Artists should “no longer huddle in the confines of a painted box set” but instead join together to “find visible and audible expression for the tempo and psychology of our time” and dramatize “the search of the average American today for knowledge about his country and his world.” – Hallie Flanagan, Federal Theatre Project
Stick Fly [...]

Highlights on stage this month include the world premiere of a drama about evolution by a respected local playwright and an intriguing collection of plays and musicals that bring an unusual perspective to topics ranging from love and music to extinction and dehumanization. And the wait is over: a show featuring singing dinosaurs has arrived.

By [...]

Boredom is the root of all evil . . . The influence that it exerts is altogether magical, except that it is not the influence of attraction, but of repulsion. — Søren Kierkegaard, “Either/Or”
Private Fears in Public Places by Alan Ayckbourn. Directed by David J. Miller. Set design by Miller. Staged by the [...]

There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
that lift and drop a question on your plate
— From “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” T.S. Eliot, 1917
Not Enough Air by Masha Obolensky. Directed by Melia Bensussen. Set designed by Eric Levenson. Staged by the Nora Theatre [...]

More than any other art, theater asks for relevance. A play that convinces us that “this is the way it is now” can be excused many shortcomings. At any one moment there is a particular quality of feeling which dominates in human intercourse, a tonality which marks the present from the past, and when this [...]

A recent piece in the New York Times provides further proof of the increasingly pernicious stranglehold marketing exerts on the production of new voices in the theater.
By Bill Marx
Let’s face it—the fastest growing segment of non-profit hiring in the arts over the past decade or so, marketing, is now pretty much in the cultural [...]

By Bill Marx
Veteran “Village Voice” theater critic Michael Feingold has written a good column on the tragic news, for some, that the Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing, the organizations that jointly manage Broadway’s annual Tony Awards, have decided to remove the first-night theater press from the ranks of Tony voters.
Some hand-wringers charge [...]

Sometimes I wonder if Euripides saw the very texture of reality as ironic. Saw the gods in their interactions with human beings as essentially playing. A frightening idea. But at least it entails the assumption that Euripides himself was not playing. Anne Carson, in her introduction to her translation of Euripides’ “Orestes” in “An Oresteia.”

Melissa [...]

Commedia dell’arte performers doing their thing in the HTC world premiere production of “The Miracle at Naples.”

The Miracle at Naples, a new comedy by David Grimm. Directed by Peter DuBois. Presented by the Huntington Theatre Company at the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, through May 9, 2009.
Reviewed by Bill [...]

By Caldwell Titcomb

Some of the dancing feet in a scene from the Boston Conservatory production of “42nd Street.”
I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been a sucker for tapdancing – whether the unsurpassed solo hoofing of the late Gregory Hines (1946-2003) or an entire stage of unison clickety-clacking. Tapdancing was a stage staple in [...]