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In his seminal work, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, sociologist Erving Goffman uses theatre and performance as analogies to describe all our social interactions. He argues, in essence, that we are actors, consciously or unconsciously performing our identities for and to others. For different audiences, we no doubt assume different roles, responding like actors [...]
Whether we are discussing the ranks of the large professional theatres like the Shakespeare Theatre, or the mid-sized Regionals like Woolly Mammoth or Studio Theatre, or community theatres like the Little Theatre of Alexandria or Silver Spring Stage, what is most important about theatre has always been the community it supports and engenders. That’s right! [...]
The 5-hour, 5-Act play with interludes has long since become a thing of the past. What Shakespeare’s audience could leisurely enjoy all afternoon would in today’s world be an extreme extravagance. The 3-Act play has become as rare as an all night performance of the Javanese Wayang (Shadow Puppets). We have had Peter Brook’s Mahabharata, [...]
As an editor of the Maryland Theatre Guide I have had the wonderful privilege of experiencing many theatrical productions over the last 6 months. So I thought I would take this opportunity to reflect on one recurring theatrical motif this past Fall season: the presence of video on stage. From large theatres like the National [...]
Musical theatre fans of Les Misérables beware! The film you are about to see will resemble the famous musical in score only. To be sure, the text will be quite familiar and the song lyrics pretty much the same; but the epic narrative, based on Victor Hugo’s ground breaking novel of the same name, will [...]
Now let me play the holiday season’s favorite character—Scrooge! That’s the bah humbug part, not the money grubbing, no time off for family and friends part, the part that asks: “Does Washington really need all of these Christmas shows? I mean—really?” It’s bad enough that TV has begun airing its traditional favorites from White Christmas [...]
Theatre critics never mention the cost of a ticket when we write our reviews, almost as if price doesn’t matter and the aesthetics of theatre operate independent of budget and cost. Maybe that’s because we critics don’t pay for tickets, so we never leave a show saying: “I just paid $102 for that! I’d have [...]
Not that Washington has ever been a hot bed for political theatre—Hair didn’t even come to the National until 1970, two years after its Broadway premiere in 1968—but in Fall 2012 there is a decided lack of almost anything political resembling a play. Sure, Molly Ivins and an utterly sanitized Janis Joplin entertain us at [...]
