C. Wolfe’s “The Colored Museum”; Andréa Burns in “Bad Dates”; and a solo show by Riz Ahmed.From left, Adam Pascal, Daphne Rubin-Vega and Anthony Rapp in “Rent,” whose anniversary is being celebrated with a reunion presented by New York Theater Workshop.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesFeb. 17, 2021A pair of game-changing shows are celebrating big anniversaries, so now is a good time to revisit them and their legacies.George C. Wolfe’s “The Colored Museum,” an anthology of sketches about Black culture (called exhibits), felt like a bolt of lighting when it premiered in 1986. At its heart, as Frank Rich said in his New York Times review, was the question “How do American Black men and women at once honor and escape the legacy of suffering that is the baggage of their past?”From left, Reggie Montgomery, Vickilyn Reynolds, Tommy Hollis and Suzzanne Douglas in the streaming production of “The Colored Museum,” filmed in 1991.Credit…Nancy LevineThanks to Crossroads Theater Company — where the show originated before moving to the Public Theater, and which is streaming the “Great Performances” capture from 1991 — we can confirm that while a few details have aged, “The Colored Museum” retains much of its satirical charge.It’s fascinating, now, to see how playlets in the show — such as “Git on Board” (about welcoming guests on a “celebrity slaveship”) and “The Last Mama-on-the-Couch Play” (a blistering take on “A Raisin in the Sun” — have influenced contemporary works like Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s “An Octoroon” and Jordan E. Cooper’s “Ain’t No Mo.’” Through Feb. 28; crossroadstheatrecompany.comWhen Jonathan Larson’s “Rent” opened at New York Theater Workshop in 1996, its young, often queer and racially diverse characters felt new in musicals; it also dealt with the HIV/AIDS crisis, one of the biggest issues of the day. The show immediately found a passionate audience, won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and transferred to Broadway, where it remained for over 12 years. Hindsight makes it clear that “Rent” has endured because a fairly conventional heart beats under its edgy demeanor, and that this “rock” musical is built out of zhuzhed-up show tunes; those are solid bones.New York Theater Workshop is revisiting the phenomenon with the tribute “25 Years of Rent: Measured in Love,” in which Eva Noblezada, Ben Platt, Billy Porter and Ali Stroker join original cast members, including Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Idina Menzel, Adam Pascal, Anthony Rapp and Daphne Rubin-Vega. March 2-6; nytw.orgNathan Lane in the National Theater’s production of “Angels in America” on Broadway.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesCatching up with British productionsThe National Theater’s streaming arm, National Theater at Home, has just made available its acclaimed production of “Angels in America,” which stars Andrew Garfield, Nathan Lane and Denise Gough Some of us in the United States were lucky enough to see it when the production traveled from London to Broadway three years ago. Perhaps even more exciting, then, is the opportunity to discover older shows that didn’t come to New York, like “Antigone” starring Christopher Eccleston and Jodie Whittaker; “Medea,” with a pre-“I May Destroy You” Michaela Coel as the nurse; and Lucy Kirkwood’s “Mosquitoes,” in which Olivia Colman and Olivia Williams play sisters. ntathome.comAndréa Burns in Theresa Rebeck’s “Bad Dates.”Credit…via George Street Playhouse‘Bad Dates’A good rule of thumb: Whenever the wonderful Andréa Burns (“In the Heights,” “On Your Feet!”) pops up in something, just check it out. In this case it’s Theresa Rebeck’s one-woman play “Bad Dates,” presented by the George Street Playhouse in New Jersey, which should provide good opportunities for Burns to flex her considerable comic muscles as a divorced woman looking for love. Feb. 23-March 14; georgestreetplayhouse.orgMichael Guagno stars in the Kafka-inspired “Letter to My Father.”Credit…Eileen Meny‘Letter to My Father’In 1919, a 36-year-old Franz Kafka penned, but did not send, a long missive to his father, Hermann. The text (published in English as “Letter to His Father”) was an impassioned of indictment of a domestic tyrant, the now-grown son still possessed by fear, his wounds still fresh. The M-34 company, captures the live show with multiple cameras, offering various perspectives to the audience. The show is directed by James Rutherford, and performed by Michael Guagno. Feb. 19-March 28; m-34.orgRiz Ahmed in his solo show “The Long Goodbye.”Credit…Kelly Mason‘The Long Goodbye’The British actor Riz Ahmed, whose performance in “Sound of Metal” recently earned him a Golden Globe nomination, is also a rapper. A solo show expanding on themes explored on his album of the same name, “The Long Goodbye” was livestreamed in December and is now available on