Editor’s Note: Our Still-Unfolding Story
Our 2025 Winter issue launches during uncertain times—but they are precedented.
Stories by Rob Weinert-Kendt
Rob Weinert-Kendt is editor-in-chief of American Theatre. He was the founding editor-in-chief of Back Stage West and writes about theatre for the New York Times, Time Out NY, and the Los Angeles Times. He studied film at USC and is a composer member of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop.
a.k. payne’s ‘Furlough’s Paradise’ Wins Susan Smith Blackburn Prize
Their two-hander about cousins sharing grief and comparing plans for utopia is part of the writer’s growing body of work.
Jack O’Brien and André Bishop’s Final Duet at Lincoln Center Theater
With an intimate new staging of Ibsen’s thorny ‘Ghosts,’ the versatile director and seasoned producer, who’s nearing the end of his LCT tenure, are not going quietly.
New NEA Guidelines Require Compliance With Trump’s Anti-DEI, Anti-Trans Orders
Other updates include a cancellation of Challenge America grants and a new emphasis on patriotic ‘America250’ projects.
Jordan Harrison’s Emotional Sci-Fi
His new play ‘The Antiquities’ offers a kind of history of our post-human future, while a new collection of his plays suggests some common themes.
Maya Choldin Named Managing Director of New York Theatre Workshop
An arts administrator whose résumé spans Philly’s experimental ensemble Pig Iron and Canada’s mainstream Theatre Calgary, she’ll succeed Jeremy Blocker at the Off-Broadway powerhouse.
The Year’s 10 Most Popular Posts, and 10 That Deserve Another Look
It was a year of uncertainty and innovation, relevance and escapism, hate-reads and affirmations.
A Block From Shuttered Connelly, Wild Project Faces Possible Sale
It’s tough out there for Downtown NYC theatres, but one East Village venue is raising money to take control of their destiny.
Language in the Driver’s Seat in ‘Racecar Racecar Racecar’
Kallan Dana’s intimate, unsettling play, a production of The Hearth redirected from the shuttered Connelly Theatre, reemerges at A.R.T./New York.
‘Pacific Overtures’ Gets an East West Encore
Sondheim and Weidman’s masterpiece about Japan’s ‘opening’ to the West returns to an L.A. company whose history with the show is as tightly intertwined as its subjects are.
