Latest news with #playwright
Daily Mail
16 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
What's Done Cannot be Undone by Athena Stevens: I never want to know the name of the arrogant doctor who left me wheelchair-bound for life
What's Done Cannot be Undone by Athena Stevens (HQ £18.99, 400pp) Athena Stevens doesn't know the name of the doctor whose arrogance gave her cerebral palsy. She prefers not to. 'Forgiveness, I think, is easier when you don't know someone's name.' Not that she has forgiven him. His actions bequeathed her with a lifetime of wheelchair-bound disability. 'Toxic optimism' is how Stevens describes his reassurances to her pregnant mother when the baby was facing the wrong way in the womb. 'It'll be fine! She'll probably straighten herself out in a few weeks!' But she didn't. For four catastrophic minutes during her birth in a Chicago hospital, Athena was starved of oxygen. As a result, she writes, 'my body hurries itself between being so low in muscle tension that it could melt into a puddle on the floor, and then jerking upright with a full-body spasm'. Stevens has 'disarticulate speech'. Her limbs and fingers are so hard to control that she types at just six words per minute. But this highly intelligent woman's eloquence comes across powerfully when those words hit the page. Her visceral memoir is a searing outpouring of 40 years of struggles, injustices, and victories. Stevens has become a successful playwright and actress. Her 2016 play Schism (about a disabled student in love with a failed architect) was acclaimed by critics, and she was nominated for an Olivier Award. Her ambition was scotched from the start. Her mother drove Athena around theatres but each one said they couldn't see how having her 'would work'. She and her parents had to fight for everything. Financial compensation came – but, as the Shakespeare quote in the book's title hammers home, what was done could not be undone. Her mother broke the news while tucking her up in bed one night: 'You'll never not have cerebral palsy, darling. It will always be part of your life.' She eventually went to one of the best schools in America, Stevenson High School, with a full-time aide, and then on to Davidson liberal arts college. One summer, the Royal Shakespeare Company visited. Stevens got on well with them and went on to do a summer course at RADA in London. A leading lady from the company, hearing her do a Julius Caesar monologue, said: 'This is going to be a long, uphill battle, but you have to do it. You have to pursue acting. It's going to take your fire to blaze a trail.' Reading this memoir you learn how litigious Athena can be. Most recently, she sued the Globe Theatre, where she was working as an Associate Artist. An actor friend had foolishly showed her some photos of his girlfriend topless. 'In the UK,' she explains, 'eliciting any sort of unwanted sexual activity, including showing people images that they did not consent to see, is legally sexual abuse when it is done to a 'vulnerable adult'.' When she heard that the Globe was about to hire him, she raised safeguarding concerns. They went ahead anyway, and put the project she was involved in on hold. So she sued them – for safeguarding issues, discrimination, harassment and victimisation. They reached a settlement in March this year. Throughout this impassioned narrative, Stevens returns to those fateful four minutes. 'The Very Bad Thing done to me on the Very First Day is something I cannot fix. And the weight of bearing it should not be mine.'
New York Times
21 hours ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Robert Wilson, Provocative Playwright and Director, Is Dead at 83
Robert Wilson, the acclaimed theater director, playwright, choreographer and visual artist who mounted wildly imaginative stagings of his own works — including collaborations with Philip Glass, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Lady Gaga — as well as contemporary operas and classic plays from the standard repertory, died on Thursday at his home in Water Mill, N.Y. He was 83. His death was confirmed by Chris Green, the executor of his estate and the president of the Robert Wilson Arts Foundation. He did not specify the cause, saying only that Mr. Wilson died after a brief illness. Tall, soft-spoken and a conservative dresser, Mr. Wilson looked more like an accountant than an avant-gardist with a long résumé of provocative productions. But there was nothing conventional about his sense of the stage. He often said that he was less interested in dialogue and a narrative arc than in the interaction of light, space and movement, and that even when he watched television, he turned the sound off. Early in his career, Mr. Wilson established a working method in which new pieces would begin not with lines of text but with richly detailed visual images, which he would either draw or describe in detail in a 9-by-12 ledger he carried with him. 'I've had the idea for a long time of a room with lots of books, all placed neatly on shelves, and something slicing through the shelves,' was how he described his startling vision for his 1977 theater piece 'I Was Sitting on My Patio This Guy Appeared I Thought I Was Hallucinating.' In an interview with The New York Times shortly before its premiere, he went on: 'There is a telephone, and a telephone wire. There is a scrim or gauze over the front of the stage, and images are sometimes projected on it.' (In its subsequent review, The Times took note of the work's 'monstrous title.') Dialogue would find its way into the ledger later in the process. It might be fragmentary and repetitious — or there might be none at all. The seven-hour 'Deafman Glance (Le Regard du Sourd),' from 1971, and the 12-hour 'Life and Times of Joseph Stalin,' from 1973, were entirely silent. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Rose Leiman Goldemberg, 97, Dies; Her ‘Burning Bed' Was a TV Benchmark