demand from the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Manchester International Festival, which jointly commissioned it. Recording himself on a cellphone, the charismatic Ahmed prowls the empty Great American Music Hall in San Francisco while blending hip-hop and spoken word, autobiographical accounts and pointed insights. Through March 1; bam.orgTelling someone else’s storyTwo of the most storied performers you could dream of seeing are appearing in a solo biographical shows they also wrote. First, Lillias White, a Tony Award winner for “The Life,” pays tribute to the jazz great Sarah Vaughan in “Divine Sass” (Feb. 18-20). Then André De Shields, who stole the show every night in “Hadestown,” portrays an abolitionist and social reformer in “Frederick Douglass: Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory” (Feb. 26-28). Both will be presented on Flushing Town Hall’s virtual stage, flushingtownhall.orgWendell Pierce, left, and Charlie Robinson in “Some Old Black Man.”Credit…Doug Coombe‘Some Old Black Man’One of the greatest actors of his generation, Wendell Pierce (“The Wire,” “Treme”) is fiercely committed to theater. In 2018, he starred in the James Anthony Tyler two-hander “Some Old Black Man” in New York; last fall, he quarantined in Ann Arbor, Mich., to participate in a virtual, fully staged version of that play for the University of Michigan’s University Musical Society. Pierce plays a middle-aged college professor who reconnects with his father (Charlie Robinson) as the two men confront their experiences with racism. March 1-12; ums.org‘The Past Is the Past’Manhattan Theater Club revisits some of its past productions in Curtain Call, a new reading series. Ron Cephas Jones — a captivating stage actor despite being most famous for the series “This Is Us” — and Jovan Adepo (“Watchmen”) lead Richard Wesley’s “The Past Is the Past.” The New York Times called the play “a poignant evocation of families and generations in conflict” when the company presented it in 1975, a year after its premiere at the Billie Holiday Theater in Brooklyn (Feb. 18-28). Head over to Manhattan Theater Club’s YouTube channel to watch the playwright John Patrick Shanley and Timothée Chalamet discuss the 2016 production of “Prodigal Son” — with generous excerpts from the show, which just predated Chalamet’s stardom. manhattantheatreclub.com‘48Hours in … El Bronx’For this year’s digital edition of Harlem9 and Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater’s “48Hours in …” festival, the playwrights Julissa Contreras, Nelson Diaz-Marcano, Alisha Espinosa, Andres Osorio, Alejandra Ramos Riera and Andrew Rincon looked to the work of photographers from the South Bronx collective Seis del Sur to create six 10-minute plays. Feb. 18-22; harlem9.veeps.comAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Review: Beware the Text, and Other Tales From ‘Smithtown’

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyReview: Beware the Text, and Other Tales From ‘Smithtown’Four not-very-believable characters in a chain of monologues are rescued by a cast of exceptionally believable actors.Ann Harada in “Smithtown,” which takes the dangers of technology as its theme.Credit… via The Studios of Key WestFeb. 14, 2021SmithtownIt’s often said that great actors can make compelling drama just by reading the phone book. But should they? Do we really want the Yellow Pages aspiring to the status of Shakespeare?These dispiriting questions arose for me while watching “Smithtown,” a play by Drew Larimore made up of four linked monologues that contain nothing very original except what the cast brings to them. Michael Urie, Ann Harada, Colby Lewis and Constance Shulman give riveting performances in material so thin it barely demands a paper clip.The technology that binds us is in fact the theme. Phone books may be things of the past, but “Smithtown” treats modern communication platforms — Zoom, email, Facebook, text messaging, YouTube and others — as if they were strange new forces teeming with unheard-of dangers.The first monologue makes this shopworn theme explicit. Urie plays Ian A. Bernstein, a graduate student teaching a class called An Introduction to Ethics in Technology at a fictional college in a small Midwestern town that gives the play its title. At the class’s first meeting — or, rather, online session — Ian immediately veers from the syllabus to provide what he thinks will be a mind-blowing example of high-tech horror.Michael Urie plays a graduate student teaching a class in the play.Credit… via The Studios of Key WestBut the example is both too familiar and too grotesque to function as drama. Set your alarm for a spoiler alert because here comes the plot: Having been dropped by his girlfriend, Ian texts Melissa — “famous for being the No. 1 human doormat of the student body” — with demands for sexy photos. She provides them, Ian instantly ghosts