Windows Onto the World: New Works in Translation
by Caridad SvichTheater
Lars Noren’s War receives its US premiere at Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre this month and a veritable stone’s throw away Peter Handke’s classic Offending the Audience plays the Flea under Jim Simpson’s direction.
Jordan Harrison, Making Language Necessary
by Deborah SteinTheater
Jordan Harrison is in previews for Doris to Darlene at Playwrights Horizons when we meet in the subterranean tearoom at Takashimaya, the Japanese department store in midtown. Here we are served a wide tray with an assortment of goodies—spiced nuts, vinegared rice with cucumber, dried pears dipped in chocolate. I joke that this tray is like his plays: many different elements arranged discretely and prepared with elaborate care.
We Must Go On: Re-directing Beckett
by Alan LockwoodTheater
A year on from Samuel Beckett’s centenary—when festivals, theater productions and conferences were held around the planet—New York City has two new productions arriving back to back that will then share the spotlight through most of January. Mikhail Baryshnikov and Fiona Shaw take the leads at New York Theatre Workshop and BAM, respectively, in just the sort of high-profile events that weren’t in great evidence here during 2006.
A Studio in the Domestic Strip: Oren Safdie with Roger Babb
by Roger BabbTheater
Oren Safdie’s newest piece, West Bank, UK, a musical on which he collaborated with composer/lyricist Robbie Cohen, is about an Israeli ex-patriot who returns to a rent-controlled apartment in London to find it occupied by a Palestinian refugee. The American landlord, unable to decide between them, suggests they try to learn to live with each other.
