Perhaps you’ve never heard of this ‘Cowboy.’
Photo courtesy of Christa Ingraham Theater artist Layon Gray directs and stars as deputy U.S. marshal Bass Reeves in M Ensemble’s Cowboy. By AARON KRAUSE If I don’t tell the stories, who will? It’s not just a rhetorical question but an attitude through which multi award-winning theater artist Layon...
Date is set for Tony Awards
Following a 15-month delay, the Broadway League and American Theatre Wing have announced a date for the 74th annual Tony Awards. The celebration will take place on Sunday, Sept. 26 in a ceremony lasting four hours, spread across two separate televised events. Audiences will learn the winners for a...
Five plays are vying for top national award
Five play finalists are in the running for a national prize which a theater critics group awards annually. Specifically, the American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) has narrowed down to five its list of potential winners of the Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award. The...
You may not have seen ‘A Christmas Carol’ like this one
Photo by Chris Whitaker Jefferson Mays, as Ebenezer Scrooge, appears in A Christmas Carol. By AARON KRAUSE Theater came alive each holiday season in Tony Award-winning actor Jefferson Mays’ childhood home. Specifically, each year, his father would read aloud A Christmas Carol “with clarity and humanity,” as Mays recalls. Meanwhile,...
Prize-winning play focuses on women’s strength and resilience
Stephanie Alison Walker By AARON KRAUSE The 2019 winner of a national award recognizing an emerging female playwright penned a piece about “the strength and resilience of women,” in the author’s words. The American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) has honored Stephanie Alison Walker with the Francesca Primus Prize....
Prominent lighting designer dies of cancer
Howell Binkley One of Broadway’s most renowned lighting designers, a two-time Tony Award winner who also received nominations for many other awards, died on Friday. Howell Binkley was 64. He succumbed to lung cancer at a hospital in Jacksonville, N.C., his wife, Joyce Storey, confirmed on Facebook. Binkley’s designs...
Play finalists for Primus Prize focus on aftermath of violence
By AARON KRAUSE How do we cope ahead in the aftermath of large-scale violence? A group of plays answer that question in ways that make the pieces stand out, said the chairwoman of a committee that recognizes the outstanding work of emerging female playwrights. From 2019, Ripe Frenzy, Benevolence,...
Which new plays will receive top national awards?
By AARON KRAUSE Six finalists for a prestigious national new play award share in common at least one timely theme, according to a new plays committee chairman. Specifically, The American Theatre Critics Association’s Lou Harry said that “a yearning for connectivity — and astute awareness of the challenges to forging...
Renowned playwright Terrence McNally dies at 81
By AARON KRAUSE SARASOTA, Fla. — Five-time Tony Award recipient Terrence McNally, the world-renowned playwright who received the Tony Awards’ Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre honor last year, died March 24 in Sarasota. He was 81 . Photo via Wikimedia McNally succumbed to complications from COVID-19, the disease caused by...
New City Players rise to the challenge of presenting the touching, honest play, ‘Falling’
Photo courtesy of New City Players Tami (Arlette Del Torro) comforts her 18-year-old severely autistic son, Josh (Timothy Davis) in New City Players’ production of Falling. By AARON KRAUSE FT. LAUDERDALE — Characters either prepare sweet foods or eat them in Falling, Deanna Jent’s heartfelt, empathy-building and beautifully-written play....
