Word: playwrights
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...that wind up on Broadway and off Broadway get their start at regional theaters. Nor should it be a surprise (though it was) that this year's Pulitzer Prize for drama went to a play most of New York City's tastemakers had never even heard of: Cuban-born playwright Nilo Cruz's Anna in the Tropics, which had been produced only at the 104-seat New Theater in Coral Gables...
...couple of years ago, for example, a San Francisco playwright named Joan Holden had the somewhat unpromising notion of turning Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich's best-selling book about her experiences as a minimum-wage worker, into a stage play. The result is an episodic but incisive series of vignettes about the impossibility of making ends meet while waiting tables in Florida, scrubbing toilets in Maine and stocking discount-store shelves in Minnesota. Nickel & Dimed has its deficiencies as drama, but it's a rare example of theater that tries to open people's eyes to the way life...
...criticism that some have long made of the regionals; off-Broadway is still a more receptive place for certain kinds of stylistically experimental plays. "I find that sometimes theaters are a little tame when it comes to choosing their seasons. They want to cater to their audiences," says playwright Cruz. "A lot of regional theaters won't take chances with work that deals more with experimentation...
Sendak decided to revive the opera. He asked Pulitzer-prizewinning playwright Tony Kushner (Angels in America) to write a new libretto. Kushner, immediately drawn to what he calls the opera's "timeless message of the necessity to stand up to bullies," was also enchanted by the appealing staccato of the Czech language and has folded some of its nuances into his new version. In an earlier English version, the names Aninku and Pepicek became Annette and Little Joe, cutting out delicious linguistic details from the piece. "It sounded like a 1950s biker film," says Kushner...
DIED. JACK GELBER, 71, influential playwright whose 1959 work The Connection was a milestone of stage experimentation; of a form of blood cancer; in New York City. With its raw depiction of a world of dope addicts and its blurring of the line between stage life and real life, The Connection put off many critics ("A farrago of dirt"--the New York Times), but helped pave the way for more innovations in style and subject matter...