The Brooklyn Rail

In Dialogue

Quincy Long’s People Be Heard

Quincy Long’s new "comedy with songs" opens on members of a middle-America school board singing the pledge of allegiance, a gesture filled with the lofty political and philosophical scope of words like "Republic," "Liberty," and "Justice."

WEB EXCLUSIVE: From Outrage to Stage: George Packer’s Betrayed

The story of how George Packer’s play Betrayed was produced would be a dream if it weren’t borne of a reality that’s so maddening and so tragic.

Process and Production: Summerworks 2008 at Clubbed Thumb

Since 1996, Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks festival has evolved from a budgeted production of a single, featured play (accompanied by a swarm of smaller, unbudgeted productions performing in off-times) to its current format of three fully-budgeted productions of new plays.

The Meltdown Should Be Televised

You know Michelle “Shells” Haylie Hoffman. Or you know her type—fancy drinks, break-the-bank shoes and brand names flying from her lips like signal flares to any moneyed, available men in the vicinity—“I know what’s hot, so I am hot!”

Every Word Ever Written…and One

Jason Grote’s 1001 is a story about stories—stories as identity, stories as culture, stories as survival, stories as everything: fantasy and reality, hope and despair, creation and annihilation (and so much more).

Our Town 2007: Colin Denby Swanson’s Atomic Farmgirl

Colin Denby Swanson’s Atomic Farmgirl paints Fairfield, Washington as the epitome of one vision of the American West. It’s farm country, a land of clear, blue sky and limitless fields filled with wheat, barley, cows and horses; a peaceful place where humans, animals and crops live closely and depend on each other in a way that seems old-fashioned, lost in time.

Something Old, Something New: Lisa D’Amour and Katie Pearl’s Bird Eye Blue Print

What does it do to a play when you move it from the place and time for (and from) which it was conceived?

From Outrage to Stage: George Packer's Betrayed

The story of how George Packer’s play Betrayed was produced would be a dream if it weren’t borne of a reality that’s so maddening and so tragic.

Sok! Pow! Beware the Vampire Cowboys

“Geek is good.” That’s not the motto of the Vampire Cowboys Theatre Company, but it could be. The Williamsburg-based troupe builds its productions—and its audience—by tapping an appetite for spectacle-laden shows that sport everything from undead Shakespeare characters to—no surprise—blood-sucking gunslingers.

We Are All Gooks: Qui Nguyen's Trial by Water

When I first saw Qui Nguyen’s Trial by Water: A Gook Story Part One – in a college workshop production at Ohio University in 2001 – what struck me most was how young the two brothers at the center of the play were.