Latest news with #BushwickStarr
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘John Proctor Is the Villain' stars Sadie Sink and Fina Strazza, playwright Kimberly Belflower on reading ‘The Crucible' for the first time
'I hadn't read it since college,' says playwright Kimberly Belflower of Arthur Miller's iconic play The Crucible. She drew inspiration for John Proctor Is the Villain from that 1953 drama and found herself compelled to reread the work — an allegory of the McCarthy era in American politics told through the lens of the Salem Witch Trials — in 2017 at the height of the #MeToo movement. A comment by Woody Allen comparing the movement to a 'witch hunt' sparked the idea to revisit Miller's play because she says her 'brain just thinks in fiction.' Belflower recently sat down with Gold Derby and other journalists at the 2025 Tony Awards Meet the Nominees press event. Set in 2018 in a small town in Georgia, John Proctor Is the Villain centers on a group of high school juniors reading The Crucible in English class when accusations of sexual misconduct begin rippling through their community and hit extraordinary close to home. 'I don't know if I would have come to the same conclusions if I wasn't re-reading it in that exact moment in time,' Belflower observes of her reaction to The Crucible, adding, 'I love to revisit things over time because they have different resonances in our larger culture, but also in your own personal time.' She believes the play has been striking a chord with young theatergoers, especially young women, because 'it's a play that takes young girls seriously and recognizes them as the smart, multidimensional people that they are, and gives them the space to be vulnerable and messy and ugly and weird.' More from GoldDerby What happens in the 'Andor' finale, and how it leads into 'Rogue One' 'Every actor likes to play a villain': Ron Howard on playing himself in 'The Studio' Krysten Ritter is returning as Jessica Jones in 'Daredevil: Born Again' Season 2 Belflower leaves the door open to reworking more Arthur Miller plays, too. 'There have been so many women playwrights who have been re-examining Miller. There's Eleanor Burgess' Wife of a Salesman. Most recently I saw the Bushwick Starr production of Julia May Jonas' A Woman Among Women, which is re-examining All My Sons," says Belflower. "Both of those, it legit makes me want to go back and reread a lot of Arthur Miller.' Unlike Belflower, John Proctor featured actress Fina Strazza had never read Miller's play as a student. While she first dove into the text to prepare to star in Belflower's work, the new play didn't influence her take on the original material. The actress, who made her Broadway debut in Matilda at eight years old, told Gold Derby, 'Even though our show has a very assertive, direct title proclaiming that John Proctor is the villain, it's really just encouraging people to re-examine historical texts and allow different perspectives, and maybe open yourself up to the possibility that the people you think are heroes might have some flaws as well.' Strazza, who plays the unflinchingly thorough, star pupil Beth in the production, adds, 'I've re-read it a few times and found different heroes and different villains. I like to think that Elizabeth Proctor is the hero of that story.' SEE Sadie Sink on her character's 'emotional rage' in 'John Proctor Is the Villain' and her reaction to 'Stranger Things: The First Shadow' When Gold Derby interviewed Sadie Sink last month, the Stranger Things and The Whale actress recalled reading The Crucible in high school but admits, 'I was just trying to make it through the year honestly. It was mostly about getting it done.' The stage veteran of Annie and The Audience knew she wanted to return to the stage after her recent film and television work and said, "When John Proctor came along, it just felt like it was something that spoke to me but also could really matter and felt like really important work that needed to be shared on the biggest scale possible, and I didn't know that meant Broadway at the time.' John Proctor Is the Villain is the most Tony-nominated Broadway play of the season with seven citations. In Gold Derby's latest odds, the drama ranks second in Best Play and could be a challenger to the frontrunner Oh, Mary! The play also ranks second in the all-important Best Director category for Danya Taymor, who pulled off an unexpected victory last year in the musical director category for her work on The Outsiders. Elsewhere, the play ranks third in Featured Actress for Strazza, Featured Actor for Gabriel Ebert, and Sound Design, and fourth for lead actress Sink and in Lighting Design. SIGN UP for Gold Derby's free newsletter with latest predictions Best of GoldDerby Sadie Sink on her character's 'emotional rage' in 'John Proctor Is the Villain' and her reaction to 'Stranger Things: The First Shadow' 'It should be illegal how much fun I'm having': Lea Salonga on playing Mrs. Lovett and more in 'Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends' 'Death Becomes Her' star Jennifer Simard is ready to be a leading lady: 'I don't feel pressure, I feel joy' Click here to read the full article.
