Boston University is loaded with student-run theater groups, and while attending BU I became familiar with plenty of them. I’ve also seen theater productions at Boston College, MIT, Wellesley, Emerson, Harvard, etc. I need not enumerate the number of community theatre groups in and around Boston that I have patronized, and even acted with. Among […]
Everyone loves lists, and at the end of the year there is no lack of Top Lists that reflect on and revamp our cultural excitement about the past twelve months. Although we frequent playhouses and movie theaters to see new works/productions on stage and screen (barring the occasional revival or vintage screening), our reading habits […]
The title was the first thing that caught my eye. If you browse the program notes of New Repertory Theatre’s latest production, Muckrakers, written by Zayd Dohrn, directed by Bridget Kathleen O’Leary, you’ll find many references to contemporary whistleblowers like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. We are prepped to think this show will be about […]
It’s hard to be an artistic pessimist in Boston. Sure, theater attendance can be a tenuous issue; sure, it’s easy to overlook a seemingly small cultural hub like Beantown. I don’t want to downplay the serious challenges the theatre community faces in light of higher audience distractability and greater pressure to procure profits. But the theatrical […]
The Oberon was transformed. For this production of Taylor Mac’s The Walk Across America for Mother Earth, music by Ellen Maddow, directed by Christopher Annas-Lee, the Oberon’s main stage was the top of a T formed with an alleyway cutting through the sea of audience tables. A path circled around the two audience clumps. The […]
Welcome to Arroyo’s, written by Kristoffer Diaz and directed by Jen Diamond, presented at Club Oberon this past summer. Arroyo’s is a mash-up play and hip-hop show, exploring the roots of this music genre in the context of the lives of certain NYC denizens. Alejandro Arroyo (Dario Sanchez) and his sister Molly (Juani Feliz) have […]
Dystopia is all the rage these days, as any of the recent hits in YA fiction/blockbuster film adaptations will indicate (The Hunger Games; Ender’s Game; The Giver, etc.). The Boston fringe theatre scene is no exception, and companies can choose to either stage new works (e.g. Flat Earth Theatre’s What Once We Felt) or give […]
“How angry am I? You don’t want to know. Nobody wants to know about that.” It almost makes you regret knocking. Or was it she who knocked on your door? From the first line, we find ourselves wondering how to deal with the Woman Upstairs. We could keep ignoring her; we’re used to doing so. […]