her, the photos get disseminated and tragedy ensues.This is presented in an entirely upbeat, faux-professorial manner that makes everyone involved, especially Ian, look not only insensitive but also moronic. Or it would, if Urie were not so expert at pulling the thread of moral anxiety within the artificial character to animate his performance.The remaining three monologues — each, like the first, about 15 minutes long — connect to Ian’s in ways evidently intended to illuminate contrasts between real and virtual intimacy, between engagement and mere witness.In “Text Angel,” Ann Harada plays Bonnie, an excessively chipper former guidance counselor running a small communications business from her basement. Customers pay her to send their loved ones helpful text messages: some meant as validation, some as slaps of tough love. When the wrong kind of message goes to the wrong kind of person, Bonnie gets mixed up in Melissa’s story.Colby Lewis as a photographer in another of the monologues in “Smithtown.”Credit…via The Studios of Key WestLikewise, in “If You Were Here,” Lewis portrays a “groundbreaking” photographer currently working as the head of social outreach at the Smithtown Heritage Center. The YouTube video he’s making to promote local treasures (a renovated window, a settler’s sock) quickly devolves into a fatuous humblebrag about his connection to the tragedy: He took pictures of it. Art, he tells us, prioritizes documentation over intervention, lest one miss the beauty inherent in the victim’s struggle.By the time we get to the final monologue, the fog of condescension around these Midwestern nitwits is too thick to see through. And yet Shulman, playing Cindy, a bereaved woman welcoming new neighbors to her kitchen with feeble jokes and an explosion of lemon cookies, somehow produces visible, relatable emotions. The evidence of watery eyes and shaky hands is incontrovertible.The opportunity to see actors working at such a high level can be worth it regardless of the play but, again, is every play worthy of such actors? This one, a production of the Studios of Key West, is so slick and pandemic-ready in its minimal physical (and attentional) requirements that thespians everywhere will probably vie to star in it; they’ll smell hot content for their sizzle reels even when there’s no meat.Constance Shulman, playing a bereaved woman, somehow produces visible, relatable emotions.Credit… via The Studios of Key WestBut it’s not the job of actors to make a play sensible and meaningful; that responsibility falls on playwrights and directors. Stephen Kitsakos, the director of “Smithtown,” seems to have focused his energy on delivering a very neat, shiny package regardless of what’s in it. Larimore, too, seems interested mostly in the surface, bending his characters to the concept instead of the other way around.To be fair, Larimore does know how to write piquant, playable dialogue. Which may not be saying much; according to the great actor theory, so did Bell Telephone.SmithtownThrough Feb. 27; tskw.orgAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Amber Ruffin to Co-Write Broadway Musical ‘Some Like It Hot’

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAmber Ruffin to Co-Write Broadway Musical ‘Some Like It Hot’The Emmy-nominated writer and performer will work with Matthew López to adapt the comedy for the stage.Amber Ruffin is getting her first taste of Broadway as a co-writer of the musical “Some Like It Hot.”Credit…Miranda Barnes for The New York TimesPublished More

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      Review: Shakespeare’s Baddies Convene in ‘All the Devils Are Here’

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s PickReview: Shakespeare’s Baddies Convene in ‘All the Devils Are Here’Patrick Page writes and stars in a meditation on the Bard’s villains, moving swiftly through a catalog of characters as if he were a chameleon.Patrick Page in “All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain,” filmed at Sidney Harman Hall in Washington.Credit…via Shakespeare Theater CompanyFeb. 11, 2021Updated 1:00 p.m. ETAll the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the VillainNYT Critic’s PickProspero steps out onto the stage, a sturdy white staff and book in hand. He kneels, opens the book and strikes the stage three times. As the last heavy thud echoes throughout the empty theater, the lights dim to an icy, concentrated glow. This is the magician, and this is his art.But it isn’t actually Shakespeare’s vengeful sorcerer we’re seeing; this is Patrick Page, and when he opens his mouth, it’s not Prospero but Lady Macbeth who speaks, in a jagged whisper. It’s a summoning: “Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts.”It’s enough to make you shiver, and fitting for a play called “All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain,” an enchanting one-man show full of