Mary Wisniewski

2 weeks ago | newcitystage.com | Mary Wisniewski

It was the summer of 1980—the first season for American Players Theatre in rural Spring Green, Wisconsin. The company was performing “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” on the hilltop stage. William Borth, who hated Shakespeare, had been dragged to the show kicking and complaining. It had rained all day, but stopped before showtime. As Puck made his entrance, a mist rolled over the stage until the fairies were “knee-deep in a swirling, firefly-lit fog,” Borth remembers.

3 weeks ago | newcitystage.com | Mary Wisniewski

RECOMMENDEDThe future used to be so much farther away. We would read dystopian novels about all-knowing, killer robots and think, “That’s scary—but not in my lifetime.”Alas, the future is here now. And “The Antiquities,” an intense and sobering play by Jordan Harrison now being performed at the Goodman’s Owen Theatre, puts the monsters right in your lap.

3 weeks ago | newcitystage.com | Mary Wisniewski

RECOMMENDEDWhen audience members enter the Trap Door Theatre for Bertolt Brecht’s “Galileo,” they see a nearly naked man, sitting on a chair with his face to the wall. They learn that the man is the scientist Galileo Galilei, played by Trap Door artistic producer David Lovejoy. Galileo’s nakedness represents his real self—a visionary who tells uncomfortable truths.

1 month ago | newcitystage.com | Mary Wisniewski

Berlin during the Weimar Republic is a great setting for drama—there was jazz, decadence, political turmoil and a rising sense of disaster. It has inspired a great play—the musical “Cabaret.”Any play that takes on the same era must operate in “Cabaret’”s long shadow. “Berlin,” now in its world premiere at the Court Theatre, tells stories from the same period, with wild nightlife and Nazis on the rise.

1 month ago | lit.newcity.com | Mary Wisniewski

I love a good time-travel story. But the choices for when and where to set the “wayback machine” can be so predictable. There are many stories about hunting dinosaurs, killing Hitler and trying to save the Titanic. The focus is almost always on the big events along the traditional Western civilization timeline—here’s Shakespeare writing a new play, here’s Napoleon meeting his Waterloo. It’s rare to see something dealing with urban and non-white history.