Rose Leiman Goldemberg, a playwright and screenwriter who wrote the script for 'The Burning Bed,' a 1984 TV movie that starred Farrah Fawcett as an abused wife exonerated for killing her husband, bringing a taboo subject to network television and into the national conversation, died on June 21 at her home in Cape May, N.J. She was 97. Her death was announced by her publicist, Alan Eichler. Ms. Goldemberg was working as a playwright in the mid-1970s when she sent a few story outlines to an unusually receptive television producer. One of them, a drama about immigrants set on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1910, caught his interest. It became a television movie, 'The Land of Hope' (a title Ms. Goldemberg hated), which aired on CBS in 1976. It centered on a Jewish family and their Irish and Italian neighbors. There were labor organizers, gangsters and musicians, and a rich uncle who wanted to adopt a child to say Kaddish for him when the time came. Such an ethnic stew was a stretch for the network, and critics loved it. 'A thoroughly charming surprise,' John O'Connor wrote in his review for The New York Times. As a pilot for a series, 'The Land of Hope' went nowhere, but it made Ms. Goldemberg's reputation, and she began receiving stories to be turned into scripts. 'Where did you spring from?' one network executive asked her, she recalled in a 2011 interview for the nonprofit organization New York Women in Film & Television. 'As though I were a mushroom.' It was Arnold Shapiro, the veteran producer, writer and director behind 'Scared Straight!,' a well-received TV documentary about teenage delinquents being brought into contact with prison inmates, who sent Ms. Goldemberg 'The Burning Bed,' a 1980 book by The New Yorker writer Faith McNulty about the case of Francine Hughes. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Lewis Treston: the 10 funniest things I have ever seen (on the internet)
I am a playwright and PhD candidate, so I've wasted much of my life watching crap online. To give you an idea: during Covid, my housemate and I painstakingly ranked different performances of Chicago's final electrifying dance number, The Hot Honey Rag. Regrettably, this article isn't about critiquing toe-tapping murderesses vying for a comeback; it's about what I find funny on the world wide web. These days, my algorithm mostly alerts me to red flags of narcissistic abuse, OnlyFans creators testing Instagram's boundaries, and some harmless astrology. Sadly, none of the current content is particularly funny, but I've gone to great lengths scrolling through innumerable chat histories to a time when the internet still made me lol. Words fail when it comes to David Lynch and Cher. Sure, this clip is funny, but it's Cher's profound vulnerability ('I get very busy being Cher then I wonder who that is?') and David Lynch's meditation on the colours of a traffic light that have compelled me to revisit this conversation time and time again. This article includes content provided by Instagram. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click 'Allow and continue'. Last year I adapted Pride and Prejudice with Wendy Mocke for Queensland Theatre in something like six months. The pressure was on, and I had two crutches to get me through: hot yoga and this rather sharp takedown of the Regency period heroine cliche. I've watched this clip countless times, and many of the lines have become everyday parlance for me in much the same way we all reference Shakespeare without even knowing it. Barry Humphries may have fallen into disrepute, but his megastar Dame Edna has an unassailable place in the pantheon of Australian talent. I want to take this opportunity to put my hand up to write on the free-to-air miniseries that will eventually get made and then nominated for a few Logies. I'll save you the trouble of trawling through hours of content – this is Dame Edna's funniest TV interview. This article includes content provided by Instagram. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click 'Allow and continue'. Sticking to the theme of megalomaniacal superstars, Alex Hines's monstrous creation Juniper Wilde is surely due for another comeback. This must be from a show that has long since closed, but the line 'I'm a shareholder; I have a right to finish' will live for eternity. This article includes content provided by Instagram. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click 'Allow and continue'. A friend gave me a weird side-eye look when I said I wanted to include this reel, but I'm doing it anyway. This presumably AI-generated dark fable had me in tears of laughter for reasons I'll eventually unpack with my mental healthcare team. For the 0.05% of people who find this hysterically funny, we must have some serious in-yun (past life connection), and it's now your job to seek me out IRL. To paraphrase Stefon from SNL, this speech by Elaine May has got everything: wit, heart, the second page of a letter written by Einstein. Honestly, I rewatch this clip whenever I need to prepare an effortlessly amusing five-minute spiel for a friend's wedding, an opening night speech or a first date. This article includes content provided by Instagram. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click 'Allow and continue'. Louis Hanson specialises in cheeky, effervescent and digestible hot Melbourne boy content. Sometimes his comedic faux-naivety is all I can handle when I'm rotting on the couch too lazy to find something real to watch. The definition of comedy is a supercut of Shelley Duvall saying her own name again and again … I am only realising now how esoteric my sense of humour might appear to the good people who read the Guardian. This article includes content provided by Instagram. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click 'Allow and continue'. It's funny because it's true – but when you realise that he's not actually joking, you can only laugh ruefully. Tears will do you no good in the face of the late capitalist technocracy where human connection is just another opportunity to create more content. Lewis Treston's recent productions include IRL at La Boite, Hot Tub at Belvoir 25A, Follow Me Home at Australian Theatre for Young People, and Hubris and Humiliation at Sydney Theatre Company. His published work is available for purchase on Playlab.