Shakespeare’s vilest, silliest and most misunderstood characters: the baddies. Produced by the Shakespeare Theater Company at Sidney Harman Hall in Washington, and directed by Alan Paul, “All the Devils Are Here” is a chronological catalog of Shakespeare’s villains — including the lady with stains on her hands that no amount of Purell can get out, and the cuckolding, crown-stealing sibling. Page, who also wrote the script (and is lately known for his performance as another grand villain, Hades, in the musical “Hadestown”), begins with some general context, bringing us back in time to the flimsy villains that showed up in 16th century morality plays and how a young Shakespeare, influenced by such shows and those of his contemporary Christopher Marlowe, first broached the role of the villain in his early works.In the roughly 80-minute production, Page peppers in tidbits about his personal relationship to the texts, like how he remained haunted by “Macbeth” even when he stepped off the stage, along with a few nods to Shakespeare in pop culture — like the imprint of “Hamlet” in “The Lion King” and the echoes of “Richard III” and “Macbeth” in “House of Cards.” Addressing some of the nuances behind the characterizations of these rapscallions and miscreants, Page asks worthwhile questions: Is Iago a sociopath? Does Shylock reflect Shakespeare’s early prejudices, and does Othello later subvert them? Is the jolly old rascal Falstaff not just a fool, but another villain to contend with?In the production, Page blends casual analysis with personal reflections on Shakespeare’s plays.Credit…via Shakespeare Theater CompanyThe production reminded me of another I’d enjoyed recently: the Irish Repertory Theater’s “On Beckett/In Screen,” written by and starring Bill Irwin (and available to stream this month as part of the theater’s Home Winter Festival). Both work in a form that speaks to the audience as not just vessels of the actor’s performance, but also as fellow scholars examining the text with him. I’m a student at heart, one of literature especially, so I count any piece that melds the virtuosity of stage performance with the intellectual rigor of a classroom, minus any didacticism, as a precious night of theater.And yet for Shakespeare stans like myself, the contextual analysis is a touch light, no more than the connective thread between villains. But when we do arrive at those villains — alas! — Page, with his bottomless bass (soon to be set to audio in a Shakespeare@Home production of “Julius Caesar”), seems possessed by such a mastery of his craft, moving teary-eyed through the pain of Shylock and the comic pomposity of Malvolio with such swiftness that it’s like watching a chameleon change hues before your eyes: stupefying, effortless.Does Page have the Weird Sisters casting spells by his side? I don’t think so, but just as well, he has Elizabeth A. Coco’s revelatory lighting, heralding and punctuating his tonal and oratorical shifts. Then there’s Gordon Nimmo-Smith’s exacting sound design, to create an air of mischief and terror, or usher in a scene in a verdant garden or rowdy pub.But it’s Page — looking exceptionally svelte in an all-black ensemble, standing or sitting at a lonely desk and chair onstage while the cameras follow him with a pristine eye and perfect attention — who is the devil, the mage, the usurper.In the final scene, he arrives at Prospero, who ends “The Tempest” rehabilitated and delivers one last monologue to the audience — here, the camera moves to show Page facing the empty theater — denouncing his magical games and bidding us farewell. Page does the same, snaps the staff in half and closes his book onstage.But has the spell really ended, just like that? Hours later, I’m still utterly beguiled.All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the VillainThrough July 28; shakespearetheatre.org.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Theaters Go Digital to Talk About Life (and Death) in the Pandemic

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeMake: BirriaExplore: ‘Bridgerton’ StyleParent: With ImprovRead: Joyce Carol OatesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTheater ReviewTheaters Go Digital to Talk About Life (and Death) in the PandemicGerman playhouses are finding innovative ways to forge connections while their doors are closed.Jonny Hoff as Werther and Florian Gerteis as his friend Wilhelm in “werther.live.”Credit…werther.liveFeb. 