Art often fails. Writers discard first drafts (and second, third, and fourth). Painters trash early sketches. And even when completed work enters the world, some is transcendent, but much is hopelessly earthbound. Or so I believe, but Heidi Rodewald and Stew, creators of the musical Passing Strange, demur. “I don’t think art is ever wrong,” … Continue reading »
Category Archives: Theater
Episode 142: A. R. Gurney
This sly anthropologist of WASP ways is much admired for his plays The Dining Room, Love Letters, Sylvia, and more. We talked at the Flea Theater about fathers and sons, students and teachers, and most emotion-charged of all: dogs versus cats. Drama is conflict. Plus music from Duncan Wickel and Lily Henley, who got … Continue reading »
Episode 140: Paul Rudnick
If an audience doesn’t laugh, the play/movie/book isn’t funny. Or might it be? Can an audience fail the writer? It’s complicated, says Paul Rudnick, who should know, having written for the screen (Adams Family Values), the stage (Jeffrey) and the page (The New Yorker). A conversation about comedy and stained glass windows – two … Continue reading »
Episode 138: Austin Pendleton
He created the role of Motel the Tailor in Fiddler on the Roof. He directed Elizabeth Taylor in The Little Foxes. He – well, it would be easier to list what he has not done during a lifetime in the theater. But what most surprised me about our conversation was his description of his lifelong friendship … Continue reading »
Episode 135: Anaïs Mitchell and Rachel Chavkin
“Failure is a very creative place,” asserts James Nicola, artistic director of New York Theater Workshop where singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell and director Rachel Chavkin developed their flamboyantly successful Hadestown, a folk opera based on the Orpheus myth. But is failure really so useful, or is it just, well, failure? Rachel and Anaïs consider that … Continue reading »
Episode 133: David Henry Hwang
It rankles when non-Asian actors are cast as Asians, yet you needn’t be Scottish to play Macbeth. How to reconcile these two ideas? David Henry Hwang takes up the question with wit, warmth and insight. Perhaps best known for his play M Butterfly, he co-wrote the musical Aida and is a staff writer on … Continue reading »
Episode 129: Ruben Santiago-Hudson
An actor and director – his staging of Dominique Morriseau’s “Skeleton Crew” is about to open at the Atlantic Theater – he rejects petty domestic drama, asserting that no writer who’s endured oppression would create such a scenario: “That’s why you never see a brother writing a play about falling in love with a goat … Continue reading »
Episode 126: Ken Ludwig
His plays, including Lend Me a Tenor, have been performed in 30 countries and 20 languages. When we spoke at Princeton’s McCarter Theater, he asserted that comedy is as important and serious as drama, which gave me a chance to quote Coleridge – “The true comic is the blossom of the nettle.” – something … Continue reading »
Episode 122: Trevor Nunn
The former artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, he also has a celebrated career in the commercial theater, having staged both Cats and Les Mis. We spoke in a dressing room at Theatre for a New Audience, right after he led a rehearsal of Pericles, where he asserted that Shakespeare is like Picasso in … Continue reading »
Episode 121: Danai Gurira
TV fans know her as an actor – Mochinne on The Walking Dead. Theater goers know her as a playwright: her Eclipsed, starring Lupita Nyong’o, is on Broadway. Moose hunters know her as… no! They don’t know her at all. She hunts no moose. But she spoke with wit and insight when we met … Continue reading »
Episode 106: Jessica Hecht & Sarah Ruhl
Actor Jessica Hecht has appeared on Broadway in Julius Caesar, Harvey and A View From the Bridge, for which she received a Tony nomination. Among her Off-Broadway work, Stage Kiss by Sarah Ruhl, whose other plays include In the Next Room, or the vibrator play; The Clean House; and Passion Play – productions swiftly followed by … Continue reading »
Episode 105: Emily Mann
She is in her 25th season as artistic director of the McCarter Theatre, and her work has been seen, well, everywhere. In 2012, she directed A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway. Among her own plays: Still Life and Having Our Say. We convened at the Princeton Public Library along with our musical guest, fiddle player … Continue reading »