The Public Theater — DC Theater Arts Archive

In honor of World AIDS Day, historic ‘Normal Heart’ to screen today

News Desk 2021-12-01

A Q&A afterward will feature Emmy Award-winning director Paris Barclay and members of the predominately BIPOC and LGBTQ cast.

It’s a busy summer for Jaime Lozano

Deb Miller 2021-06-17

Mexican-born musical multi-hyphenate Jaime Lozano is having a blockbuster summer, with both online and live appearances, in addition to his work on the hottest film to hit the screens. As part of the...

Get ‘A First Look at English with an Accent’ by Migguel Anggelo

Deb Miller 2021-05-12

Though the coronavirus pandemic has temporarily halted public access to live in-person shows at Joe’s Pub, the popular Astor Place venue has continued to entertain audiences with a free series of...

Coming soon from Red Bull, The Public, and MasterVoices

Deb Miller 2021-04-10

Three favorite NYC companies have new offerings making their virtual debut next week, in a variety of genres and styles. So whether you prefer a dramatization of a classic epic poem, an original audio...

The Public’s bilingual podcast of ‘Romeo y Julieta’ to star Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o

Deb Miller 2021-03-17

Director Saheem Ali continues his audio exploration of William Shakespeare’s canon with Romeo y Julieta – a new bilingual podcast of The Bard’s beloved classic Romeo and Juliet – collaborating with...

The Public Theater’s ‘Under the Radar Festival’ begins streaming this week

Deb Miller 2021-01-03

For the first time in its seventeen-year history, The Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival will be going completely virtual in 2021, with twelve days of free performances beginning on Wednesday,...

Live and online this week

Deb Miller 2020-10-19

While the pandemic shutdown of Broadway continues, New York theater artists continue to reach out to fans with virtual presentations and a few live Off-Off-Broadway events that will keep...

The Public Theater examines the ‘SHIPWRECK’ of our nation in a four-part audio drama

Deb Miller 2020-10-16

In a co-production with DC’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company (where SHIPWRECK made its American debut in February), The Public Theater presents the New York audio version premiere of Anne Washburn’s...

A benefit livestream on ‘Angels in America’ will help amfAR to fight COVID-19

Deb Miller 2020-10-05

In response to the coronavirus pandemic, amfAR (The Foundation for AIDS research) has temporarily expanded its nearly four-decade study of infectious diseases and their impact on marginalized...

Apple Family Productions’ ‘Incidental Moments of the Day’ concludes the Zoom trilogy

Deb Miller 2020-09-14

Since 2010, audiences have been following the dinnertime conversations of the fictional Apples, an ordinary white middle-class family in upstate New York. The live on-stage performances were a running...

New album releases of ‘The Michael Friedman Collection’ and ‘In the Heights’ from Ghostlight Records

Deb Miller 2020-08-17

Ghostlight Records, an independent leader in original cast recordings of Broadway musicals and solo albums by its stars, has announced two new releases in the world-premiere series of The Michael...

Alt-cabaret artist and actor Kim David Smith talks about his new live album and his musical inspirations

Deb Miller 2020-07-28

Cabaret sensation Kim David Smith just released his first concert album Live at Joe’s Pub earlier this month, recorded during one of his recurrent sold-out performance at the iconic downtown nightclub...

A telling and powerful serial podcast of ‘Richard II’ by The Public Theater

Deb Miller 2020-07-16

Although COVID-19 has caused the cancellation of this year’s outdoor summer performances of free Shakespeare in the Park, it hasn’t stopped The Public Theater from offering another installment of its...

A heart-piercing tribute to frontline COVID responders in ‘The Line’ from The Public Theater

David Siegel 2020-07-10

With the country hitting new daily highs as COVID-19 surges well beyond hot spots such as New York, New Jersey, and Connecituct, the Public Theater has produced a love letter to the medical community...

The Public Theater’s ‘The Line’ relays true pandemic stories from New York’s first-responders

Deb Miller 2020-07-08

As the coronavirus wreaks havoc on the world, and on live theater on and off Broadway, The Public Theater has responded with a virtual world premiere of The Line – an original Zoom docudrama with a...

Off-Broadway selections streaming this week from Red Bull, Mint, and The Public

Deb Miller 2020-07-05

From an expert conversation about a Shakespearean classic to a series of three rarely produced period-pieces to a documentary drama about NYC’s front-line workers in the current coronavirus pandemic,...

How to join the ‘Hamilton’ revolution

Deb Miller 2020-07-01

Founding Father Alexander Hamilton (ca. 1757-1804) was a key figure in the American Revolution, so it’s only fitting that the stage musical Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda (book, music, and lyrics)...

Significant streaming for the week of the 4th

Deb Miller 2020-07-01

While most of us will be celebrating Independence Day remotely this year, there’s a significant selection of virtual performances by New York theater artists that will enrich your 4th of July week. In...

Black Lives Matter and the universality of Shakespeare come together this Juneteenth in a powerful new video from The Public Theater

Deb Miller 2020-06-19

As part of its weekly digital series #BraveNewShakespeare, which challenges members of the theater community to create their own interpretations of what Shakespeare’s words mean to them today, The...