11, 2021, 4:41 a.m. ETAn interactive thriller about the race for a vaccine. A morbid installation on the stage of a theater no one can visit. A literary classic set during lockdown and narrated through social media posts. This is what theater in Germany looks like in early 2021.Nearly a year after the pandemic first shuttered playhouses in the country, German theatermakers have become increasingly adept at working around virus-related restrictions. Now, instead of the deluge of archival recordings or the broadcasts of productions planned before the pandemic, an increasing amount of digital theater is using technology to address Covid-era concerns.A recent spate of online productions from state-run and fringe theaters have examined contemporary themes of loneliness, isolation, fear of death and our chances for beating the virus. As lockdowns throughout Germany continue to be extended — Berlin has already announced that theaters in the city won’t reopen until after Easter — it’s heartening to see directors and actors finding new ways to forge connections with remote audiences by focusing on contemporary themes, even when taking well-known works as their starting point.Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther,” from 1774, is one of the foundation texts of German literature. The epistolary novel, about a young artist who kills himself because of unrequited love, catapulted Goethe to fame and jump-started the Romantic movement in Germany. (The book also inspired a rash of copycat suicides). These days, “Werther” is sometimes seen like other classics that are required reading in school: musty, quaint and cloying in its depiction of adolescent passion and confusion.The director Cosmea Spelleken gives Goethe’s Sturm und Drang hero a refreshing update in “werther.live,” an intricately built and skillfully executed production with a live digital run through March 3 that replicates the in-person theatrical experience. This means that the show can be viewed — for a modest 4 euros (about $5) — only when performed in real time by the actors and technical team.Werther chatting with Lotte, played by Klara Wördemann.Credit…werther.live“werther.live” is a successful experiment in subjective storytelling: The audience experiences the plot almost exclusively from Werther’s perspective, via screen recordings from his computer. Over 120 minutes, we follow the novel’s four main characters through their Facebook profiles, Instagram feeds and WhatsApp conversations. Despite the 21st-century interventions, the production remains surprisingly faithful to the plot and emotional tone of the 18th-century original.At the start of the production, Werther (Jonny Hoff), a university student, is glad that he decided to put his academic career on hold during the pandemic. In his free time, he Skypes and chats regularly with his friend Wilhelm (Florian Gerteis), who is studying in France and, the coronavirus notwithstanding, seems to be having the time of his life.Werther, on the other hand, never seems to step away from his computer, let alone leave his room. He e-meets Lotte (the love interest in Goethe’s original) after buying an illustrated book of antique firearms (foreshadowing!) from her on eBay. Then, after some cyberstalking, Werther’s interest in Lotte becomes an infatuation. As they trade text and voice messages and video chat, we experience Werther’s increasing infatuation with a woman he’s never met. Klara Wördemann’s Lotte isn’t cruel or calculating, but she is careless in the way she leads him on. We understand, however, that she does reciprocate his feelings, at least in part. Their video chats are shot through with tenderness, but also sorrow. Of all the theatrical productions I’ve consumed over the past few months from my laptop, “werther.live” is among the most genuinely innovative. A manifesto of sorts posted on its website outlines the creative team’s aesthetic approach. “Filmed stages? Theater monologues in front of webcams? You’ll find none of that here. We believe that digital theater makes a new form of storytelling possible, in which the digital surfaces are actively part of the story.”The same evening as I watched “werther.live,” I downloaded and logged in to Webex, a web-meeting app, to take part in the Nuremberg State Theater’s production of “The Doses,” an “interactive choose-your-own-adventure” by Philipp Löhle about the race for a coronavirus vaccine.The three characters in “The Doses,” a production of the Nuremberg State Theater.Credit…Staatstheater NürnbergIn the video chat room, I gazed around at a mosaic of participants who had punctually joined the meeting. (Others who tried to log in late were refused entry.) A man in a Guy Fawkes mask instructed us to turn off our cameras. One by one, the faces of the roughly 90 audience members vanished. For the next half-hour, we watched as three actors performed, in real time, a high-octane biological thriller that seemed at least partially ad-libbed and contained a healthy dose of humor.In “The Doses,” a researcher, a human guinea pig and a radical anarchist scramble around a lab in search of a coveted vaccine. Each actor is equipped with a camera while navigating the research facility, and Webex’s split-screen format allows us to follow them on their increasingly frenzied quest.The audience, too, gets to play a role, via poll