Martina Arroyo, Kennedy Award ceremony honoree, soprano supreme, who has been a beacon of light and pioneer since the 1960’s and 1970’s, a crossover classical singer with a delightful sense of humor still is in the game. She is a brilliant teacher “go getter”and nurturer through her Martina Arroyo Foundation. This gala event occurred at the Kaye Playhouse at Hunter […]
Theater
An Uncomfortable Audience at Jackie Sibblies Drury’s “Fairview” by Ruby Hutson-Ellenberg
Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Pulitzer-prize winning play “Fairview” shines a light on white spaces Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Pulitzer-prize winning play “Fairview” will run until Aug 11, 2019 at Theater for a New Audience’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center after a successful production at Soho Repertory Theatre in 2018. The 95-minute play may technically be one act with no intermission, but it is divided […]
Montagues, Capulets, Fords, and Chevys: Shakespeare in the Parking Lot celebrates its 25th season on the Lower East Side
The plays are some of the greatest ever written in the English language. The venue is a product of necessity, opportunism, and the quirks of New York real estate. This July marks the 25th anniversary of Shakespeare in the Parking Lot, the annual production of the Bard’s plays that is exactly what it sounds like. Produced by local theater group […]
Scheherezade (& Her Sister) Shushed in Sunset Park
Last June, Sunset Park’s Target Margin Theater commissioned the Brooklyn-based experimental theater company, The Million Underscores, to stage “1001SUR” as part of its three-play festival News of the Strange Lab, which reimagines the classic story of The One Thousand and One Nights. “1001SUR” begins as you might expect, with the foundational myth of Scheherezade’s story: royal cuckold gone hunting; horny, […]
Arthur Miller’s Red Hook excavated at Waterfront Barge Museum
If one could go back in time and visit Red Hook in the 1940s, one would, at about 4:30 am, find a scene of desperation on its crowded waterfront. Days began with “longshoremen huddling in doorways in rain and snow on Columbia Street facing the piers, waiting for the hiring boss, on whose arrival they surged forward and formed up […]
Broadway’s ‘Hadestown’ and ‘Mean Girls’ cast members perform in Brooklyn
Local Brooklyn residents didn’t have to travel to Manhattan on June 14 to see quality Broadway theatre performances; Broadway came to Bed-Stuy instead. Cast members from the hit shows Hadestown and Mean Girls sang four or more songs each to kick off this year’s Broadway in the Boros concert series. Broadway in the Boros, which is in its fourth […]
Smith Street Stage celebrates a decade of theater in Carroll Gardens
Smith Street Stage (SSS) has produced free Shakespeare at Carroll Park for 10 years. Starting with a five-actor adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, the company always looks for new ways to tell classic stories, making their productions deeply meaningful and easily accessible. Since that inaugural production, SSS has grown to more than 40 artists each year, performing for thousands of […]
Asase Yaa School of the Arts Prepares for Largest Kid’s Summer Camp to Date
Brooklyn-based Asase Yaa Cultural Arts Foundation (AYCAF) and their School of the Arts program are getting ready for what’s expected to be their largest children’s summer art camp. The multidisciplinary theater camp, which is geared toward ages four to 13, has attracted over a thousand participants since 2006, averaging 70 kids per summer. This summer AYCAF is adding 30 additional […]
TARGET MARGIN THEATER’S ‘MARJANA AND THE FORTY THIEVES’ IS CHARMING AT ITS BEST, BUT DISJOINTED.
“Marjana and The Forty Thieves” is a modern retelling from the minds of the Target Margin Theater Company of The One Thousand and One Nights, directed by David Herskovits. Broken into three distinct acts, each with a unique style of storytelling, the play enthusiastically immerses the viewer in a tactile world of storytale. The collaborative, unbridled energy and years of […]
TFANA’s lucid take on The Tragedy of Julius Caesar
Through April 28, Theatre for a New Audience presents a clear and forceful production of Shakespeare’s 1599 tragedy, “The Tragedy of Julius Caesar.” Director Shana Cooper’s take is a great lucid rendering that accentuates the plays core themes and conflicts, even as the production careens into one too many air-knife-fights that turn the tragedy into a Mortal Combat training site. […]