The playbill for Bertolt Brecht’s play The Mother suggests immediately that the drama at The Performing Garage will be unique. Brecht himself noted that the aim of the play is not to entertain, but rather to “teach certain forms of political struggle …Read more

He did warn us. When his family asks him for a ghost story, Arthur Kipps declines, on the grounds that the story he has to tell is not the type of entertaining thriller they want to hear. It’s dark, upsetting, evil. And yet, determined to finally mov …Read more

On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. It was the climax of the subprime mortgage crisis, the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history, involving more than US $600 billion in assets. Before there was Lehman Brothers, the financ …Read more

Ruben Santiago-Hudson was raised by his grandmother. So he did what any talented theater person would do-he wrote a play about her! “Lackawanna Blues” is Santiago-Hudson’s paean to his grandmother, Rachel Crosby. She was Nanny to him but to the many …Read more

“This play is hard to watch as a socialist.” Said the young man sitting next to me at Lauren Yee’s Cambodian Rock Band: a play about the Khmer Rouge regime. That performance seems ages ago now; it was the last I saw before the theatre shutdown. But I …Read more

It may sound like a grisly horror fest, but Kevin Augustine’s dance/puppet show Body Concert, performed as part of La MaMa’s Puppet Festival, is actually a gentle meditation on the human body, the interconnectedness of our separate parts, and the int …Read more

To many,“Six the Musical” was the show that was mere hours away from opening night when Broadway shut down in March 2020. A smash hit in London’s West End, the show had already created buzz and excitement and was sure to win fans in the US. But then …Read more

For whatever reason, there seems to be an upsurge in absurdist theatre lately. Maybe it’s because the last two years felt like a badly scripted Beckett play. At any rate, the newest is Randy Sharp’s Worlds Fair Inn, presented by Axis Theatre Company. …Read more

In a convertible car, speakers blaring, a woman is breastfeeding her baby when she hears someone make a derogatory comment. Enraged, she gets up and launches into an impassioned speech about the right of women to breastfeed in public. She’s furious t …Read more

Language plays a significant role in “Pass Over,” the play by Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu, whether through repetition, ambiguity or cultural references. It begins with the title referring to Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt. Most of the actio …Read more