questions that appear onscreen. Should the anarchist enter the lab via the door or the window? (The audience chose the window). Should she disguise herself as a cleaning woman or a cat? (A cat, obviously!) Should the researcher grab the blue or the red vaccine?I’m not certain that the audience always chose wisely, since the short production ended in bloodshed and mayhem. Even so, if all the applause emojis in the chat window after the performance were any indication, the viewers were well pleased.Despite their unusual formats, both “werther.live” and “The Doses” told dramatic stories, however avant-garde their means. In late January, however, Darmstadt State Theater, in southwestern Germany, put together a timely livestream that, on the surface, had little to do with conventional theater.On the main stage of an auditorium, which has been empty for most of the last year, the German artist Gregor Schneider mounted his installation “Dying Room” (“Sterberaum”). First exhibited in Innsbruck, Austria, in 2011, “Dying Room” was conceived by the artist as a sculptural space where a person could die with dignity. Gregor Schneider in the livestream “Dying Room,” from the Darmstadt State Theater.Credit…Benjamin WeberInitially, Schneider said he was looking for a real person to die in the room over the course of the exhibition. He even enlisted a doctor to help him find volunteers. But even for the outré tastes of the European art establishment, the concept was a step too far. Among the general public, it was treated as a morbid publicity stunt.The ubiquity of death over the past year — to date, Germany has recorded over 60,000 Covid-19-related deaths — has provided a more sobering context for “Dying Room.” In Darmstadt, the installation was streamed on the theater’s website for three days and nights, and shot from three angles to give different perspectives on a modest room, with white walls and a herringbone floor, that had been constructed on the stage. In lieu of an expiring subject, Schneider himself provided the performative element: The artist, clad in all black, stayed onstage throughout the more than 70 hours of the livestream. In this new framework, and against the backdrop of the continuing pandemic, it seemed neither tasteless nor sensational, as previous presentations were called. Instead, Schneider succeeded in creating a space for contemplation and stillness that was heightened by his own high-endurance performance. Like “werther.live” and “The Doses,” the livestream showed that art and technology, when ingeniously combined, can respond to our age of solitude and disquiet with an urgency and immediacy more readily associated with live performance.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Interview: Matt Woodhead on Who Cares?

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      These young people are literally the next generation of artists. They have so much to say and so much to give to the world.

      Matt Woodhead is not only the author of Who Cares?, but also doubles up as Campaign Manager for the Who Cares Campaign. So when we had the chance to chat with him, how could we possibly say no to someone doing such amazing work for young adults right now?
      Who Cares examines the difficulties experienced by young carers in the UK. It’s a co-production between LUNG and The Lowry and was made in partnership with Gaddum, an organisation supporting young carers in Salford. Having toured the country extensively since 2015, it’s now been adapted for radio. It received its premiere on BBC Radio 4 on 9 February, and is now available until 8 March on BBC Sounds here.
      Who Cares? Trailer
      Hi Matt, first things first then, tell us a little about the play.
      Have you not heard of it by now?! Where have you been?
      Erm, well, you know, here and there, so sorry we missed the show originally.
      Who Cares is a verbatim play that began its life in 2015. It’s adapted from over 100 hours of interviews with a group of incredible young carers from Salford.
      In the play, we follow Connor, Jade and Nicole as they juggle the dramas of every day teenage life with caring for a loved one. Adapted from the real words of young carers, it’s heart-warming, real and doesn’t pull any punches.

      Lizzie Mounter
      Luke Grant
      Jessica Temple

      So the play’s been around for a while, what’s the reaction to it been?
      Ah, it has had so many different lives. It was only supposed to be performed for one night at The Lowry but here we are…six years later!
      The show has been performed in schools and youth clubs across the country, as well as having a run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. 10,000 people have seen the play and it’s bagged a few awards. 200 young people were also signposted for support when they realised – as a result of watching the play – they might be a young carer.
