TDF Stages Archive

Fans of HBO's gritty, novelistic series The Wire know Prysbylewski, the tall, overly sensitive young cop-turned-schoolteacher who struggled to do right from within, and often in spite of, Baltimore's public institutions. Playing "Prez" for The Wire's five tumultuous seasons was Jim True-Frost, the Steppenwolf-steeped actor who's now appearing on Broadway in the role of a […]

Disney isn't the only producer of theme park-like shows on Broadway. Consider the wild ride that is Mel Brooks' Young Franksenstein , with its rollicking haycart, monster chorus lines and floating, flashing laboratory gadgets. One key to making all the moving parts come together in such a tech-intensive show, of course, is for the performers […]

If you've seen a familiar-looking man with dark, curly hair strolling around Hell's Kitchen and blabbing into his cell phone headset, you could have witnessed some free street theatre: It just might have been Eddie Mekka running his lines for My Mother's Italian, My Father's Jewish and I'm in Therapy , Steve Solomon's hit solo […]

Broadway Eugene Rodriguez goes back a long way with the Theatre Development Fund–to the very beginning, in fact. The first theatre production he ever saw was the James Earl Jones boxing drama The Great White Hope , which also happens to have been the first production ever subsidized by TDF, in the form of discounted […]

Now here's how you can tell you're talking to a real actress: Anita Gillette says she wanted to put on the grey wig so she'd look older in the part. "I don't want to sound egotistical, but I feel I have a more youthful look than is required for Angelina," says Gillette about one of […]

Theatre can happen anywhere, even on a Greyhound bus. Playwright Rajiv Joseph was travelling at night between his hometown of Cleveland and Pittsburgh, and while most of the bus was dark, one woman had a worklight on over her tray table and was "folding these little boxes and fish," Joseph recalls. "It was this weirdly […]

Are you ready? The 12-year-old New York International Fringe Festival, a.k.a. FringeNYC , is roaring back to town with performances by 202 of the world's best emerging theatres and troupes, Aug. 8-24. And, even though the Fringe's official $15 ticket price is a steal, the best deal on the Fringe is to see it with […]

In Britain, the term "tosser" is roughly synonymous with a mild American pejorative like "idiot" or "jerk." On Broadway, "tosser" is now the more-or-less official name for a rabid fan of [title of show] (that's tos for short, hence "tosser"), the new meta-musical by, about and starring virtual unknowns Hunter Bell and Jeff Bowen, which […]

Lenelle Moïse looks forward to visiting Paris one day. In the meantime, the multitalented performer/poet/playwright can travel to the City of Lights virtually in her new play Expatriate , which opens this week at the Culture Project. Moïse plays Claudie, an African-American singer/musician who, with her soul mate Alphine, rises to pop stardom in Europe. […]