TDF Stages Archive

Audiences frequently confuse Dael Orlandersmith with the characters she writes and performs. Originally solely an actress, the New York City native began penning her own plays in the mid-90s such as Monster , The Gimmick and Pulitzer Prize finalist Yellowman . Superficially at least, she and her characters do seem to have a lot in common — they’re all brilliant black women trying to transcend di

Directors Designers Playwrights The Irish Rep's latest play creates the rough energy of 1980s Belfast — If you know the folk song "I'll Tell Me Ma," which is also called "The Belle of Belfast City," then it might conjure images of a joyous Irish community. Or it might remind you of that one Chieftains album […]

It’s not every day that a playwright starts her own theatre company and then wins a prestigious, game-changing grant. But such was the case for Sibyl Kempson, whose 7 Daughters of Eve Thtr. & Perf. Co. was founded before she was selected as a USA Rockefeller Fellow last year. “The company came before the grant,” says Kempson. “But it seemed cosmically connected.”

In our brand-new series, Behind the Scene, playwright Qui Nguyen shares the challenges of mounting his latest show, Six Rounds of Vengeance

Performers Directors Contemporary audiences sometimes expect classic dramas to be updated for modern times, but that's not Red Bull Theater 's approach. The 12-year-old company — whose primary mission is to stage Jacobean-era plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries  — is currently mounting a lively and faithful production of John Ford's ' Tis Pity She's […]

Directors Songwriters In a new family musical, director Colman Domingo doesn't sugarcoat slavery or racism — Although A Band of Angels is based on Deborah Hopkinson's picture book of the same name and mounted by the New York City Children's Theatre , the musical is far from child's play. A tribute to the historic Fisk […]

Songwriters Playwrights Inside the satire of Clinton the Musical — If you ask ten people their opinion of Bill Clinton, then you're likely to get ten different answers. But that's not a problem for Clinton The Musical , currently playing at New World Stages. In the musical comedy he wrote with his brother Michael, writer/composer […]

Performers Broadway Why I was almost as excited about Josh Grisetti's Broadway debut as he was — For any performer, making it to Broadway is usually a dream come true. But for Josh Grisetti , currently costarring in the campy musical comedy It Shoulda Been You , it was the end of a very long […]

Blessed Unrest partners with a theatre from Kosovo — Theatre artists who want to be treated like rock stars should just head to Albania. At least that's what Blessed Unrest artistic director Jessica Burr discovered when she toured her company's show Doruntine through the Balkans in 2009. "People would stop us in the streets," she […]