      For me the highlight was performing at The House of Lords. Antonia-Rae, Ciaron, Kerry and Paige (the real young carers involved in the making of the play) made speeches and lobbied decision makers to improve services for young carers across the country. It was really special. 
      Has the stage version altered much for the radio?
      Oh yes, it has been changed to fit the form! Any writer gets a bit nervous when they have to change a script, but once I unclenched by bum, dried my sweaty palms, it was totally fine.
      The production has been pieced together beautifully by Toby Swift and it feels really at home on radio. Verbatim theatre has a knack for doing that… In the radio version we also hear from two of the young carers involved in making the show. It’s so cool to think hundreds of thousands of people have now heard their voices. It’s great!!
      I also do an introduction at the start of the piece. When we were recording it, the producers wouldn’t let me put on my Radio 4 voice. I was well gutted, coz I had been practicing it all week…
      There is now also the Who Cares Campaign; what it’s aim?
      YES! The Who Cares Campaign was born from the play. Its aim is to campaign for better services for young carers across the UK. Right now we are launching a Digi Fund. One in three young carers are from low income families and many don’t have access to technology like laptops and phones. These things are vital for young people accessing school work in the pandemic and to help them fulfil their caring role. Through the Digi Fund we are trying to raise £5,000 to pay for young carers to get the digital support they need.
      So you believe theatre has the ability to drive real change?
      Oh my days – 100%! I’m obsessed (sorry this is my inner nerd speaking now) with this infographic from the Arts Council that shows a study they did with young people. It found that:
      When taking part in the arts, children from low income families are three times more likely to get a degree.
      Young people who participate in culture are 20% more likely to vote.
      (You can find the mentioned infographic here)
      Art can change young people’s lives, and soz this is a cliché…
      That’s ok, we write reviews, we are partial a good cliché.
      These young people are the future. We need to make sure once this pandemic is over we use culture to empower them to make their voices heard.
      Has the past year made this an even more vital issue?
      Ah, I need to be careful or I’m never gonna get off my soapbox .
      Like clichés, we love a soapbox, climb on board…
      YES! This lockdown has been so challenging, especially for young carers. At LUNG we have launched a Young Carers Creative Makers group. Each week young carers from Salford, Kent, Cheshire West and North Wales come together with our Engagement Manager / Associate Director Gitika Buttoo to make art.
      These young people are literally the next generation of artists. They have so much to say and so much to give to the world. They are all beavering away at the moment making something for Young Carers Action Day on 16 March. It’s going to be really special. I’ve had a preview of some of their work and they are definitely giving all us so-called ‘professional artists’ a run for our money.
      Most important question then, how can people support the campaign?
      The biggest thing you can do right now is donate to the Digi Fund. Any amount, big or small will change a young person’s life! You can find out more at – https://www.whocarescampaign.co.uk/digi-fund
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      Our absolute heartfelt thanks to Matt for taking the time to chat with us. Who Cares? is another example of where theatre is supporting the community in ways far beyond simply putting on a show! Please donate if you can. More

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      Review: Fathers, but Not Yet Men, in the Prison Drama ‘Shook’

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s PickReview: Fathers, but Not Yet Men, in the Prison Drama ‘Shook’Samuel Bailey’s knockout professional debut isn’t so much about the pipeline to incarceration as it is about the toxic masculinity that keeps it flowing.Josef Davies, left, and Ivan Oyik as teenagers in a British “young offenders’ institution” in Samuel Bailey’s play “Shook.”Credit…The Other RichardFeb. 