TDF Stages Archive

"Our show is all about used-car salesmen in a fishbowl," joked Steven Cosson, the director and compiler of Gone Missing , the Off-Broadway hit by the hip New York-based theatre company The Civilians, just extended at the Barrow Street Theatre through Jan. 6, 2008. In fact there are no cars, fish or sales staff onstage […]

Funny what a Broadway hit can do for a writer. Douglas Carter Beane had only written one musical before, an allegorical romp set on a terrorist-beset cruise ship called The Big Time , which had a brief production as part of the New York Musical Theatre Festival in 2005 but has since languished on producers' […]

Angela Lansbury may have told the press that Terrence McNally's Deuce will be her last Broadway show, but her co-star Marian Seldes won't have any of it. "I don't believe it," Seldes said recently. "I think something will occur that she'll want to do, and she'll do it again. She loves acting in the theatre […]

Broadway Summer in New York is a season of street fairs, outdoor concerts–and theatre festivals. From international imports to Off-Off-Broadway experiments, there's something for every theatregoer, and every price range. The festival season has already begun, so here's a quick guide to three that are worth your attention. Lincoln Center Festival This extraordinary international festival […]

"If somebody's not willing to do anything to get what they want, they probably shouldn't be in a play," says Harriet Harris, stating the sound dramatic principle that's driven several of her most memorable characters: a grasping talent agent on Frasier , a scheming neighbor on Desperate Housewives , a ruthless white-slavery mastermind in Thoroughly […]

It's classic bit of showbiz advice that still hard to argue with: "You gotta have a gimmick/If you wanna get a hand." So our question for Alison Fraser, the veteran musical theatre actress who will dispense this pearl of wisdom as the stripper Tessie Tura in Encores! Summer Stars' production of Gypsy at City Center […]

Linda Hamilton is trying to engineer a wardrobe malfunction. "We're having a little struggle with a scene at the end where the costume is ripped from my body," confesses Hamilton, who has played her share of tough cookies in the Terminator films and in the TV series Beauty and the Beast and who is in […]

Acting is a form of interpretation, but interpretation is not acting. Such is one of the key lessons offered by the Interpreting for the Theatre institute, an annual summer intensive held by the Theatre Development Fund at Juilliard School, at which up to 20 interpreters for the deaf and hard-of-hearing from all over the United […]

"I would never use those words, but I don't object to them," says playwright Sarah Ruhl, referring to a pair of adjectives often applied, and not always admiringly, to her form-defying plays: "wacky" and "quirky." Though she claims not to read reviews, she has certainly heard these words directed her way, but, she insists, "I'd […]