See who won the 65th Annual Drama Desk Awards

Deb Miller 2020-06-13

Recipients of the 65th annual Drama Desk Awards for outstanding achievements in New York theater (on, Off, and Off-Off Broadway) of the 2019-20 season were announced tonight by a star-studded roster...

Diverse online offerings to watch this weekend

Deb Miller 2020-06-11

Even though it’s remote, you can still keep your connection to the theater strong with a diverse selection of virtual offerings this weekend. From livestream concerts, original cast readings, and...

Theaters are closed but the music plays on in Ghostlight Records’ original cast albums

Deb Miller 2020-05-08

Though audiences aren’t able to enjoy live on-stage performances during the ongoing coronavirus shutdown, Ghostlight Records offers cast recordings from a selection of popular musicals for digital...

The Apple Family returns with ‘What Do We Need to Talk About?’ on Zoom

Deb Miller 2020-04-28

In 2010, award-winning playwright Richard Nelson began his series of plays in The Rhinebeck Panorama, named for the town in upstate New York where he lives. After ten years of installments on the...

New release and free audio streaming of ‘Sea Wall/A Life’ from Audible Theater

Deb Miller 2020-04-27

The latest title in the popular Audible Theater series of audio-plays, Sea Wall/A Life – the sold-out New York stage hit double bill of two moving direct-address monologues reflecting on love, life,...

Audible offers free audio-plays of hits from the New York stage

Deb Miller 2020-04-04

For a limited time, Audible Theater, a division of Amazon, is offering free audio versions of a selection of popular stage productions from the past year, narrated by the original cast. So if you...

Conor McPherson takes a new approach to the jukebox musical in ‘Girl from the North Country’ at the Belasco Theatre

Deb Miller 2020-03-11

In Girl from the North Country, playing an open engagement at Broadway’s Belasco Theatre following successful runs in London and Off-Broadway at The Public Theater, Irish playwright and director Conor...

Political history repeating itself in ‘A Bright Room Called Day’ at The Public Theater

Deb Miller 2019-11-29

Tony Kushner’s newly revised first play, A Bright Room Called Day, written and debuted during the presidency of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, is back for our present time in an updated incarnation at...

An expressive revival of a ground-breaking work: ‘For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf’ at The Public Theater

Deb Miller 2019-11-17

First presented at The Public Theater in 1976, the Obie Award-winning For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf, by playwright/poet Ntozake Shange – a pioneering voice in...

A ridiculously funny and revelatory vision of East meets West in ‘Soft Power’ at The Public Theater

Deb Miller 2019-11-04

On November 29, 2015, Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang (M Butterfly) survived a potentially fatal knife attack to his neck on the street near his home in Brooklyn. That unprovoked (and...

Review: ‘Sea Wall/A Life’ at the Hudson Theatre

Deb Miller 2019-08-14

Following its sold-out Off-Broadway run at The Public Theater this past winter, Sea Wall/A Life has made its transfer to Broadway for a limited engagement at the Hudson Theatre. Comprised of two...

Review: ‘We’re Gonna Die’ by Flying V at The Writer’s Center

Ravelle Brickman 2019-05-28

When Farrell Parker steps out onto the black box stage at The Writer’s Center in Flying V’s version of We’re Gonna Die, something explodes. Light and sound—literally—erupt. And while much of the...

Perfecting the ‘Burn’: Props Master Jay Duckworth on Styling the Iconic ‘Hamilton’ Song

Jay Duckworth 2018-06-25

As a Props Master, you try and read through a script and see where the big “what ifs” are, but there is always a human factor that you just can’t predict. In Hamilton, one big “what if” was the song...

‘Hamlet’ at Laurel Hill Cemetery: An Interview with Rosey Hay and Rudy Caporaso of the REV Theatre Company

Henrik Eger 2017-07-08

Every year, the REV Theatre Company fills Laurel Hill Cemetery — Philadelphia’s resting place of the rich, the powerful, and the famous — with an almost cult-like following of theatergoers, who see...

Opinion: ‘Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare, and the Fine Art of Dissent’

Andrew Walker White 2017-06-20

It’s a classic art-imitating-life-imitating-art situation: to make a production relevant, the director decks out the cast in modern dress to create the illusion that Shakespeare was writing about our...

Review: ‘Detroit ’67’ at The Stagecrafters Theater

Neal Newman 2017-04-09

Two young black men stumble upon an expensively dressed but badly beaten young white woman in the ghetto. What do they do? If it’s Detroit in 1967, you certainly can’t involve yourself with the...

Review: ‘A New Brain’ at Theatre Horizon

Madeline Marshall 2016-10-21

I definitely would not “rather be sailing…”, I would rather be at Theatre Horizon’s production of A New Brain! The hilarious and touching show follows Gordon Schwinn, a songwriter for a children’s...

An Interview with Broadway Music Director Ted Sperling on ‘An Evening with the Music of Marvin Hamlisch’ at the Library of Congress on 10/19

David Rohde 2015-10-13

What better place to celebrate the life and work of Marvin Hamlisch than right here in Washington? But the reasons for An Evening with the Music of Marvin Hamlisch on Monday, October 19, 2015 with...