Gunderson, Smith, Spector Unfold Personal Crisis by Patricia L. Morin Aurora Theatre has come up with an experimental, three-part, audio thriller called “The Flats”—part play and part character study. Three local playwrights and their director have collaborated on a drama centered on the terror of a looming world disaster—akin to what we face…
Anna Deavere Smith Reignites Struggle over Police Brutality by Patricia L. Morin Twilight: Los Angeles, the PBS movie, resurrects the explosive problem of police brutality. Raging riots ignited over the acquittal of four officers who savagely beat Rodney King on March 3, 1991. Now, thirty years later, we are faced with the murders of…
Shakespeare Gets Dangerous in Women’s Prison Setting by Kim Waldron “Mischief, thou art afoot,” and it’s thrilling. In Director Phyllida Lloyd’s “Julius Caesar,” the actors appear as inmates in a women’s jail, fighting to mount their production under prison authority. First, a young woman shyly explains how she ended up in jail; then the…
Emily Mann Highlights Steinem’s Fabulous Feminism by Barry David Horwitz Emily Mann’s Off-Broadway play “Gloria: A Life” offers a shocking timeline of how professional women were treated from the 70s onwards. The rights women enjoy today were unheard of when Gloria Steinem started working in New York as a journalist. Bosses tried to seduce…