European Theater
Stars of Stage and Screen: Review of The Bretts—The Complete Collection DVD box set
The Bretts: The Complete Collection (2011, Acorn Media) My father imagined himself in the tradition of the great old British actor/managers of yore—he was English, and for decades he ran summer stock theaters where he regularly directed, acted and consulted on everything from design to promotion. That actor/manager model seems ancient now, at least in … Continue reading
Re: Boundaries
No Boundaries: A Series of Global Performances knows what’s bound to happen this season. The series’ 2011-12 slate was announced last week. It represents a rare and longrunning collaboration between the undergraduate Yale Theater Studies program’s World Performance Project and the Yale School of Drama graduate program. No Boundaries presents three visiting theater or dance … Continue reading
New Ron Jenkins play being read at Wesleyan TONIGHT!
Wesleyan Center for the Arts in Middletown is premiering a new play by Ron Jenkins tonight. The reading is held at 7 p.m. tonight, Sept. 28, in the center’s CFA Hall, for free. Must be cool to go to school where Ron Jenkins teaches. I never studied with him, but I followed Jenkins for … Continue reading
The Norman Conquests on DVD: Ayckbourn with camera angles
A BBC radio documentary found online this week (Ayckbourn in Action, on Radio 4) shows a side of Alan Ayckoborn not often considered by the prolific playwright’s more casual fans—namely that he’s also a prolific director. Indeed, Ayckbourn is quoted in the program saying he considers himself a director first and a writer second The … Continue reading
Conan Doyle or Doyly Carte?
Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly and Other New Adventures of the Great Detective By Donald Thomas (Pegasus Books, New York). Thomas is such an accomplished hand at writing Sherlock Holmes yarns that he overwrites and overindulgesd, lulling you into complete credulity. When he writes at length about a late-19th century actor-manager named Caradoc … Continue reading
The YSD Three
The news has gotten around in other ways, but I just received the official press release for the three Yale School of Drama productions this season. These are the thesis projects for the three students in the School’s directing program. They also serve as showcase for the directors’ classmates in the acting, design and management … Continue reading
Dell M for Movement
Had a fun ‘phone chat the other day with several members of Dewey Dell. The brash young Italian movement troupe has been at Wesleyan University in Middletown for the past week leading student workshops and performing the U.S. premieres of two of their distinctively colorful, kinetic and techno-pulsed movement theater pieces. The 20-minute two-character work … Continue reading
Still Hanging on Fringes
Some of you might be wondering whatever became of Aoife Spillane-Hinks. I’ve known Aoife since she was a tot, dashing around auditoriums following the grueling grown-up productions which her mother, theater critic for the New Haven Independent (the long-defunct 1980s print one, not the current online one) would bravely bring her to. Aoife attended the … Continue reading