Bess Rowen

In a world where quotations of and allusions to pop culture abound, Rick Elice's Peter and the Starcatcher provides a postmodern twist on the well-known story of Peter Pan. Sitting in the audience in the presence of such fantastic performers and beautiful staging telling a sharply creative approach to the...

When I first heard that Carmelita Tropicana, Becca Blackwell, and Erin Markey were going to be in a piece called Post Plastica, conceived and written by Carmelita, and Ela Troyano, I knew that I had to find out more about it. Without knowing anything about the plot, the fact that...

I have seen many a play that makes fun of pretentious artists and the balance of "art" and "humanity" in an artist's life. This discussion is again taken up in One Year Lease Theater Company's production of Mark Ravenhill's new play pool (no water), where one character says, "we are...

Who was Alice Paul? I'm the first to admit that if you had mentioned that name to me a short while ago, I would not have been able to answer that question. But now, after seeing Take What Is Yours at 59E59, I am happy to say that I will...

There was body paint, whipped cream, and a bodiless man. Though this may sound like just another evening in New York, it is actually a short description of Werk!: The Armitage Gone Variety Show. The double punctuation actually gives a great deal away, as this is a piece of dance/performance...

It is said quite often that Anton Chekhov believed he was writing comedies and the great beacon of realistic method acting Konstantin Stanislavski thought he was writing tragedies. I am not alone in believing that the truth lies somewhere in between, which is especially obvious today. Having said this, Uncle...

It might seem appropriate that St. Ann's Warehouse in DUMBO is ending their run at 38 Water St. (don't worry, next season they will be at a new space in DUMBO!) with a play entitled Festen (The Celebration). However, if you are expecting a happy and heartwarming party, you are...

"Fun" is not usually a word that comes to mind when William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice comes up in conversation. In fact, I have always found every single character in this play to be utterly despicable. However, after seeing Theater Breaking Through Barriers' production, now playing at Theatre Row's...

As someone who is interested in the moments between the lines, I am always thrilled to see silence used powerfully on stage. Some of the strongest moments of acting come from these nonverbal moments as actors who are beyond words communicate with the each other and the audience. However, there...

In the year 2012, the word "religion" and the concepts that follow in a chain reaction of the modern person's mind are complex and plentiful. John Lennon was famously criticized for saying that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, and more recent debates involving David Wojnarowicz's video

I've always been a fan of secret societies like fraternities, sororities, Freemasons, Illuminati, and... The Elephant Room Society? Okay, perhaps you haven't heard of the last one, but in a magical "room" propped up on cinder blocks at St. Ann's Warehouse, Louie Magic, Daryl Hannah and Dennis Diamond have brought...

"Theatre for Young Audiences" is a somewhat complicated term for me. As someone who has been on both sides of that particular theatrical equation, I have always believed that children simply should be able to see good theatre. A great production of an age-appropriate play will entertain the children as...

On my way into the theater for Geoffrey Decas O'Donnell's The Deepest Play Ever: The Catharsis of Pathos, I overheard someone ask her companion "Who 's Brecht?" I cringed, not because it is some sort of unforgivable sin not to know who Bertolt Brecht is, but rather because satires are...

In many ways it should be no surprise that on the evening of St. Patrick's Day I found myself at The Pearl Theatre's production of A Moon for the Misbegotten. My Irish heritage and my theatrical leanings found the perfect synthesis in Eugene O'Neill's drama, which is rendered all the...

At around 10 p.m. on a Friday or Saturday night on East 4th street you are likely to find a long line of people holding gold coins and small plastic astronauts or fireman. Though this happens every weekend, people are happy to come back again and again for that staple...

My mother once told me a story about a writer who said that he used to walk past people on the street and spend the rest of the day thinking about their lives. This one line story sums up a certain kind of imaginative artist, who is likely do the...

In a day and age where people lives are so often defined by what they leave behind, what happens when indivisible things get left to multiple people? In other words, what happens next if a house is left to three daughters who cannot decide on what to do with it?...

Everyone has had that moment: You hear someone say a phrase or sing a lyric to a song and you realize that you have been saying, and therefore meaning, something completely different. People confuse words like "home" and "hone" all the time, giving their language an unintentionally metaphoric dimension. In...

I'm sensing a pattern here. I know that's not unusual for me, but this one is pretty straightforward. With the New York Neo-Futurists' production of The Complete and Condensed Stage Direction of Eugene O'Neill Vol. 1: Early Plays/ Lost Plays, The Wooster Group's latest offering of Early Plays, and now...

It is said that the people with the most symmetrical faces are those that we find the most attractive. If this is true, and let's suppose it is, there is something deeply satisfying about symmetry to us humans. We enjoy it on visual level of aesthetics, but for someone like...