(Theater, San Diego) Somebody had to do it, we suppose; the genre’s too ripe for satire, even if it does manage to be more self-satirizing than any scripted production could possibly be. ...more...

(Theater, Opera, Santa Fe) There isn’t much discussion of Emma Goldman these days, and there are probably a lot of reasons why that’s the case; regardless of political climate or the tone of the national conversation (more accurately deemed a shouting match, currently, but we digress), there isn’t a lot of excitement to be had right now in discussing the life and politics of a Lithuanian anarchist who’s been dead more than 70 years, and probably lots of people won’t know what you’re going on about anyway. ...more...

(Theater, Richmond) Say it one more time, and it’ll start to sound really odd. Yes, well. Anyway. ...more...

(Theater, Twin Cities) Some nights, you get home and turn on the television, or the radio, or jump online, and after you’ve Drawn Something or whatever, you might – just – catch a little of the news, either local or national, and unless things have changed, drastically, you’re going to get – what? ...more...

(Theater, National) So, yesterday, Christopher Isherwood was feeling pretty bad about Broadway’s musical offerings this season. ...more...

(Theater, San Francisco) Google “don’t like site-specific theater” and you get one lonely hit. ...more...

(Theater, New York) Once, the musical adapted from the 2006 film that is pretty much a lock for Best Musical at next month’s Tony Awards, has a moment in Act I after which the show really starts to take off, an action moment, and it is: a guy fixing a vacuum cleaner. ...more...

(Theater, Chicago) A jury finally managed to convict former Chicago PD detective Jon Burge of perjury and obstruction of justice in January of 2011, nearly twenty years after he was fired from the force for using torture. ...more...

(Theater, New York) After a steady run of nearly three decades, Gerard Alessandrini shut down his satirical revue Forbidden Broadway in early 2009, reasoning that there was no way to adequately parody things like Shrek: the Musical and Guys and Dolls. ...more...

(Theater, Washington DC) Theater, thousands and thousands of pounds of theater, theater groups all across the country, new ones springing up almost every day (not all of which are replacing ones that have gone belly-up), because doing theater is fun, and going to the theater is fun, and sometimes writing for the theater is fun, even. ...more...

(Theater, Cleveland) Lauren Weedman did time on the Daily Show when it was still becoming itself (mid-2001 to fall 2002) and played a character on Hung named Horny Patty, and just by the way, if you see Lauren Weedman on the street do not yell out HEY, HORNY PATTY, HOW’S IT HANGING, because she does not like that and, thus, will not like you. ...more...

(Theater, New York) A man walks out on stage, trips over an ottoman, and falls down. A woman walks out on stage, trips over the man – who is still on the floor, writhing – and falls down, too. Then a picture falls off the wall and makes a loud noise. ...more...

(Theater, New York) A week after picking up a very surprising nod for Best Musical, Leap of Faith is done. ...more...

(Theater, Philadelphia) “Hitting the ground running” is one of the most egregious and off-putting of clichés, even as clichés go, because: it is impossible. You know how fast you already have to be going to have a chance of hitting the ground running? ...more...

(Theater, New Orleans, National) The Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola is very nearly unique among American prisons. For starters, it’s bigger than Manhattan, and functions both as a prison and as sort of a work camp. ...more...

(Theater, New York) You know, producers and directors and actors hype shows to a deafening pitch, mostly because they have to in order to avoid getting overlooked, especially when the show is heading to Broadway, because you will spend some serious money staging a show on Broadway, obviously. ...more...

(Theater, Minneapolis) The McCarthy era must have been a great time to be alive and an American. Think of the drama – never knowing if you’d be accused of being a Communist and blacklisted, unable to work in your chosen field or, really, any other, because you were a dread carrier of the hammer-and-sickle and an enemy agent and probably very very naughty besides. ...more...

(Theater, Hartford) Sajak’s pairing up again with KHON Honolulu’s Joe Moore, and no, he is not playing Oscar. ...more...

(Theater, Chicago) New York’s Public Theater did it last February, calling it, correctly, “a play for the Great Recession”, but Timon of Athens is still direly under-appreciated and under-performed, which is a shame, because – its status as a “problem play” notwithstanding – Timon is Shakespeare at his most caustic and bitter, even if we aren’t entirely sure how much of the play he even wrote. ...more...

(Theater, New York) You pay a lot of money to go to a Broadway show. You get there, and you stand, bathed in yellow light and anticipation, beneath the marquee, among all of the women in their sable coats and all the white-haired men in their two-button suits. ...more...

(Theater, Chicago) Travel is often boring and terrifying in equal measures, which is why we should not do it very much. (Also: it is very expensive and will make you tired.) ...more...

(Theater, New York) Leap of Faith, which is a musical based on a 1992 Steve Martin film about a fraudulent faith healer – yes, it is – opened officially on April 26 to less-than-glowing notices. These reviews, surprisingly, have not turned Leap of Faith into a box-office smash. ...more...

(Theater, Boise) In 2009, Andrea Caban did what everyone who lives in New York has to do once in a while – she got out of Gotham. It doesn’t matter where you go; you’ve just got to GO. ...more...

(Theater, Atlanta) The Twinhead Theatre (motto: “Yeah, we went there”) doesn’t seem to have much interest in the standard trappings of theater – you know, stages and sets and things like that. ...more...

(Theater, Austin) Death of a Salesman, you know, is back on Broadway right now, presumably still being assigned in high schools, and likely still haunting the open American highway, gingerly, gently, as more a faint smoky grey wisp of haunt than a yawning black open pit of doom. ...more...