#250629 ~ History, Technology, Legacy
Brian Eugenio Herrera's #TheatreClique Newsletter for June 29, 2025.
WELCOME to #TheatreClique — my emphatically intermittent newsletter dedicated to encouraging you to click out to some of the most interesting, intriguing & noteworthy writing about drama, theatre & performance (at least, so says me)…
This Week's #TheatreCliquery:
This installment of #TheatreClique links out to pieces considering questions of history, technology, and legacy. And for this week’s opener, I lift a remarkable short film by Nellie Kluz. Ostensibly a backstage documentary of the work that annually pours into The Great Passion Play in Eureka, Arkansas (“America's #1 Attended Outdoor Drama”). As the Kluz’s film evocatively conveys, most of the work that goes into making a play is never seen by the audience. (I was fortunate to encounter Kluz’s film between shows as part of a program at the indispensable Anthology Film Archives.) It’s a quiet stunner, thrillingly unlike any “backstage doc” I’ve ever seen. …and if clicking the image below routes to an error message, try clicking here.
EDITOR’S NOTE: whenever possible, whenever linking to paywalled pieces, I try to “gift” the article to #TheatreClique readers. In other words, clicking out to articles in the New York Times, Washington Post, Atlantic, and Wall Street Journal should neither present hassle nor burn through your current allotment of free views. Here’s hoping more outlets — hello LATimes! hi NewYorkMagazine! yo NewYorker!— adopt similar technologies for subscribers soon...— adopt similar technologies for subscribers soon...
#NowClickThis…
Wherein I highlight a handful of the most click-worthy links I’ve encountered in the last few…
The Atlantic’s Thomas Chatterton Williams ponders the bureaucracy of governmental censorship as he digs into the complicated history, impact, and archival legacy of the Lord Chamberlain’s Office (the governmental office responsible for “licensing” all public British theatrical performances from 1737-1967);
The New York Times’s Michael Paulson reflects on “Broadway’s Season of Screens” and how “high-tech storytelling is having a moment”;
at Latina Media Co, scholar/advocate Arlene Davila points to the Broadway musicals Buena Vista Social Club and Real Women Have Curves as a “call to Hollywood and mainstream media that it is possible to represent Latinx communities with depth and authenticity”;
at The New Yorker, writer Han Ong talks to editor Deborah Treisman about the “partisan passions” and peculiar intimacies of theatremaking and as dramatized in the drama of NYC indie/experimental theatre in his short story “Happy Days”;
American Theatre’s Rob Weinert-Kendt talks to Artistic Directors Lou Moreno and Nidia Medina about the enduring presence, contemporary power, and potent legacy of INTAR Theatre;
Remembrances of the iconoclastic independent experimental theatre/performance-maker and activist Diana Oh (198-2025) filled my feeds this week, attended by sensitive obituaries from Diep Tran at Playbill and Laura Hill-Collins at The New York Times and a welcome reminder of Oh’s remarkable 2017 exchange with Zhailon Livingston at The Brooklyn Rail. And for a reminder/glimpse of the wonder of Diana Oh, click below…
Thoughts from That One “Critic” Who Likes Everything:
Wherein I offer capsule reviews of what I liked best — my HIGH-LIKES if you will — about the shows I’ve recently engaged...
#83: RENT
Book, Music & Lyrics by Jonathan Larson • Directed by Terence J. Nolen & Steve Pacek • Philadelphia • Arden Theatre Company • June 2025.
I should confess. RENT is one of the very few canonical musicals that I actively dislike. And not just for the well-rehearsed ethical and sociohistorical critiques of the musical, but rather I find myself weirdly allergic to the affective infrastructure of the piece. So I always enter any production of RENT warily but also with a quiet hope that this RENT might be the one to finally unlock the musical for me. Alas, while I am pleased to report that the Arden’s RENT stands as possibly the most gratifyingly engaging of any of the half-dozen or so productions I’ve encountered, it did not resolve my ongoing RENT problem. Even so, the high-likes include: Gilbert Sanchez’s slyly witty yet sensitive performance threaded Angel’s gift for seeing & tending to their community in ways that amplified the quick emotional turns of the character’s arc/reverberations; the soaring high belts of Leigha Kato and Matteo Scammell gave layered musicality to Mimi and Roger’s many duets; ensemblist Elena Camp’s vocal acrobatics took Alexi Darling to hilarious new highs; and major high-likes to Assistant Stage Manager & Video Operator Jillian Chase whose live-video mixing of Jorge Cosineau’s extraordinary video design transformed that concluding video montage into a surprisingly powerful mirror of the actual performance we had collectively just experienced. All told, ‘twas an impressive, beautifully sung, and visually potent production of a musical that, um, I just don’t like.
See also:
at The Philadelphia Inquirer, queer theatre/arts writer Frank Schierloh declares the Arden’s RENT “fantastic in flashes;”
at Philadelphia Gay News, freelance arts/film writer Liz Declan affirms that Arden Theatre Company finds new urgency in RENT.
#84: Dead Outlaw
Book by Itamar Moses; Music and Lyrics by David Yazbek & Eric Della Penna • Directed by David Cromer • NYC : Broadway @ Longacre Theatre • June 2025.
