By Dale King Leave it to students in the master of fine arts program at Florida Atlantic University to wrap up their first season — one that featured some shockingly emotional, nerve-twisting, heart-wrenching productions — with a shockingly emotional, mentally twisted finale. The show, Next to Normal, is a frank portrayal of a family in psychological crisis. The tale of … [Read more...]
Student theater: Compelling ‘Mill Fire’ at FAU
By Dale King Mill Fire is a horrific, haunting and deeply emotional play, a story of Birmingham, Ala., a steel town on the skids circa 1977; a massive, deadly fire and explosion in an apparently malfunctioning steel mill furnace that kills five workers; and the chaos the disaster inflicts on a community whose populace is already at the edge of upheaval. The script, by … [Read more...]
At FAU, a ‘Frankenstein’ of the mind as well as body
By Dale King Student actors at Florida Atlantic University have brought the Frankenstein story to life in a frightening retelling of the novel written exactly 200 years ago by Mary Shelley, wife of English romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and daughter of pioneering feminist thinker Mary Wollstonecraft. This show differs markedly from versions popularized since the … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: June 9-10
Film: I have rarely recommended a horror film, but Ari Aster’s directing debut, Hereditary, is so creepy good, with a stunning central performance by Toni Collette, that it exceeds the genre. She plays a woman disturbed by the recent death of her mother, whose genes have apparently infected the family and set in motion a series of tragedies. When her stoner son reluctantly … [Read more...]
#MeToo and the young actress: Three FAU thespians view the road ahead
By Janis Fontaine The #MeToo movement that exploded onto the cultural scene in 2017 with allegations of sexual misconduct against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein – who was indicted this week on rape charges in New York – has upended the careers of major figures in entertainment, media and government, among other professions. Palm Beach ArtsPaper sat down in April with … [Read more...]
Gogol it: FAU’s ‘Government Inspector’ shows good satire never really dates
By Dale King Student actors in Florida Atlantic University’s Department of Theatre and Dance have finally been loosed from a hurricane-prompted delay that postponed the opening of their 2017-2018 season from October to the period just before Thanksgiving. As a result, the political satire, The Government Inspector, written by Nikolai Gogol in the mid-1830s and adapted … [Read more...]
FAU’s Wayzgoose celebration ‘makes book’ in Boca
By Myles Ludwig John Cutrone is a tireless cheerleader for the hand printed and the art of the book. He heads FAU’s Arthur and Mata Jaffe Center for the Book Arts (JCBA) located in the school’s Wimberly Library, a treasure chest of the book as an art; i.e. the container, rather than necessarily the contents. I am a fan. On Oct. 29, John put together the first edition of … [Read more...]
Arts Preview 2017-18: The season in theater
Keith Garsson bounces back with a sexy season of Primal Forces, Palm Beach Dramaworks produces two world premieres, Slow Burn serves up its first non-musical and in case you haven’t had enough inclement weather this hurricane season, The Wick promises to make it rain inside its theater. All in all, it looks like a promising 2017-18 at area stages. Here’s a preview, in … [Read more...]
FAU Theatre Lab launches New Play Festival this month
Florida Atlantic University’s Theatre Lab ends its second full season – its first with a slate of fully produced plays – with a New Play Festival, May 10-14, in Parliament Hall on FAU’s Boca Raton campus. The festival kicks off with an evening of short plays selected from submissions by participants in the master classes of the Playwrights Forum, led by associate artistic … [Read more...]
FAU grad students offer gripping ‘Judas Iscariot’
By Dale King Grad students in the Master of Fine Arts program at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton wrap up their 2016-2017 season this weekend with an intensely dramatic retelling of a 2,000-year-old-story with critical contemporary consequences. In fact, the play, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, is steeped in passion, and unfolds at a slow, often painful pace, … [Read more...]