In an American era of death and decline, where does Byrne see the path to utopia?

Featuring selections by Bethany Ides, Isaac Pool, Charles Bernstein, Matthew Weinstein, Ivan Talijancic, and more.

If you’re craving a larger dose of antihero than the typical binge watch can offer, you might turn your gaze back to Sondheim and Weidman’s Assassins. 

New York sees two of the playwright’s most recent works performed this fall, The Flick and John. She talks with Kan about her fondness for Chekhov’s plays, writing for certain actors, and the music of speech.

Oskar Eustis, the Public’s Artistic Director, and his collaborator, Hewes Award-winning set designer David Korins. Having recently collaborated on Passing Strange, among other productions, the two discuss how process makes perfect.

I first met Donald Margulies at Sundance in the 1980s. An early play, What’s Wrong With This Picture?, was workshopped and given a fine reading. 

Gabriel Byrne delivers a “painfully raw and ungracefully poetic” performance in A Moon for the Misbegotten, writes reviewer Nicole Burdette.

Who among us doesn’t harbor pipe dreams? You don’t have to be a down-and-out drunk at Harry’s bar, aka “The No Chance Saloon,” to hang onto the kind of delusions that keep us going day-to-day. 

Zoë Wanamaker’s performance in Sophocles’s Electra brought New York audiences to their feet every night in 1999. Catharsis never had it so good. Film director Bette Gordon talks to the legend.

In the old days of theater, when the play was still the thing but movies were already a fast way to make a buck, New York playwrights hightailed it out to Hollywood after the current season had gotten underway. Then by the following summer, having made a killing in the schlock market, they’d be on the train heading back for Broadway to go into rehearsal for the next season.

George C. Wolfe’s theater accomplishments are too many to list, among them Jelly’s Last Jam, Angels in America, and Blade to the Heat. He speaks with bell hooks about the various social hierarchies that his work challenges.

Joan Tewkesbury and I met this summer in Los Angeles: Immediately I was struck by the kinky combination of elements that work in rapid fire in this woman’s brain.

As far as theatre goes I wasn’t born yet, at best I am in diapers.