Theater
In Conversation
Power & Punk: New York's Avant-garde Lifers
Mac Wellman with Sara Farrington
My interview for this issue is with playwright Mac Wellman. Over the course of his nearly 50 year career as a writer, Wellman has taken the form of playwriting and bounced it around the room like a kid with a Super Ball. He is prolific, his voice unmistakable, his plays feats of contemporary playwriting, a modern-day Beckett.
In Dialogue
How to Live a Best Life, With Melisa Tien
By Matthew Paul OlmosThe term “living your best life” is an identity concept which seems rampant on social media—this idea that whatever we might be doing with ourselves, living one’s “best life” is completely in our own hands; it is a readily available utopia should we choose to live it. For Tien, this play came from the process of seeing this concept of a “best life” against the backdrop of the “real racial and economic divides” which were being heavily reported in the media while she was writing.
Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?
OZET Lands at The Brick
By Adam R. Burnett
Upon first witnessing this work in 2012 I was immediately disoriented by the specificity of the world. As if walking in on the middle of the narrative, I kept asking myself, “Am I missing something?” Not that I didn’t feel cared for, but that, by design, it didn’t matter which part of the story I entered—the audience is a welcome addition at any point in the ever-expanding world of the OZET.
In Conversation
Looking Back, and Forward, as Ma-Yi Celebrates 30 Years of Innovative Work
By Billy McEnteeThe Obie and Lucille Lortel award-winning theater company started out in 1989 producing solely the work of Filipino American writers; while that has evolved, so has the theater’s definition of what a “Ma-Yi play” is. And that’s a strength: in a company whose ethos and blessings are fortified by its creators, each new playwright brings with them—to Ma-Yi’s numerous productions and artistic programs—their own world and experiences to expand and delight the company’s evolving landscape of thought-provoking, envelope-pushing American plays.
