LOWELL – Sean Daniels, the first-year artistic director of the Merrimack Repertory Theatre, has made premiering new works a raison d’etre for the theater. But new works are like Forrest Gump’s box of… Continue reading
BOSTON – How can something be both simultaneously beautiful and ugly? It’s when the beauty of a new theatrical technique that seamlessly combines film and animation with live acting is contrasted against the… Continue reading
BOSTON – Just for the record, I’m a huge fan of “The Simpsons.” The animated comedy has skillfully skewered virtually every aspect of American culture for more than a quarter-century and earned an… Continue reading
CAMBRIDGE – The Actors Shakespeare Project has had a strong record when it chooses to detour from The Bard’s canon, with critically-acclaimed productions such as Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” in 2014, the award-winning… Continue reading
BOSTON – It takes a lot to grab and keep a child’s interest these days. I guess that goes for adults, too. And if you are adapting and restaging an iconic work of… Continue reading
CAMBRIDGE – Looking back on events that happened more than 180 years ago and reconstructing them is a bit like solving one of those huge jigsaw puzzles. It’s easy filling in those big… Continue reading
BOSTON – An octoroon , by definition, is someone with one-eighth black blood, an amount that still made it illegal for the person to marry a white person in the South before the… Continue reading
PROVIDENCE, R.I. – As historical figures, both Christopher Columbus and Queen Isabella have been in sore need of some PR repair after the full extent of what really happened more than five centuries… Continue reading
BOSTON – Listen and learn. That would seem to be the motto of playwright Kirsten Greenidge, who grew up in Arlington and now lives in Waltham. It might help to explain her facility… Continue reading
BOSTON — When the curtain first went up at the American Repertory Theater’s production of “Pippin” in Cambridge in 2012, there was an audible gasp from the audience. Were they in the wrong… Continue reading