Tranquility Disrupted – Sean Donovan’s CABIN
Donovan builds a tranquil place effortlessly, and then creates darkness within the negative (theatrical) space around it, using it as atmospheric pressure to hold the memory in place.
All posts by Dan O'Neil
The Literacy of Delight – In Conversation with Bailey Williams and Sarah Blush
You can get close to truth but you can’t ever – in my opinion – I don’t think any story is ever true.
Both Lynchian & Eno-esque, PLANO Swirls Ever Inward
If life is a race, all the characters here are lagging behind the leader, just hoping to keep up and find space to breath amidst the density of inevitable heartbreak that comes along with living.
The Verisimilitude of the Mad Ones
I’m not sure I would call Mrs. Murray’s Menagerie a play, as such, if only because a play suggests an exterior blueprint which is then built or enacted by a group of performers and designers. The Mad Ones appear to build out – they start with what is generally interior, a collection of tiny behavioral tells that shape human intention, and construct around it.
The Story Variations of MARJANA AND THE FORTY THIEVES
through sharing, repeating, layering, and rephrasing, the company finds a way to both underline and subvert the brutality without explicitly pointing at it.
William Burke’s Containers: VARIATIONS ON THE MAIN
It’s not so much a communing with the dead as an un-containing of the self, casting meaning into the void, hoping perhaps to receive some echo of that meaning back, in the shape of a hug, or song, or strip of tin foil torn from the wall.
Half Straddle’s IS THIS A ROOM at the Kitchen
Tina Satter’s direction and Half Straddle’s pitch-perfect company establish and then maintain an unblinking focus that cuts through the dissipating fog and rewards the audience’s taut attention.
The Watching of THE MAKING OF KING KONG
The Making of King Kong sets out to unpack the monstrosity of our current cultural moment via the monkey, simultaneously evoking a 1930s acting style (transatlantic accents abound) while complicating itself with very-much-now identity politic-infused dialogue.
Extended Play(fulness) & Big Dance Theater’s Antigonick
While the subject matter is dead serious, the style and aesthetic approach feels giddy, unafraid of big stupid choices when they’re appropriate.
Future Issues: RAGS PARKLAND SINGS THE SONGS OF THE FUTURE
There is pain, hurt, lovesickness for miles in every direction, emanating from this club across the country, world, and intergalactic beyond.
How Smart is OKLAHOMA?
What makes this Oklahoma more than just smart is how it ruthlessly strips away the glaze of nostalgia that usually accompanies such restagings in order to uncover what seemingly must have always lurked there, submerged just below the musical’s glossy surface.
Confrontation & Complication: THE REVOLVING CYCLES TRULY AND STEADILY ROLL’D
Payne keeps his audience from jumping ahead to any particular conclusion by deploying a second (bigger, metatheatrical) frame around Karma’s story, one in which the house lights keep coming up and we are rendered, without a choice, visible – to the actors, to the audience, and (most disturbingly) to ourselves.