Innholdsfortegnelse for Winter 2025 i American Theatre

This magazine launched in the spring of 1984, amid the reelection campaign of incumbent President Ronald Reagan and the Democratic primary to pick his challenger, Walter Mondale, who would later that year go down to a crushing 525-to-13 electoral college defeat (Mondale won only his home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia). Among other things, that election resoundingly confirmed the nation’s rightward turn after decades of New Deal and Great Society liberalism. How did these politics show up in our pages? Most obviously, the increasingly chilly climate for federal arts funding was a recurring subject of the magazine’s coverage, including regular columns by TCG’s deputy director, Lindy Zesch. The National Endowment for the Arts was then still giving money directly to individual artists, including playwrights and translators, but…

Twenty-fifth anniversaries are traditionally commemorated with a gift of silver. But when Palm Beach Dramaworks embarks on its twenty-fifth anniversary season in November, what the company has in store for its audience is pure gold. PBD will celebrate this milestone occasion with an eclectic array of invigorating plays that epitomize the notion of “Theatre to Think About. ”The season features revivals of Ronald Harwood’s The Dresser and Mark St. Germain’s Camping with Henry and Tom, two compelling plays that were performed early in the company’s history; the world premiere of Gina Montet’s Dangerous Instruments, which continues PBD’s commitment to new plays; Neil Simon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Lost in Yonkers; and Stephen Karam’s Tony Award-winning The Humans. “When PBD was founded in 2000, we believed that there were local audiences hungry for…

One day in a theatre class, my college’s technical director projected some bleak employment stats from Actors’ Equity on the wall and explained that life in the business would be tough. This was about it, in terms of professional preparation, for me and my classmates earning a theatre degree at my undergraduate institution. It was eerily reminiscent of the religion teacher’s STD slideshow at my Catholic girls’ school. In both cases the message was clear: Fair warning, enter at your own risk, our hands are clean. Thankfully, things seem to be changing. The strong consensus from several current and former educators and recently graduated students I spoke to for this article was that undergraduate theatre training programs have a moral imperative to prepare students for the profession, not simply teach…

In this excerpt from her new book The Radical Act of Listening: Making Documentary and Investigative Theatre (Routledge, 2024, 272 pp.), Sanchez writes about how her childhood love for a certain television host’s fearlessly curious and wide-ranging interviews inspired and informed her first theatre work. As a kid, I was obsessed with Dick Cavett—his sly sense of humor and his nerves of steel. He never lost his cool, no matter how cranky his guest, and always found the smoothest way to have the hardest conversation. Cavett was known to say, “It’s a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn’t want to hear.” What I learned from Dick Cavett is that it’s essential to go toward what scares you. One of my first documentary plays sat squarely in the…

SUSTAINING DONORS ($10,000+) Institutions Bloomberg Philanthropies Distracted Globe Foundation Doris Duke Foundation The Ruth Easton Fund of the Edelstein Family Foundation Edgerton Foundation The Field Foundation of Illinois Ford Foundation Howard Gilman Foundation John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation The Joyce Foundation Mellon Foundation National Endowment for the Arts New York City Department of Cultural Affairs The New York Community Trust New York State Council on the Arts Paul M. Angell Family Foundation The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Richenthal Foundation The Sheri and Les Biller Family Foundation The Shubert Foundation Theater League of Kansas City Walder Foundation The Wallace Foundation Walt Disney Imagineering Willa Kim Estate William & Eva Fox Foundation Individuals Eve Alvord James Chosy Eleanor Cook Nolan John Fontillas Jeffrey Gural Joan MacKeith Kevin McCollum David Moore,…

Last fall I co-wrote an article for HowlRound Theatre Commons about the impact of university closures, reductions, and mergers during the 2023-24 academic year. I was concerned by what I learned. When the global pandemic hit in 2020, many colleges had not yet recovered from the funding dip that followed the 2008 financial crisis. Coming out of the pandemic lockdown, universities have grappled with declining enrollment and rising operational costs, and administrators have implemented cost-saving measures, including staff and faculty layoffs, early retirements, and course reductions. These measures have disproportionately impacted drama departments across the country. Invited by American Theatre magazine to continue the conversation, I wanted to learn how colleagues were working to address the cutbacks and constraints, while continuing to teach the next generation of theatre professionals. Given…

This Winter issue is reaching you as the calendar turns over and New Year’s resolutions are yet to be fulfilled. Perhaps this issue can be a hopeful springboard to motivate us through the rest of the winter ahead, when the air is cold, the nights are long, and summer is still distant. During this season, I’m reflecting on recent events here in the U.S. with the awareness that our future is intricately connected to what happens in the world around us. I live in New York, and in late November, I was excited to see We Live in Cairo at New York Theatre Workshop (covered in this issue, p. 40). The musical, with an ensemble of six Arab actors, begins with the protests at Tahrir Square and follows the characters…

LARISSA FASTHORSE The Los Angeles-based playwright behind The Thanksgiving Play is bringing a new comedy to the stage with Fake It Until You Make It, which will have its world premiere at L.A.’s Center Theatre Group (Jan. 29-March 9) before heading to Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. (April 3-May 4). WHAT’S THE ELEVATOR PITCH FOR FAKE IT UNTIL YOU MAKE IT? It’s a farce set in the world of nonprofit organizations that highlights the absurdities of authenticity. WHO IS THE IDEAL AUDIENCE FOR THE PLAY? It was originally commissioned by Center Theatre Group, so I wanted it to appeal to an audience that looks like Los Angeles, and now D.C. It’s dealing with issues of race identity and the complicated world of nonprofit funding in general, which affects a broad cross…

The second show I ever directed as a high school drama teacher was The Diary of Anne Frank. It was a bold choice, though born more of ignorance than audacity. The material would challenge even a veteran drama teacher; in spring 1998, I was a first-year public educator. Fortunately, I had a gifted actor for Anne. But I cast this show when my “educating through a crisis” filing cabinet was quite bare. While the girl playing Anne’s sister, Margot, was a kind, soft-spoken junior whom I will call Sarah, I was shaken when one of Sarah’s teachers approached me after hearing she had been cast, exclaiming, “I was so happy for her. I wonder how auditions went for her, since she can’t read?” Hmm. I somehow missed that tiny detail.…

Jonathan Spector’s play Eureka Day follows several contentious parents’ meetings about vaccine policies at a Berkeley private school. Originally staged in 2018, the play is currently running on Broadway at Manhattan Theatre Club. Spector spoke before rehearsals began (and before Election Day) with the play’s director, Anna D. Shapiro, as she recovered from Covid. ANNA: Talking to you from my Covid sick bed, it made me think about this play and how long you’ve been living with it and where it started, and where you find yourself as it’s about to go to Broadway. Have the questions shifted? Has your focus shifted? JONATHAN: In a weird way, it’s the same and it’s very different. When I began working on it, I was really just trying to write a very Berkeley…