New York Times
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
In Two New Works, the Power of Generational Connections
Adam Gwon's new musical, 'All the World's a Stage,' is an unassuming, 100-minute marvel that follows a closeted math teacher at a rural high school in the 1990s. Like some of that decade's gay-themed indie movies, including the earnest 'Edge of Seventeen' and 'Trick,' this musical is not looking to reinvent the wheel with its storytelling, but is charming, specific and appealing in its rendering of gay life outside the mainstream. Ricky (Matt Rodin), a 30-something teacher with a new job, befriends a kind secretary, Dede (Elizabeth Stanley), and meets Sam (Eliza Pagelle), a rebellious student in whom he finds a kindred love of theater and simmering need to break free from societal expectations. They bond over 'Angels in America,' the new risqué play and the source of her monologue for an acting scholarship audition. But her selection threatens the school administration's conservative sensibilities. At the same time, Ricky is striking up a romance with Michael (Jon-Michael Reese), the owner of a gay-friendly bookstore in a slightly more progressive town where he's settled down. When Ricky's two worlds inevitably collide, they do so with well-crafted wit. Gwon's yearning, pop-classical score flows together beautifully, yet is composed of numbers distinct enough to allow the four excellent cast members to flex their skills. That balance between individuality and unity proves a key theme, expressed in the title's idea that each of us is always adapting our performance across circumstances. (He also has fun with some clever lyrics, at one point setting up 'hara-kiri' to seemingly rhyme with 'Shakespearean.') The director Jonathan Silverstein draws warm portrayals from his troupe (matched by a quartet playing onstage) in his modest, efficiently staged Keen Company production at Theater Row. Jennifer Paar's costumes are instantly evocative; button-up shirts and wire-frame glasses for the teacher and bomber jackets for his pupil. Patrick McCollum's movement work is gently expressive and Steven Kemp's scenic design is similarly to-the-point, with a bookcase or chalkboard rolled in as needed, a lone student desk and an American flag hanging ominously in the corner. Gwon locates in each of his archetypal characters a unifying love of art. Whether it's Dede's penchant for schmaltz like 'The Notebook,' or the radical zines Michael sells, they all seek escape through culture. This disarmingly powerful show aims for the same, and lovingly succeeds. At the Bushwick Starr in Brooklyn, Shayok Misha Chowdhury is engaging in his own generational classroom performance in 'Rheology.' Chowdhury, a writer and director whose 2023 play 'Public Obscenities' wove together academia and deep sentiment, this time enlists his mother, the physicist Bulbul Chakraborty, for a theatrical take on exposure therapy. The short, presentational piece in which they both star is clear in its ambitions: Chowdhury cannot bear the thought of losing his mother, so decides to see what staging her death might feel like. How this all unfolds is its own delight, with a lively structure that's a mishmash of scientific lectures, traditionally staged scenes and meditations on how the two have grown closer by seeing each other passionately pursue their work. Mother and son have a natural stage presence that prompted me to consider the nature and reality of performance. (When I saw the show, just as I thought it was all too heady, an audience member ran out crying during a frank discussion of parent mortality.) As in 'Public Obscenities,' Chowdhury plays with form and language. The show is performed in English and Bangla, and uses supertitles, live camera feeds, singing, and a cello accompaniment, by George Crotty, reminiscent of the melodrama in both Bollywood and in Bernard Herrmann's film scores. Krit Robinson's lablike set, Mextly Couzin and Masha Tsimring's lighting, Tei Blow's sound and Kameron Neal's video designs shine in a surreal moment toward the end. Like his earlier works, 'Rheology,' named after the study of the flow behavior of substances, combines Chowdhury's Bengali heritage and knack for rigor (his father, too, was a scientist) with his own artsier, more American tastes. For a promising artist in New York theater, it feels like a special new intervention in the sandbox he's claimed for his exploration.
