ArtistsBlog & Buzz
Myth, Music & History: The Mixtape World of Suzan-Lori Parks
For nearly three decades, Suzan-Lori Parks’ distinct style has solidified her status as one of theater’s most imaginative, respected writers.
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An Epic Odyssey for a New Era
An epic journey. Lyrical language. A devoted dog. These are a few recognizable elements from the famed poem, The Odyssey, which playwright Suzan-Lori Parks uses as loose source material for Father Comes Home From the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3). A staple of high school curricula for generations, The Odyssey is one of the…
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Finding Fame at 100: The Delany Sisters’ Dazzling Denouement
The Jim Crow era. The great migration of blacks from Southern to Northern cities. The Harlem Renaissance. The Civil Rights Movement. The 20th century’s horrors, triumphs, stagnations and progress are the stuff of history books now.
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Separate But “Equal”: A Brief History of Jim Crow Laws
When the Delany sisters, born in 1889 and 1891, were small children, they could sit anywhere they pleased on streetcars in their hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina.
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Growing Up, or Just Growing Older?: Shifting Patterns in American Adolescence
“Nine girls in uniform stretch in a circle on an AstroTurf indoor soccer field. They do the same stretch at the same time for the same amount of time.” This first stage direction in The Wolves introduces us to the activity that the 16- and 17-year-old characters will do for most of the play: warming…
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About Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens was born February 7, 1812, the second of eight children. His father, John Dickens, worked as a naval pay clerk, but his poor financial habits landed him in debtor’s prison when the younger Dickens was 12. While the rest of his family was imprisoned with his father, Charles was forced to work in…
Artists
Lies, Truth and Theatricality: Thornton Wilder’s Vision
Nearly each day of the year, somewhere in America, an actor strides on stage and declares, “This play is called Our Town…The name of the town is Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire—just across the Massachusetts line: latitude 42 degrees 40 minutes; longitude 70 degrees 37 minutes.” ...
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A Different Kind of Matchmaking: Pairing Actors with Their Roles
“If Juliet is represented as a girl ‘very like Juliet’…..moving about in a ‘real’ house with marble staircases, rugs, lamps and furniture, the impression is irresistibly conveyed that these events happened to this one girl, in one place, at one moment in time. When the play is staged as Shakespeare intended it, the bareness of…
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Prison Pageantry: Inside Buen Pastor’s Annual Beauty Competition
The women pose seductively, hands on hips, mouths stretched into toothy smiles. Their sequined bustiers and miniskirts glisten as the two-foot-tall feathers on their headdresses shift lightly in the breeze. They would be at home on the Las Vegas Strip. Instead, they are inmates in Buen Pastor Prison in Bogotá, Colombia. And for a brief…
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Bringing Beauty to Life: A Conversation with Another Word for Beauty Playwright José Rivera
A few weeks before rehearsals began for Another Word for Beauty, Academy Award-nominated playwright José Rivera sat down with the Goodman’s Dramaturg Neena Arndt to discuss his research, the themes of the play and Colombian beauty pageants. Neena Arndt: How did you become interested in Buen Pastor Prison, the facility in Bogotá where a beauty…