‘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.
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.
Ghosts of Future Passed
In Anna Ouyang Moench’s new backstage comedy, a regional theatre actor looks to avoid becoming a real-life Scrooge.
Cal Shakes’s Revels Now Are Ended
The venerable East Bay theatre, which offered classics outdoors for 50 years, is another casualty of the punishing economics of theatre since the end of the Covid lockdown.
Editor’s Note: Before the Fall
Our season preview and most-produced plays lists show a theatre scene still feeling the effects of contraction but continuing to show up for the work against steep odds.
Elizabeth Marvel, Hearing the Voices of America
In the new docu-theatre piece ‘The Ford/Hill Project,’ the words of Christine Blasey Ford and Anita Hill—and their interrogators—live again onstage.
North Carolina Stage Survives Helene, But Future Is Cloudy
There was no physical damage to the theatre building, but the company’s fate feels precarious, and not just due to the hurricane, said artistic director Charlie Flynn-McIver.
The Top 10* Most-Produced Plays of the 2024-25 Season
Heidi Schreck’s ‘What the Constitution Means to Me’ tops the list for the second year in a row (*11 due ties).
The Top 20* Most-Produced Playwrights of the 2024-25 Season
Kate Hamill and Rajiv Joseph tie for the top spot on a diverse list of dramatists and adaptors (*23 due to ties).
The Legend of Zelda
2 new books show and tell the instructive story of Arena’s path-breaking co-founder, Zelda Fichandler—both the work she did and the work she left for us to continue.
Days of Future Passed
With this issue we look forward, glance back—and direct our concerns and hopes to the world outside the theatre doors.
