New York

The Unbuilt City, King’s Head Theatre

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by Laura Kressly

Claudia is a reclusive collector whiling away the time in her Brooklyn Heights townhouse overlooking the East River and lower Manhattan. Jonah is a young writer day jobbing for his old university’s academic archives. He’s been sent to see if Claudia has a priceless item, long thought lost, hidden away in her home. As her life approaches it’s midnight hour, she is desperate to cling to the last thing that gives her some power and Jonah is desperate to win this commission which would financially secure his immediate future.

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Long Day’s Journey into Night, Brooklyn Academy of Music

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by guest critic Steven Strauss

On its surface, the title Long Day’s Journey into Night describes the looooong four acts it takes Eugene O’Neill’s play to chronicle the story of one day-into-night in the life of the Tyrone family. Metaphorically, it suggests how the play utilizes this micro-slice of life to depict how this autobiographical family descends from the daylight of sanity to the darkness of madness in a macro sense, and how their projected reality in the sunlight of day masks the true darkness of night lingering underneath. 

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The Seafarer, Irish Repertory Theatre

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by guest critic Steven Strauss

The Seafarer, Conor McPherson’s Olivier Award-nominated play that premiered at the National Theatre in 2006, imagines the plight of humanity as that of lonely sailors lost at sea, teetering on the safe, dry deck of morality above treacherously immoral waters. No matter how far you roam, the Devil that is your sins of the past can always find you. Walking on water isn’t a foreign concept to celestial entities. A reckoning will come, and spiritual debts must be paid.  

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We Live By the Sea, 59E59

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by guest critic Steven Strauss

Even in the current march towards greater representation across the arts for all marginalized communities, people with learning disabilities too often find themselves on the outside always looking in, literally. Though their stories have graced stages and screens throughout the years, they’re often performed by actors not personally afflicted with the depicted disabilities.

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Disco Pigs, Irish Rep

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by guest critic Steven Strauss

So there used to be this movie theater in New York City that always made me laugh by insisting on including subtitles over movies IN ENGLISH, albeit those with heavy accents. Let’s just say that this multiplex’s average clientele was of a certain age, and their diminished hearing required some help in understanding strong dialects of any kind from every corner of the world.

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Interview | ‘All roads lead to Tim Webb’: Peg Schuler-Armstrong on working with Oily Cart

by guest writer Steven Strauss

New York’s Lincoln Center invited UK-based Oily Cart to be one of three theatres from outside the US to perform at the Big Umbrella Festival, the first of its kind dedicated to such audiences.

In addition to Oily Cart’s Light Show, the one-month festival includes other one-off events, symposiums, and professional development opportunities for artists, arts professionals, presenters, and audience members interested in expanding the theatrical spotlight on this shamefully under-served community.

Simply put, major theatres around the world should really be funding such festivals all the time. To find out more about the process of bringing the Big Umbrella Festival to life, we interviewed Peg Schuler-Armstrong, the Director of Programming and Production for Lincoln Center Education, the organizers of the festival.

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