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Mike Daisey’s Agony
Arthur Miller demanded an American theatre that would “raise the consciousness of people to their most human possibilities.” Indeed, his words have largely been taken to heart, as socially engaged theatre has become one of many recent trends embraced by theatre companies all over the country. Simply getting an audience to attend is no longer ...
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An Evolution of Sorts
People have asked me how I got into playwriting, my typical answer is that it was the power of suggestion. The real answer is something of a long story. People wonder how I went from music, to poetry, to theatre. In order to tell this story, let’s look at the origins of a few things. ...
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Female Playwrights
In an annual burst of OCD last summer, I cleaned out and reorganized the bookshelf at home in New Jersey. I order fiction and poetry by period and/or style (e.g. confessional poets next to confessional poets, you get the picture). I order my plays by a similar rule. First I organize all the Shakespeare plays ...
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The Rock Musical & Rock Opera: Broadway Takeover
The 1960s saw the birth of not only the rock opera but also of the rock musical on Broadway, an erudite medium with a self-selected and mostly entitled audience. The Golden Age of Broadway, ranging from the 1940s to the 1960s, generated productions that integrated all aspects of musical theater: a cohesive plot, songs that ...