I’m writing this just as word came in of a tentative deal that would end the Hollywood writers strike. Which is welcome news, of course, for our country’s creatives and, by extension for all of us, their audience. But I can’t help feeling sorry for everyone involved in the glittery, glamorous, immensely lucrative (for the rare few) … but also incredibly caustic and phony movie business.
Prolific playwright Stephen Brown may be heading toward his late thirties, but he looks at least a decade younger and has managed to retain incredible knowledge of and insights into all the angst and anger of teen and preteen life. Whether his plays revolve around the actions and passions of a troubled young boy or girl, they always ring true, inciting gasps of recognition from his audience.
Despite its thunderbolt of a title, the focus of this memory play is on the relationship between a self-involved author and his long-suffering agent.
Amid an ongoing strike by Hollywood screenwriters and actors, a play with the nifty title “Pay the Writer” courts applause before anyone has uttered a word. Never mind that its turf is mainly the literary world, not the cinematic one; the author at the center of Tawni O’Dell’s play, Cyrus Holt (Ron Canada), seems to speak for all underpaid writers when he inscribes that feisty injunction in a copy of his book that is being adapted as a movie.
South Florida Theatre is undergoing a change… or at least that is what the evolving audience should hope for.
With smaller companies like LakeHouseRanchdotPNG, that change is at its most present. Having just made it to their second season, this small but growing theater company is still making strides in going against the grain that is South Florida theatre. They do this by not only choosing experimental and absurdist plays for their season, but by operating as a playwrights theatre, something you don’t see enough of within the community. All of their work comes from new, exciting, and challenging playwrights – a mission that not only expands the outreach of the community, but in a way might also alienate certain audiences… and maybe that’s okay.
At 26, Area Stage Company of Miami director Giancarlo Rodaz became the youngest director to win a Carbonell Award for creating an immersive theatrical experience in his production of the musical Beauty and the Beast in 2022.
Everything’s coming up musicals nowadays … and no subject is taboo. Almost feels like the more outrageous the premise, the more likely it is to become a huge hit. Take joyfully murderous “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” or Mel Brooks’ Nazi-themed comedy, “The Producers,” featuring “Springtime for Hitler in Germany” as examples. A few weeks ago, even the universally beloved Star Trek brand has seen fit to choreograph an entire episode as a musical. (Check out S2 E9 “Subspace Rhapsody” of the “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” series on Paramount+. I consider it both thematically and choreographically out of this world!) In this episode, original musical numbers are weaponized to save the known universe – but not before presenting one of the best and briefest explanations for the art form, i.e., a song reveals the singer’s deepest, true emotions.
Perhaps the fact that I find myself genuinely conflicted as I try to assess David Mamet’s Oleanna is actually something of a mark in its favor. After all, as opposed to the many perfunctory crowd-pleasers that do little to challenge convention, this script offers plenty of food for thought, ensuring an intellectually stimulating experience for practically all audience members regardless of what they come away thinking about the work.
Since the biblical story of Adam and Eve, differences between men and women have been personified in many plays, as South Floridians have seen in recent years with the numerous performances of playwright Rob Becker’s “Defending the Caveman” for many decades.
New initiative Women of Wilton (WOW)—a project of Ronnie Larsen of Plays of Wilton and Nicole Stodard of Thinking Cap Theatre—is getting off to a great start with a seriously wow-worthy production of Last Summer at Bluefish Cove. Written during the late 70s and first produced in 1980, this play by openly lesbian playwright Jane Chambers was considered monumental for its time. This is primarily due to the fact that it was one of the first commercially successful works to portray gay women as full-fledged, well-rounded human beings as opposed to tortured by self-hatred or as stereotype-ridden caricatures.
“Wonder” might be an understatement of just how awestruck I was by Alice in Wonderland: A Musical Cirque Adventure. Conceived and directed by Deena Marcum Selko and featuring an original score by Quentin Chiappetta, this acrobatic extravaganza recently blew into the Adrienne Arsht Center courtesy of Moth Entertainment, a company that “creates live stage shows designed to connect with audiences of all ages.”
