Posts from — March 2011

David Gallo and the Quiet Broadway Set

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Sometimes, a Broadway set demands your attention. A musical extravaganza wouldn’t feel the same, for instance, without a trap door and a spinning castle and maybe a pontoon boat made of sequins that floats by in the second act.

Some Broadway sets, however, are designed to speak in whispers. Take David Gallo’s work on High, Matthew Lombardo’s drama about an ex-alcoholic nun (Kathleen Turner) whose demons emerge when she counsels a teenage junkie (Evan Jonigkeit.) His set is made from white walls and white furniture, and it’s automated so that pieces slide and pivot to suggest new rooms. Watching them move is like watching the world fall gently into place.

That’s a marked contrast to the volatile emotion of the script, which pushes characters to dark places as they grasp for redemption.

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A Manhattan high school uses local productions to teach valuable lessons

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Manhattan’s Regis High School is on the Upper East Side, but for teachers like James Kennedy, that’s just a home base. He sees all five boroughs as potential laboratories for his students.

Take Theater in New York, an elective course that Kennedy co-teaches with Father Phil Judge. (Regis is a tuition-free Catholic boys’ school.) Offered in the winter trimester, the class goes to a different live performance every week, and they travel everywhere from Broadway to Brooklyn.

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How four current productions are putting war on stage

War is a reality in at least three dozen places around the world today, and that reality is echoed on many New York stages this season, from Broadway to Brooklyn.

“It’s interesting that all these plays are going on now,” says Matthew Lopez, author of The Whipping Man, which takes place in the aftermath of the American Civil War and is running at the Manhattan Theatre Club at City Center through April 10th. “I guess it’s taken a lot of time to process what it means to be a nation at war.”

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Glenn Davis and Necar Zadegan are making their Broadway debuts with Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, Rajiv Joseph’s tense and metaphorical drama about American soldiers, Iraqi civilians, and a thoughtful speaking tiger. But while they’re new to the Rialto, they’re no strangers to the play.

Like most of the seven-person cast, the actors were in Bengal‘s first two productions, at L.A.’s Kirk Douglas Theatre in 2009 and L.A.’s Mark Taper Forum in 2010. (Robin Williams, who plays the tiger, is the only newbie in the New York run.)

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For the first time, a series for new plays goes completely international

When the hotINK reading series for new plays launched in 2002, it was a strictly American affair, and it eventually introduced new work by major Yanks like David Mamet, Itamar Moses, and Rinne Groff.

In its tenth season, however, which runs March 24-28 at the Lark Play Development Center, the focus has shifted. For the first time, every play in the series is by an international playwright.

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