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Just got a call from David Pilot. I know him as a participant in the Get to the Point! storytelling/spoken word series I host at Café Nine. Newish to town, David’s directed for some small theaters in the area, including Theater 4. David Pilot is producing a script by one of my favorite local playwrights, … Continue reading »

I applaud the state of Connecticut’s decision to give four million bucks to New Haven’s Shubert for renovations and other stuff. State Rep. Pat Dillon requested the funds from the Bonding Commission, and was instrumental in making the case for the historic, nearly century-old Shubert. There have been plans to expand and renovate the theater … Continue reading »

My Friend’s Story Presented by the International Festival of Arts & Ideas “in collaboration with the Yale School of Music and the Yale Office of the Provost, with the support of the Yale School of Drama.” 8 p.m. June 19 & 20 at Yale’s Iseman Theater, 1156 Chapel Street, New Haven. www.artidea.org Music by Martin … Continue reading »

The Quiet Volume is not a calming experience. It infers things about reading habits, then turns those internal habits inside out by commenting on them and making the reader—you—hyperconscious of them. The performance piece, concocted by Ant Hampton & Tim Etchells (who are not present at the local performances, and do not need to be) … Continue reading »

The International Festival of Arts & Ideas has manifested itself many ways, including the ways it documents itself while it’s happening. The festival has always offered helpful programs for its theater events. Usually, there’s been one big program which encompasses the whole festival—the way the Shubert in New Haven and other “presentation houses” in the … Continue reading »

The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center knows who will be in the seven plays of its National Playwrights Conference, which runs July 3-27. The playwrights and plays— David Auburn (Lost Lake), Jeff Augustin (Little Children Dream of God), Bekah Brunstetter (The Oregon Trail), Michael Yates Crowley (Evanston: A Rare Comedy), Samuel D. Hunter (A Great Wilderness), … Continue reading »

Last weekend Connecticut theatergoers could choose between the culminating public performances of the National Puppetry Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford and the opening weekend of the Handspring Puppet Company/Bristol Old Vic production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (in photo above) at the International Festival of Arts & Ideas. If that’s not … Continue reading »

Spent an hour this afternoon behind a microphone in the lobby of The Study hotel on Chapel Street, as one of six special guests of the Colin McEnroe show on WNPR. The topic was the International Festival of Arts & Ideas which is consuming downtown through June 29. The others on the show were: composer … Continue reading »

Some folks flock to the International Festival of Arts & Ideas for the big names who play on New Haven Green, but the festival has become just as well known for its audacious programming and its progressive next-wave outlook. Theaterwise, yes, this is the festival that once brought over the mediocre present-day D’Oyly Carte Opera … Continue reading »

The Yale Repertory Theatre  knows who’ll be screaming “Stella” on its stage in September. Joe Manganiello—werewolf Alcide Herveaux from the toothy romance HBO True Blood—will be Stanley in Mark Rucker’s production of the Tennessee Williams classic A Streetcar Named Desire at the Rep Sept. 20 through Oct. 12. That casting coup has been reported by … Continue reading »