The Guardian
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Trophy Boys review – gripping and entertaining play tackles urgent issues
An Australian playwright's debut work receiving international transfers to great acclaim and extended runs is extremely rare; that it's happened twice in 12 months, along with two other starry international productions of local works, is extraordinary. Right now, the Australian voice has an increased currency on international stages – and it's our stories of power, privilege, gender and identity that are making waves. First, there's The Picture of Dorian Gray, Kip Williams' dazzling Oscar Wilde adaptation, remounted for a Tony and Olivier award winning international run starring Sarah Snook. Then there's Prima Facie, Suzie Miller's searing one-hander about a cutthroat lawyer who experiences the justice system as a victim after a sexual assault, with an international production starring Jodie Comer that was also heavily awarded (a film adaptation is in the works, starring Cynthia Erivo). Then there's Counting and Cracking, S. Shakthidharan's breath-taking 2019 debut, a family epic that played at New York's Public Theater in 2024. Now, there's Trophy Boys. Written by actor and playwright Emmanuelle Mattana (Mustangs FC) when they were 21, the play debuted in 2022 at Melbourne's La Mama and has since had sell-out local seasons as well as a twice-extended off-Broadway run under the helm of Tony Award-winner Danya Taymor. This month, the original Australian production, directed by Marni Mount, returns for an east coast victory lap, starting at Sydney's Carriageworks. Jared (Fran Sweeney-Nash), David (Leigh Lule), Scott (Gaby Seow), and Owen (Myfanwy Hocking) are the Year 12 debating team at Imperium, an elite private school. When we meet them, their trophy-deciding bout is just an hour away, and they're already cocky about their success. They're up against their sister school and clearly don't consider them competition until the debate topic and position is revealed: that feminism has failed women; affirmative. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning The boys – played here and in every production by actors who are non-binary or women – are horrified. They're feminists, they proclaim. They love women. Arguing the point will get them cancelled and might even rule out any future chances of becoming prime minister. Owen, the one dreaming the hardest of Kirribilli House, even suggests that they forfeit – largely for the optics. But the boys' thirst for the win trumps their desire to be seen as good, so they start scheming. Could they say feminism has failed women because it isn't intersectional? Could they say that getting women into CEO roles hasn't done anything to address broader gender inequities? They brainstorm, they sweat, they spray a lot of Lynx Africa – and, at one point, they even perform an energetic dance break. Then the play pulls off a bait-and-switch: a new piece of information, that shouldn't be spoiled, reaches their closed-door prep session and gives all the rhetoric being flung around the room a sudden urgency. The play is a sprint at about 70 minutes, and after the twist, it takes off: you watch personal gain weighed against women's interests in real time, as the group uses its debate skills, subtly different stores of acquired power, and their awareness of larger social dynamics to reveal the gulf between all that box-ticking politically correct talk about feminism and how many men actually treat women. The show is adjusted to fit the region in which it's being performed: the boys off-Broadway are American, but here at Carriageworks, in local accent, they are instantly and identifiably Australian, of the same social cohort of male students who created and circulated graphic deepfake images of girls from their school, or ranked girls' looks for sport. The play is gripping and entertaining, but not as incisive as it might be. Early scenes run on necessary tonal shifts: it starts with camp choreography and quick laughs that lull us into a sense of comfort to be shattered later, but the narrative throughline isn't drawn tightly enough by Mattana, or facilitated clearly enough by Mount, to make the piece feel cohesive. The performances alternate between drag-king-satire and chilling realism in ways that aren't always clear. Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips after newsletter promotion In scenes where the boys race to construct their debate arguments, the dialogue is more didactic than character-driven; a little more workshopping would probably see those talking points tied more deeply to character and to the group's interesting and occasionally under-tapped personal dynamics. For example, there's a fascinating social hierarchy in the group that only gets a glancing look-in before the plot twist; if we knew the group dynamics better in the first half, the second would be even more powerful. But it's an exciting play: bursting with urgency, laced with keenly observed behaviours filtered through a queer lens, it speaks directly to issues that are choking schools, universities and social groups right now. While its dramaturgical build isn't as sharp as its dialogue, it's the kind of play that has you leaning forward in your seat. I attended a Friday night performance, sitting among a diverse audience that skewed young, and felt a current of close attention. Leaving the venue, I overheard lively, thoughtful conversation about the play. Trophy Boys starts a conversation; the audience was continuing it. That's a valuable export. Trophy Boys is playing at Carriageworks, Sydney, until 3 August; Riverside, Parramatta (6-9 August); Arts Centre Melbourne (12-24 August); Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Brisbane (25-30 August)