9, 2021ShookNYT Critic’s PickGreat injustice makes great drama, so it’s no surprise that playwrights have been drawn to the epidemic of incarceration among neglected young men.Or should I say the pandemic? “Shook,” Samuel Bailey’s knockout professional debut, diagnoses much the same disaster in Britain as some recent American plays have diagnosed here.But if “Shook” echoes stateside dramas like “Pipeline,” “Notes From the Field” and “Whorl Inside a Loop” in its mash-up of themes, it is so specific to its own milieu that it rings with fresh truth. That milieu is an English “young offenders’ institution,” roughly the equivalent of a juvenile detention center. Three young men — Riyad, Cain and Jonjo — are the offenders in question, though calling them young men is part of the problem. They are teenagers: Riyad and Cain, 16; Jonjo, 17.Andrea Hall, left, as Grace, who teaches parenting lessons to a trio of boys at the institution, including Oyik as Riyad.Credit…The Other RichardStill, they are old enough to be fathers, which is what brings them together, lifeboat-style, for the play. Over the course of six weekly lessons, a woman named Grace (Andrea Hall) introduces the boys to diapering, feeding and CPR while Bailey introduces us to the violent lives they lived outside and the even more violent ones they live while locked up.That structure could easily be a defect; with so much of the action described in retrospect, “Shook” might have felt distant or placid. And it’s true that Grace is given only the most basic demographic information to suggest a life offstage: She’s in her 30s and has a son of her own. But for the most part, the production from Papatango — a London theater dedicated to new plays and early career playwrights — avoids such pitfalls, thanks to propulsive pacing and sharp characterizations in roles that spark with specificity.That’s especially true of Cain (Josh Finan), who talks as if he were spraying ammunition. Both a threat and a cutup, he says he probably has dyslexia, A.D.H.D. and “problems with boundaries,” as if these were impressive battle scars. Hardly able to read and completely unable to focus, he is more interested in getting a look down Grace’s shirt than in learning to care for a son he never sees.A new arrival, Jonjo (Josef Davies), is introduced as Cain’s counterweight: On the rare occasions he does talk, he stutters. After the crime that brought him to the institution — involving, too predictably, a vicious stepfather — he has been forbidden contact with his pregnant girlfriend. The most eager of the trio to practice his parenting skills, but also the one least likely to use them, he is, at first, lost in a stupor of grief.Cain and Jonjo are white; race is more submerged in “Shook” than in typical American plays on the subject. But as Riyad (Ivan Oyik), who is Black, gradually moves to the play’s center, we nevertheless sense the disastrous way racism intersects with ordinary neglect in an atmosphere of toxic masculinity. That he is “clever” at math, and that Grace, also Black, might bring out his potential, is a hoary first-play device. And yet the scene in which she encourages him to apply to college is perhaps the saddest, if not the subtlest, in the play.“This moment in your life, this place here, doesn’t have to define you,” she says, seemingly referring to the unsparing fluorescents and abused walls of the prison classroom. (The grim lighting is by Max Brill and the grimmer set by Jasmine Swan.) But Riyad needs just one glance at the college catalog to know that the happy students and teachers pictured there “ain’t gonna want me.”It would be an even sadder scene, and play, if Oyik, Finan and Davies — all riveting — were not so obviously a decade older than the characters they portray. Perhaps the gap was not as evident during the original Papatango run in 2019. But just as “Shook” was about to transfer to the West End last spring, coronavirus precautions shut down the industry. What the director, George Turvey, has created on film (with James Bobin) is a record of an apparently excellent staging that the camera’s fixed eye cannot flatten no matter how hard it tries.Credit, in part, the vividness of the dialogue, which is naturalistically profane and comically aggressive but also thematically valid. These boys are mouthing off as fast as they can so they will not open themselves to accusations of softness or be caught short by an incriminating insight. Even if they do say something painfully true, they usually toss it off as a joke. When Jonjo asks whether the other inmates’ children ever come for a visit, Cain answers flippantly: “Not me, la. He’ll be in here himself soon enough, like.”Ultimately, “Shook” is less interested in how young men get into the prison pipeline than in how they get stuck there forever. One answer is embedded in the plot: catastrophic fathering. Riyad observes, and the story bears out, that people like Cain, no matter how gentled by proximity to dolls and diapers, are “programmed” to repeat the injuries they’ve suffered at their fathers’ hands. “When it gets hard,” he says, “they get shook and come back to what they know, innit.” He is clever enough to include himself in that fate.American plays about the prison pipeline typically indict its machinery, which, at least theoretically, can be retooled. The much more despairing drama that “Shook” enacts is the one in which the machine isn’t broken it all; it’s a very efficient system of breaking people, and keeping them broken, in order to feed itself. All the Graces in the world can’t undo that damage.ShookThrough Feb. 28; papatango.co.uk.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More