Theater

In Dixwell, White Flight Script Rings True

by | May 20, 2013 3:22 pm | Comments (2)

Allan Appel Photo

Lillian Brown listened intently to a scene from a play about white flight in a mythical American town in 1959.

It didn’t take the 95-year-old veteran Newhallville political activist long to add some lines of painful autobiographical fact to the compelling fiction she’d just heard: When we came in [to Division Street] to purchase our house [60 years ago], the white families all put their houses up for sale.”

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There Goes The Neighborhood

by | May 17, 2013 12:03 pm | Comments (0)

T. Charles Erickson Photo

LeRoy McClain and Jimmy Davis in Clybourne Park.

Natalie Holder-Winfield: “We don’t question ourselves.”

Fifty years after white flight, a white couple has returned to build a home in a newly gentrifying neighborhood — and lands in a tense scene with neighbors. It’s race,” the husband blurts out. Isn’t it?”

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A House Of Race Cards

by | May 17, 2013 12:01 pm | Comments (5)

T. Charles Erickson Photo

LeRoy McClain and Jimmy Davis in Clybourne Park.

Natalie Holder-Winfield: “We don’t question ourselves.”

Clybourne Park makes you laugh, think, laugh again, cringe. Then it rips a super-glued Band-Aid off of liberal white skin, exposing all the raw, tribal bias white people prefer to think they don’t possess.

If that doesn’t sound like fun, you’re wrong.

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Cell Phones Don’t Exist

by | May 9, 2013 3:19 pm | Comments (2)

Allan Appel Photo

Warehouse Ensemble actors Madeline Wright, Ja’Quann Brantley, and Angelica Rodrigez.

Motha Earth checks out Wisdom Warrior and his girlfriend Patti in the new booth at Uncle Kang’s Diner. That stuff she’s dabbing on her zits? It was intended to be a magical potion to take Wisdom’s mind off other girls. Turns out it works even better as acne cream.

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3 Plays Enter. 1 Leaves

by | May 6, 2013 12:16 pm | Comments (1)

Allan Appel Photo

Actor Mitch Greenberg as the rabbi in Jonathan Caren’s Let Me Go.

The man with the maroon vest seems like an average, pleasant middle-aged guy. Then his cell phone goes off. The ring tone is the catchy I have a little dreidel” Hanukkah tune.

Is he in pain?” comes the question to his telephonic interlocutor.

A heartfelt conversation ensues about terminal illness, pain, and end of life care. It turns out the speaker is a rabbi. But he’s not talking to a suffering congregant. He’s talking to his wife — about the fate of their elderly cat Sam, who soon has to be put down.

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Co-Op Actors Go On Trial

by | May 1, 2013 8:38 am | Comments (0)

Allan Appel Photo

Johanna Delgado as St. Thomas and Cameron Twitty as the Judge, at tech rehearsal.

Johanna Delgado comes from a strict Pentecostal family. When her character St. Thomas says, mouth dripping in street-style derision, Personally Judas is a bit of a jerk-off … Actually he’s a dick,” she wonders what her grandmother, who will be in the audience, might think.

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City Hip-Hop Poet/Playwright Debuts In San Fran

by | Apr 17, 2013 1:30 pm | Comments (0)

Kevin Byrne Photo

Julius Ahn as Guang.

It’s fitting that Stuck Elevator, before arriving back in New Haven for a grand summer unveiling, is having its world premiere in San Francisco. It’s a city with a strong tradition of political theater, and New Haven’s Aaron Jafferis, who wrote the libretto, has spent his career riveted on using language, from hip-hop poetry to drama, for social change.

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Actress Seeks To Change History

by | Mar 13, 2013 12:12 pm | Comments (0)

Allan Appel Photo

Actress Lind: “Affairs with powerful people are not black and white.”

Exner: Misunderstood?

Christina Lind will change dresses often as she brings Judith Exner to life on a New Haven stage. She also aims to change how history views the mistress of both JFK and the don of the Chicago mob — to get beyond the wardrobe and the good looks.

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Condoms, Genocide—& A “Believe”-able Cameo

by | Feb 25, 2013 9:10 am | Comments (3)

Thomas MacMillan Photo

New Haven’s most celebrated guerrilla street artist got his start in New Haven dodging Yale security as he painted illegally on university property. On Saturday, he made a surprise cameo appearance as an invited guest to a high-profile event with Yale’s name on it.

True to form, he was conspicuous by his absence.

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