Tagged: theater

A dark secret haunts a rural Illinois farmhouse where a once-proud family molders in disgrace in Sam Shepard’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Buried Child.” The play is sometimes described as a dark comedy, and its humor does serve to occasionally diffuse the almost stifling tension that pervades the play. But ultimately, “Buried Child” is a disorienting tragedy about the dissolution of the American family and the legacy of shame that causes one household to unravel and curl violently inward.

The more things change, the more things stay the same. 2,500 years after Aristophanes first suggested women could end a war by kicking powerful husbands out of their beds in “Lysistrata,” the idea is still compelling to playwrights and politicians alike (a Michigan state representative recently suggested a similar strategy).

It’s no wonder the wedding has been a staple of stage comedy since Shakespeare’s time. A wedding has all the elements of a stage production: a supporting cast and two romantic leads, an audience, costumes and even a script. The effort of producing a real spectacle can bring even the most experienced stage manager–or wedding planner–to his knees. 

The Bard’s Town Theatre is resurrecting the ancient Greek story of Lysistrata in the premiere of a new comedy about sex, politics and patriotism.

Five years ago, when playwright Jordan Harrison began writing “Futura,” the death of print still sounded like an ominous prophecy, one that could be enlarged into the stuff dystopian fantasies are made of. Today, that dread is palpable to some, and the paperless future is almost here.