Arts & Culture:
The premiere of Waiting for Lefty, by the legendary Group Theater in New York in 1935, was as sensational as the first performance of The Rite of Spring...
By Steven G. Kellman
3/13/2013
Arts & Culture:
The charlatan is a mainstay of American musical theater. Think Barnum, 110 in the Shade and The Music Man. And the most charismatic of these...
By Gregg Barrios
3/6/2013
Arts & Culture:
In one of the most notorious episodes in the history of modern art, Nelson Rockefeller ordered the destruction of a mural he had commissioned from...
By Steven G. Kellman
1/28/2013
Arts & Culture:
The carpas, the traveling tent shows that entertained working-class audiences throughout Mexico and the Southwest during the 1920s and 1930s, offered a...
By Steven G. Kellman
9/19/2012
Arts & Culture:
Families fare badly in Western drama. Oedipus kills his father, Lear's daughters connive against one another, and Ibsen's Nora walks out on her husband and their...
By STEVEN G. KELLMAN
8/22/2012
Arts & Culture:
Setting a beautiful standard for the new Overtime Theater, I-DJ, written by Gregg Barrios and directed by Matthew Byron Cassi, explores aspects of the late 1970s...
By Lauren A. Silva
8/1/2012
Arts & Culture:
The New York nights were sultry when H. L. Mencken coined the term "ecdysiast" to describe Gypsy Rose Lee, a star of Minsky's Burlesque during the Great Depression.
By Scott Andrews
8/1/2012
Arts & Culture:
In 1979, when Bent premiered in a London production starring Ian McKellen, homosexuality was still actively persecuted and prosecuted as a sin and crime. Gays and lesbians were still invisible in...
By STEVEN G. KELLMAN
7/25/2012
- Woodlawn tackles mental health with rule-breaking, Pulitzer-winning 'Next to Normal'
It's next-to-impossible to categorize Next to Normal, but here's a shot: it's a cross between a high-energy rock concert and op-ed column on psychopharmacology. If that seems an awkward hybrid, the show nevertheless boasts friends in high places: the musica
| 7/11/2012
- David Crabb dishes queer Saytown goth to the rest of the world
Storytelling comes naturally to playwright and San Antonio native David Crabb.
In his solo show Bad Kid — that captivated audiences this year off-off-Broadway...
| 6/27/2012
- Fiction leads to murder in 'The Pillowman'
Ronald Ibbs, Maureen Halligan, and David Bowen once bestrode the boards of San Antonio stages. Trinity and Incarnate Word hosted professional productions, and...
| 6/20/2012
- Cellar production short-circuits 'In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play'
What's the buzz? Well, for starters, the San Pedro Playhouse has inserted The Vibrator Play into its Cellar (ahem), and in some ways it's a competent...
| 6/13/2012
- 'God of Carnage' exposes atavism in a bourgeois living room
For its 2011-12 season, AtticRep has transformed its home, the Attic Stage at Trinity University, into a laboratory for domestic mayhem.
| 5/16/2012
- 'Cries That Bind' dissects the 'tsunami of the soul'
The sardonic theme song of M*A*S*H assures us that: "Suicide is painless." But bungle the sword stroke during seppuku, and you can count on excruciating agony before...
| 4/11/2012
- 'Six Degrees of Separation': Sometimes the stranger is closer than blood
Inspired in part by a real-life incident in which a young black man charmed his way into the homes of wealthy white New Yorkers by pretending to be the...
| 2/15/2012
- Mary Poppins delivers Banks children from snootery in style
I’m not so proud as to turn up my nose at the obvious wordplay: the touring production of Mary Poppins is, like its titular nanny, practically perfect.
| 10/3/2011
- Ballot count: ‘Ugly People’ at Overtime
How has politics responded to the 24-hour news cycle?
| 8/31/2011
