TDF Stages Archive

Although the Peccadillo Theater Company’s new comedy Drop Dead Perfect sends up a wide range of American cultural touchstones—from The Glass Menagerie to I Love Lucy to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? —its greatest inspiration is arguably the high-camp, cross-dressing work of Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company. As with Ludlam classics like The Mystery of Irma Vep , Drop Dead Perfe

Welcome to Building Character, our ongoing look at performers and how they create their roles

Broadway I heard Annie Golden's voice before I ever saw her. Her song "Hang Up the Phone"—a bizarrely peppy ode to romantic jealousy—made quite an impression on me as an adolescent when I heard it in John Hughes' movie Sixteen Candles. I played it over and over and over again (on LP!), and I fell […]

“ Once happened at this perfect juncture where I really needed this show and I really needed this group of people,” he says. “I was on the fence about whether I even wanted to stay in New York. Whether I even wanted to keep trying my hand at being an actor.”

That’s certainly the case with playwright James McLure, whose work is finally back in town after decades of playing everywhere else.

And while it’s rare enough for an actress to land such a major part, Faure’s journey to top billing has been especially unusual: Most recently, she left the ensemble of Bullets Over Broadway to start her new job, a swift exit that certainly wasn’t part of her plan: Last year, she says, “when I was in Honeymoon in Vegas at Paper Mill Playhouse, I knew it might have a Broadway life at some point, an

Considering all the gunfights and sex and dirty jokes in their show, you wouldn’t think anyone in Clown Bar would base their performance on It’s a Wonderful Life . But that’s one reason this raucous play has become such a downtown hit. It never met a vintage reference it couldn’t use.

This video was directed by Mark Blankenship and shot and edited by Nicholas Guldner.

Typically, of course, American plays launch in America before heading across the ocean (and vice versa). But at the moment, playwright Adam Bock, a Montreal native who’s based in New York City, is thwarting that trend. Though he has a long history of New York productions, his latest play, The Colby Sisters of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is currently making its world premiere at London’s Tricycle The