Category — Family

How a deaf CUNY law student uses TDF’s program

Caitlin Parton is a law student at the City University of New York who spent her early twenties interning with a U.S. senator. She’s also a lifelong theatregoer, and the theatre is richer because of bright, passionate fans like her. Not that long ago, however, the theatre wasn’t very accommodating to Parton or the hundreds of audiences members like her.

Parton, 26, identifies as deaf, and though a cochlear implant gives her partial hearing, she still hears less than most people. When she was young, that seriously hindered her theatregoing.

“My mother is an actress and her father was a Broadway producer, so I grew up having an appreciation of the performing arts and attending Broadway performances with my mom,” she recalls. “I would enjoy them, but she would sit next to me and mouth what people were saying so that I could lip read when I missed it. We would watch movies of musicals before we would go to see the production, so I’d be familiar with it, but there would just be so much that I would be missing.”

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Tips for getting the most from FringeNYC

The fifteenth annual FringeNYC festival runs from August 12-28, and as always, it’s a smorgasbord of theatre, dance, comedy, and performance art. With so many shows to choose from, the festival can seem overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. Here are some tips on how to become a Fringe expert.

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The Voca People try to reach everyone

How do we define “universal entertainment?” What makes a show reach all generations on every continent?

Plenty of artists are trying to answer those questions. If they succeed, then they can reach millions (and make a fortune in the process).

“It’s like a Coca-Cola formula,” says Lior Kalfo, and he may have brewed the magic potion. An Israeli writer, director, and performer, he’s the co-creator of the international hit Voca People, a “vocal theatre performance” that blends a cappella singing, clowning, and popular music.

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How to play the only “normal” woman in “The Addams Family”

Welcome to Building Character, TDF Stages’ ongoing series about actors and how they create their roles

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If you’re used to vamping it up, then how do you button it down? Heidi Blickenstaff solved that Zen riddle when she got cast in The Addams Family, the Broadway musical based on Charles Addams’ gleefully macabre cartoons.

Since March, Blickenstaff has played Alice Beineke, a repressed, “normal” woman whose son falls in love with the demented-yet-alluring Wednesday Addams. When Alice visits the Addams mansion for a family dinner, she’s a sunny aberration among the cobwebs and killer plants. “She’s one of those people who moves through life making everybody very comfortable,” Blickenstaff says. “She hears all this stuff and her answer to it is always, ‘Oh! Totally normal! That’s not crazy that I’m looking at a photo of your cousin Helga who has two heads!”

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How the actor is tackling two roles for Shakespeare in the Park

One advantage of performing in repertory is the chance to try on a variety of roles: Coriolanus one night, a stable hand the next. Alternatively, there’s the subtler satisfaction of finding different nuances within similar characters. Just ask André Holland, a central part of the Public Theater’s current season of Shakespeare in the Park.

In All’s Well That Ends Well, directed by Daniel Sullivan, the rising young actor plays Bertram, a callow nobleman who snubs the heroine, spurring all sorts of trouble. In Measure for Measure, directed by David Esbjornson, he plays Claudio, a callow nobleman who tries to corrupt the heroine (a nun, no less), spurring even more trouble.

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