Performance Critiques
Celebrating The Thanksgiving Play
Lydia Heberling and the review team bring essential context, highlighting the necessity of Native stories coming to Seattle stages, beginning with Larissa Fasthorse's satire about the complexity of the Thanksgiving Holiday and performing whiteness.
And In This Corner: Cassius Clay Reminds Us That All the Greats Were Once Children
Sara Porkalob applauds Seattle Children Theatre’s production of And In This Corner: Cassius Clay, the origin story of Muhammed Ali, the “activist, champion, musician, and poet who would shape the political conversation around Black oppression, empowerment, and white supremacy.”
Ghostly Historical Knowledge: SCT's The Journal of Ben Uchida: Citizen 13559
Viewing Seattle Children's Theatre's production of The Journal of Ben Uchida: Citizen 13559, Steph Hankinson and the review team remind readers that we can be "challenged (both emotionally and intellectually) by encountering the ugliest, most complicated parts of history" through the powerful tool of performance.
Politics Again, Politics Otherwise: Lingering Questions from Frost/Nixon
Jenny Van Houdt and the review team query and answer the questions brought up by Strawberry Theatre Workshop's timely production of Frost/Nixon: Why This Play? Why Women? Why Here and Now?
Queer Performance in Unsafe Spaces: The Nance Looks Back at New York Theater's Censorious Past
Liz Janssen and the review team provide much-needed additional historical context for ArtsWest's thought-provoking and well-performed production of The Nance.
The Curse of Gender and Empty Promise of Urbanization in Modern-Day China
Kate Forster and the review team uncover the possibilities of the "unrealized potential" in Desdemona Chiang's "puzzling interpretation" of The World of Extreme Happiness.
Bad Apples: Who Let This Happen?
Sara Porkalob asks "who let this happen" of Jim Leonard's Bad Apples—a semi-fictional rock musical account of the 2003 prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq at ACT Theatre.