TDF Stages Archive

Dance Choreographers Off-Broadway By LAUREN KAY Modern dance icon Merce Cunningham was an innovator not only in angular shapes etched in otherwise flowing movement, but also in choreographic structure: Among other variables, he used chance to determine which sections of choreography were to be performed—and in what order— creating what was called an Event. As […]

Directors Playwrights Some demons are imaginary and some of them are real, and during a climactic moment in Little Children Dream of God , they all engulf the stage. Jeff Augustin's play, now in Roundabout's Underground series, follows a Haitian immigrant named Sula, who has floated to Miami on a car tire in search of […]

Susan Reiter covers dance for TDF Stages.

Playwrights On the surface, Lucy Thurber's new drama The Insurgents , now at the Labyrinth Theater Company, recalls her previous work. Like last year's Obie-winning five-play cycle The Hill Town Plays , which chronicled the turbulent life of an author who (like the playwright herself) escaped an upbringing of poverty and strife in a small […]

Geek Out Freak Out Songwriters Welcome to Geek Out/Freak Out , where theatre fans get super enthusiastic about things. This week, Mark Blankenship geeks out (via Google Doc), with Jennifer Ashley Tepper , who is both a musical theatre historian and a producer. Jennifer's new book, The Untold Stories of Broadway: Volume 2 , is […]

Designers Directors Playwrights By MARK BLANKENSHIP It's no accident that The Groundling takes place in a guy's garage. Marc Palmieri's new comedy, now at Axis Theatre, follows Bob Malone, a landscaper who's so moved by an outdoor performance of Love's Labour's Lost that he decides to write his own play about his marriage. He mostly […]

Off-Broadway Building Character Anna Camp plays an artist in crisis in Verité — "This play is definitely keeping me up at night," says Anna Camp, the star of Verité , Nick Jones's unsettling new comedy at Lincoln Center's Claire Tow Theater. Specifically, she's unsettled by the decisions her character makes about balancing her family life […]

Off-Broadway Performers Building Character By KENNETH JONES Welcome to Building Character , our ongoing look at performers and how they create their roles It's a wonder that actress Christina Bianco doesn't struggle with nightmares about the dozens of characters she plays in Off-Broadway's one-woman comedy Application Pending . You imagine that keeping all of them […]