“A lot of people in Boston don’t associate Malcolm X with being a Boston figure. They don’t claim him. Let’s rediscover our own heroes and reclaim them and understand the complexities of who they were.”
DETROIT RED: MALCOLM X COMES OF AGE IN BOSTON
theater
RESPONSES TO OUR “CULTURAL REHASH” EDITORIAL
A range of views from readers
PASS OVER
A theatrical look at race in America
THOTBOT HOTSPOT: HOW A GLITCH TEST BEGAT A TRANSMEDIA NARRATIVE
"Perspective, belief, memory, social class, education—among many other things—all play a role in shaping how we see and act in the world, but ultimately we are the creators."
LOL ON TRAGEDY
A speedy taste of all things Shakespeare
EDITORIAL: WHY SO MUCH CULTURAL REHASH?
Is the decades-long economic crisis for working people leading to less relevant art?
CHIVALRY MEETS TEQUILA
At odds with ICE and in search of the Mexican Dulcinea, Quixote Nuevo is reborn as the shining knight of Chicanos
PEAK ARTISTIC EXPERIENCE: BOSTON’S LARGER STAGES DON’T NEED TO BE MORE LIKE THE MOVIES. THEY NEED TO BE MORE LIKE THE SMALL STAGES.
Boston’s larger stages don’t need to be more like the movies. They need to be more like the small stages.
‘ADMISSIONS’ AT SPEAKEASY: WHEN WHITENESS IS REFLECTED BACK AT ITSELF
While it is easy to dismiss this group of wealthy parents as depraved, morally bankrupt, and awash in white privilege, Harmon’s Admissions illustrates the length at which high-minded, politically correct, and supposedly “woke” white liberals will also go to get their children into top-tier colleges and universities.
DE-MORONIZING AMERICA: JOHN LEGUIZAMO ON 3,000 YEARS OF LATIN HISTORY
"The show is a call to action. Everybody has got to do something every day. You’ve got to call your senators, write to your congressman, run for office, get out and vote, register people to vote, call the networks."
THE DREAMER: I REMEMBER GOOGLING, ‘WHAT HAPPENS TO A US CITIZEN CHILD IF AN UNDOCUMENTED PARENT IS DEPORTED?’
"It feels increasingly cruel to offer what amounts to be a fairy tale, when in reality she may need great strength to overcome great threats."
THOTBOTS AND GLITCH TESTS
Glimpsing Boston’s dystopian future through the eyes of Reagan Esther Myer
“IS YOUR THOTBOT GLITCHED?”
The question is posed on an ominous neon-green flyer hung on my commute through Harvard Square.
I ended up taking the “glitch test” that the flyer advertised during my hour-long ride home and discovered that my ThotBot, a fictional government-authorized brain implant, was broken.
I chuckled. It wasn’t the first time this gay man was told that my brain was “defective.”
Those five minutes I spent filling out this glitch test on my phone was just a quick glimpse into the dystopian world Rebecca Kopycinski has dedicated four years to carefully crafting and fine-tuning for the Boston community to explore.
“Instead of using the same media, I’m taking the same idea and taking all of these disciplines that I’ve learned, and I’m creating many different multimedia works on one topic,” said Kopycinski as she enthusiastically described her complex and imaginative creation. “So the universe, it’s like a black hole and everything just gets sucked in.”
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BOSTON’S FIRST BUTOH FESTIVAL: APRIL 19-21
ALLEGED LESBIAN ACTIVITIES OPENS A LESBIAN BAR ON STAGE
REVISING HISTORY: PHOTOGRAPH 51 AT CENTRAL SQUARE THEATER
SPAMILTON TOO NICE FOR SATIRE
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As far as Boston theater goes, Hamilton is out and Spamilton
is in. Of course, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical juggernaut about the founding fathers is (sadly) far
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ENDLINGS DIVES INTO KOREAN-AMERICAN IDENTITY: AN INTERVIEW WITH ACTOR JIEHAE PARK
Celine Song’s Endlings, which has its world premiere next month at Cambridge’s American Repertory Theater, is a strange, fantastical work with a lot on its mind. It centers on three aging haenyeoes—female divers from a centuries-old Korean tradition—on the rather desolate island of Man-Jae and on Ha Young, a Korean-Canadian playwright in Manhattan struggling to tell her story.