I don’t think I’ve more adored a new musical in recent years than Dead Outlaw. (It’s gotten so bad that I find I must actively resist the impulse to silently judge those who dismiss it.) Indeed, I had hoped to find a way to revisit it every month or so — to both introduce my beloveds to this show and also to at least try to figure out why I so love it — but the vicissitudes of commercial theatre quashed that fantasy. Therefore, this week’s visit was my last. So why do I love this musical? My guess (this week) is — first — it’s a savvy critique of the capitalist hustle that — next — reminds us, whether you’re a loser like Elmer or a winner like Andy Payne, that death and obscurity inevitably await and — finally — uses the shifting sounds of American music (roots to barbershop to romantic ballad to midcentury croonery and back again) to chart the experiential passage of historical time. And then there’s the not-to-be-repeated precision of Andrew Durand’s performance — a breathcatching marvel of kinetic liveliness and morbid stillness — which (all hail TDF!) I got to see from the perfect angle. (This go-round, I also finally clocked just how dimensional/essential Julia Knitel’s performance is within the peculiar alchemy of this show.) One of those weird Broadway anomalies I will likely treasure until I join its “and so are you” litany…
See also:
Playbill’s Margaret Hall charts how the folks at Dead Outlaw brought their idiosyncratic and intimate show to The Tony Awards and the Radio City Music Hall stage;
at History.com, freelance journalist Crystal Ponti mentions the musical only in passing in a profile of the long, dark, curious journey of Elmer McCurdy and his mummified remains;
#85: Eurydice
By Sarah Ruhl • Directed by Les Waters • NYC Off-Broadway @ Signature Theatre • June 2025.
Sarah Ruhl’s lovely, ruminative fugue on the imponderable losses that flow from the raining elevator of grief… Les Waters’s elegantly spare — yet somehow also giddily theatrical — production animates Ruhl’s characteristic balance of erudition, poetry, and deep wells of feeling. At center, as Eurydice, the actor/singer Maya Hawke toggles between self-centering vulnerability and expansive theatricality and somehow plausibly stirs the peculiar hurricane of emotion that swirls around her. I particularly enjoyed — and felt strangely seen by — the cranky clowning of the underworld’s judgiest backup singers, the Loud Stones (Maria Elena Ramirez, Jon Norman Schneider, & David Ryan Smith); T. Ryder Smith’s deeply unnerving physicality as the Nasty Interesting Man (aka Lord of the Underworld); and the incomparable Brian d’Arcy James’s enveloping warmth as the grieving/grieved Father. A sparkling gem of a production.
See also:
TheaterMania’s David Gordon talks to Eurydice playwright Sarah Ruhl and director Les Waters about their longstanding collaborative partnership;
at Vogue, writer/audio-producer Alex Jhamb Burns talks to actor/musician Maya Hawke about making her Off-Broadway debut in Eurydice.
#86: Cold War Choir Practice
By Ro Reddick • Directed by Knud Adams • NYC: Off-Off-Broadway - ClubbedThumb’s Summerworks 2025 (with Page73) @ TheWildProject • June 2025.
Densely plotted, deeply emotional, wildly theatrical — Ro Reddick’s Cold War Choir Practice uses the thick lushness of the 1980s as they are remembered (plush carpets, shoulder pads, bright pastels, luggage-like briefcases) as setting for this poignant yet prescient contemplation of how moments of geopolitical transition (especially when you’re a tween, or in your twenties, or at middle age) can really stir feelings of precarity, vulnerability, and crisis. We’ve got Black Panthers and Black Republicans, self-actualization cults and international penpals, a chorus of children singing for nuclear disarmament and the voices of Barbara Walters and Oprah Winfrey resounding from an always-on television. Knud Adams directs it all with a sensitively witty precision, allowing the play (and its many songs) to ring the emotional notes we most need to hear within the elaborate (and elaborately funny) narrative. Contributing to the cause is a stacked cast, including two of my all-time faves: Grace McLean serving generous helpings of exquisite vocality and slapstick physicality as a member of the Choir and Lizan Mitchell salting every line with humor and gravitas as Puddin. As Puddin’s granddaughter and sometime Choir member Meek, Alana Raquel Bowers anchors this rich swirl with great heart in one of the most impressive adult embodiments of childhood I’ve ever seen. And Nina Grollman’s ominously hilarious spy inside the Speak’n’Spell? And Mallory Portnoy deliriously deluded ex(?) cult member? And the whole design team? Who somehow, on the tiny stage at the Wild Project, made a single, scarlet-red set that somehow made every one of the play’s dozens of locations make sense? A delightful, deeply felt production that marks an auspicious downtown debut by Reddick and a thrilling conclusion for ClubbedThumb’s Summerworks 2025.
See also:
at the Clubbed Thumb website, nuclear policy expert Lynn Rusten considers Cold War Choir Practice through the context of the now-nearly-forgotten 1980s movement for nuclear disarmament;
at 3Views on Theater offers a Purview from Lexie Waddy, a Review from Ashley M. Thomas; an an Inside View from Ekimini Ekpo;
at Exeunt, freelance arts writer Nicole Serratore praises Cold War Choir Practice for its balance of “a manic, off-kilter surface… with a serious struggle underneath.”
And This Week in Fornésiana…
Wherein I highlight noteworthy recent or upcoming engagements with the life, work and legacy of legendary playwright, director and teacher María Irene Fornés...
At Nothing for the Group, writer/dramaturg/advocate Lauren Halvorsen announced a new collaboration with 3Views on Theater — Dear Fefu— “an advice column for theatre workers written by industry experts”…
