At Central Square Theater, a tale of bird brains and human hearts
Beyond Words is based on Irene Pepperberg’s life and career, which she has devoted to studying how parrots think and communicate. “She never gives up, and she risked everything,” says playwright Laura Maria Censabella. | Boston Globe | March 2024
The unpredictable experiment
From Proof to Behind the Sheet, the Sloan Foundation has supported hundreds of plays about science and scientists. What can we learn from this still growing body of work? | American Theatre | March 2024
Opening the door to drawing
A new interdisciplinary course uses art to ask a fundamental anthropological question: What does it mean to be human? | MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences | January 2024
The social life of poetry
Joshua Bennett makes an appreciative noise when the poem’s final words, I am spring, hang in the air. He poses a now-familiar question to the class: “Where’s the heat? What’s strange? What’s familiar?” | MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences | May 2023
Breaking out of the box
The title of dreamlike dance-theater piece The History of Empires refers to the rise and fall of civilizations. But to director Dan Safer, the realities we construct for ourselves can be seen as fragile empires in microcosm. | Arts at MIT | November 2022
Steady pull
A 1971 experiment on the surface of the Moon inspired Christian Frederickson and Gregory King’s immersive audio and video installation The Hammer and the Feather. | Arts at MIT | May 2022
Kirsten Greenidge, close to home
The Luck of the Irish playwright debuts two new plays drawing on her family dynamics and Boston roots. | American Theatre | March 2022
Turning emotion into sound
Three questions for composer Elena Ruehr, whose Requiem honors personal and global losses. | MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences | February 2022
Physicist and novelist Alan Lightman on 10 years of the Catalyst Collaborative
“The playwrights were getting good ideas about plays that involved science and the scientists were learning how theater people think about the world.” | MIT Spectrum | April 2015
Object of art: Chance Magazine puts stage design in focus
Designers and photographers unite to produce, of all things, a new paper magazine. | American Theatre | September 2013
Shakespeare & Co. goes to Bulgaria and back with Sfumato Theater
How the U.S. company used Bulgarian performance techniques to better understand Chekhov. | American Theatre | May 2013
Plunging into character: a grueling photo shoot puts actors’ training to the test
Tim Tadder had been experimenting with underwater photography. Would the MFA students be willing to portray Shakespearean characters for him—while plunging their heads repeatedly into a swimming pool? | American Theatre | April 2013
Matthew Lopez’s sense of place
“I never purposefully set out to write a play about gentrification.” A Q&A with the playwright, whose Somewhere revisits family history to tell a forgotten New York story. | American Theatre | February 2013
Playwright Will Eno: where the dot is [PDF]
His chicken soup for the soul arrives at your table in a chipped bowl with a big fat fly floating on the surface. | American Theatre | April 2012
Fusion fare [PDF]
Nine perspectives on unexpected intersections of food and art. | American Theatre | April 2010
Stephin Merritt makes ‘Coraline’ sing [PDF]
The musical continues the composer’s track record of mixing his ideas about theater and pop songs. | American Theatre | April 2010
Interpretive dance [PDF]
Aditi Brennan Kapil’s Love Person is eloquently realistic about the wear and tear that time wreaks on relationships. | American Theatre | April 2010
Songs of innovation and experience [PDF]
Virginia Woolf’s novels push theatermakers into the unknown. Her only play holds surprises, too. | American Theatre | February 2009
The status of a symbol [PDF]
A docudrama puts a human face on Little Rock’s integration crisis — and gives voice to those who live its legacy 50 years later. | American Theatre | December 2007
Intellectual dust-bunnies at the Humana Festival of New American Plays
Human existence is messy. For me, the most satisfying plays at this year’s festival were the ones that left a few corners unswept. | American Theatre | July 2007
The outside man [PDF]
Once wary of musical theater, recording artist Duncan Sheik is doing his part to expand the form. | American Theatre | May 2006