Dealing with issues of identity, creative authenticity and the lack of visibility for marginalized communities, it drew the attention of Jiehae Park, the Korean actor/playwright who plays Ha Young. I spoke to Park on the phone about the play and about the challenges of being an immigrant artist sharing a personal story. Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
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The character, as written, is very much pure Celine, but since there is this Venn diagram of our experiences as Korean-born playwrights working in America, we share a lot. We understand each other because we’ve had to jump through the same hoops and have been asking many of the same questions. I can relate to it but it’s all Celine.
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The fact that the play touches on so many things that my peers and I are all wrestling with felt like it would be helpful for me to be asking these questions through her lens. As a writer, I tremendously admire the imagination and courage of the things she does in this play, which is wild. It just explodes a lot of ideas about what people think a play has to be, and that’s so exciting to be around.
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THE LITTLE FOXES CREW MAKES CASE FOR HELLMAN
Lyric Stage considers Lillian Hellman’s opus and legacy
The Little Foxes
cuts straight into the heart of American morality at a time when the nation is at a turning point. With women striving for
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AT NEW REP, HEARTLAND FAILS TO SHOULDER ATLANTEAN BURDEN OF MESSAGE
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The impact of American propaganda on Afghani children is admittedly a difficult subject to understand and explain,
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SMALL MOUTH SOUNDS
Director Bevin O’Gara Speaks About Play With No Talking
For a play in which the characters aren’t allowed to speak, Small Mouth Sounds says a lot. The play, by Bess Wohl, follows its characters on a comedic and poignant journey in self-reflection and mutual understanding at a spiritual retreat. Director Bevin O’Gara, a Huntington Theatre alum, is returning to Boston—this time at SpeakEasy Stage—to work on Small Mouth Sounds. DigBoston spoke with her about the play and about coming back to the city for this project.
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So it’s about six individuals who go to a silent meditation retreat somewhere in the Northeast, and they’re all going through their own struggles, their own difficult times, they’re all there to look for some sort of solace. And so they’re silent. They’re not allowed to use dialogue, or words, to communicate. And it’s all about the miscommunication that happens there, and the connections that are forged, in that and the foibles and happenstance that losing that means of communication allows.
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I became aware of this play pretty quickly after it gained popularity in New York. I love finding alternative ways to communicate. I think that communication between individuals is utterly impossible. And I love plays that explore how we are so isolated and yet share so much at the same time. And I love that this play took away the words from sharing in those joys and those pains and still found a way of expressing that. I hadn’t read anything like it before.
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Oh, dear God, I hope that that’s what theater does because, I mean, I’ve based my entire life on that pretense. I think this play explores it in very unexpected ways. I think the goal of theater is to see yourself in the other or to see the things that we all share. But I think the way that this play communicates that and conveys that is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Silence is the story. It’s the inciting incident. If these characters had words, none of the play would happen. Silence takes away everything from these characters, but also gives them utter permission to be who they are at this retreat.
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IT’S A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL
Winter People at the Boston Playwrights’ Theater
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It’s a particularly East Coast feeling—the eeriness of a summer resort in winter, when February
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LAND HO, SO-SO: TWELFTH NIGHT AND SHIPWRECKED! IN REP AT MOONBOX PRODUCTIONS
★★☆☆☆
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FRONT PORCH PUSHES THEATRICAL DIVERSITY
A new black-led Boston theater company prepares its inaugural season
The hard truth about Boston is that it’s a fairly racist city. It’s evident in its social dynamics
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A.R.T. CHEERS ‘EXTRAORDINARY’ DECADE
ALL BARK, NO BITE IN AKA THEATRE’S IN THE FOREST, SHE GREW FANGS
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Once upon a time, there was a play. And in this play, presented by Also Known
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THE RIGHT WAY TO DO SLAPSTICK COMEDY IN THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG
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After drinking and spitting out scotch
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THE SALONNIÈRES AIMS FOR BITING CRITIQUE, HITS DATED COMMENTARY
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It’s easy to see what the set of The Salonnières
is trying to do. It’s an opulent room filled with ornate couches and chairs—Renaissance paintings hung on the walls. But the most
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ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN: EQUIVOCATION BY THE ACTORS’ SHAKESPEARE PROJECT
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Beneath the cavernous gothic arches of a church nave, two men sit hunched over a wooden table. “Your works will last,”
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MICHAEL GREIF, IN THE RING
The A-list director readies Man in the Ring at Huntington Theatre Company
For Michael Greif, it’s all about context. The four-time Tony Award-nominated
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A SOARING FUN HOME AT SPEAKEASY STAGE
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Based on the 2006 best-selling graphic memoir of the same title by Alison Bechdel, Fun Home
recreates Bechdel’s childhood and adolescent memories: how she loved drawing and despised dresses, how she came
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