WELCOME to #TheatreClique — my emphatically intermittent newsletter dedicated to encouraging you to click out to some of the most interesting, intriguing & noteworthy writing about drama, theatre & performance (at least, so says me)…
This Week's #TheatreCliquery:
This installment of #TheatreClique clicks out to pieces that invite us to consider the long arc of critical practice, integrating creative captioning in the theatre, and crafting process maps that chart human networks defining our creative journey — plus my commentary on some recent productions I’ve encountered, including The Unknown, Wilderness Generation, and The Elementary Spacetime Show. And for this week’s opener, I lift this hilarious, essential, and probably NSFW public service announcement from the good folks at #F*ckCancer (h/t to my longtime pal Brad) …and if clicking the embedded image below routes to an error message, try clicking here.
EDITOR’S NOTE: whenever possible, whenever linking to paywalled pieces, I try to “gift” the article to #TheatreClique readers. In other words, clicking out to articles in the New York Times, Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, Atlantic, and Wall Street Journal should neither present hassle nor burn through your current allotment of free views. Here’s hoping more outlets — hello LATimes! hi NewYorkMagazine! yo NewYorker!— adopt similar technologies for subscribers soon...
#NowClickThis…
Wherein I highlight a handful of the most click-worthy links I’ve encountered in the last few…
at Cote Notices, veteran theatre writer David Cote issues this week’s must read — a measured meta-meditation on “the American Theatre in the 21st Century” as considered between two plays by David Lindsay-Abaire;
at Howlround, dramaturg/caption-designer McClain Leong details the artistry and impact of “creative captions” — or “approaching captions as a design element [that] incorporates them into the world of the show”;
The New York Times’s Dwight Garner reviews Rhae Lynne Barnes’s new book, Darkology: Blackface and the American Way of Entertainment as “a major and thrilling work of American history [that] deals out uncomfortable truth after uncomfortable truth”;
at the New York Public Library Blog, theatre writer/librarian Zachary Cohn surveys three notable attempts to musicalize Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth — the first by Leonard Bernstein with Betty Comden and Adolph Green, then by Kander & Ebb, and finally by Ethan Lipton — and concludes that “all would agree on [that it’s] togetherness that gets us through trouble by the skin of our teeth”;
at The Paris Review, freelance writer/critic Rhoda Feng offers her characteristically illuminating take on the proliferation of Antigones this season, noting that “it’s not hard to hazard the reasons for the renewed popularity of the Theban protestor who challenges the authoritarian rule of her uncle, King Creon, and is subsequently put to death”
at The Hat, theatre writer/dramaturg Dezi Tibbs profiles Bigfoot!’s breakout star Jade Jones, a “plus-sized, Black, queer, nonbinary performer [who] was discouraged from pursuing acting at the start of their career”;
and at Squiggle & Heart, theatermaker/advocate Lynne Marie Rosenberg reflects on how the practice/technique of developing one’s own process map as a reminder of how “your artistic journey is not about the thing you are making, but the people you gather along the way.”
Thoughts from That One Theatregoer Who Likes Pretty Much Everything:
Wherein I offer capsule commentaries on what I liked best (or found most compelling) about the shows I’ve recently engaged... A full accounting of my 2026 theatregoing can be found HERE.
#057: The Unknown
Written by David Cale • Directed by Leigh Silverman • NYC : Off-Broadway • StudioSeaview via League of Live-Stream Theatre • April 2026.
David Cale’s The Unknown unfurls a consistently intriguing tale of liminal/psychological horror that taps into the irreality of becoming lost in the idea of someone else. The Unknown also provides a delightful showcase for Sean Hayes, whose stealthy precision (especially vocally) distills the feeling of palpable precarity — the collision of uncertainty and urgency — that drives the central character’s devolution over the course of the brisk hour or so. (I confess to finding it tricky to write about Sean Hayes and the elliptical tonality of The Unknown without thinking immediately of Anthony Rapp and the narrative propulsion of Touch. Both plays spin compelling full-length monologues out of the terrified ramblings of middling, mildly horny middle-aged gay writers oscillating between self-aggrandizement and self-abnegation.) I wonder if my experience of The Unknown via livestream might have obscured the evidently intricate lighting and sound design characterizing Leigh Silverman’s production. I’m likewise not sure whether encountering it as a “remote performance” tips The Unknown experience perhaps further into abstraction while simultaneously creating a consistently fascinating vacuum of emotional uncertainty. Even so, I think it interesting that my remote experience shares Helen Shaw’s “in theatre” sense that The Unknown’s “pleasures are very quiet ones [like] I was listening to radio drama on a rainy night, or as if someone were reading me a familiar story, but I’d forgotten the ending.” I find my thoughts of The Unknown remind me of the peculiar eeriness of a particular subset of lesser-known Twilight Zone episodes that I find fascinating to re/watch in part because I’m never entirely certain whether I’ve seen them before… A consistently intriguing work of solo drama that I sincerely hope to experience again, if only so that I can revel in the eerie uncertainty that stirs when I begin to wonder “have I seen this before?”
See also:
at Theatrely, independent theatre writer/critic Joey Sims highlights how The Unknown is a “mind-scrambling solo work” that “lingers, unnervingly”;
at Lighting & Sound America, critic/editor David Barbour reminds us that “the fungibility of identity is Cale's theme, and his skill at keeping one guessing is, if anything, sharper than ever” in The Unknown.
#058: Wilderness Generation
Written by James Ijames • Directed by Taibi Magar • Philadelphia • Philadelphia Theatre Company • April 2026.
Though presented with forthright comedic realism, James Ijames’s Wilderness Generation also stands as a remarkable theatrical experiment. How might a playwright build the dramatic architecture of a family dramedy that is not overdetermined either by intergenerational transmission/trauma, or by birth order conflicts among siblings, or by the proximity of living next to (or on top) of each other? In Wilderness Generation, Ijames takes the trickier task of evincing the intra-generational intimacies still active among cousins who haven’t been in the same room together for years. Such is the scenario of Wilderness Generation. Four cousins have been summoned by their not-to-be denied Grandma Bobbie to return to the family home to help pack everything up in preparation for the home’s impending sale. What Grandma Bobbie left out of this summons? Grandma Bobbie would be in Cancun with her prayer group so it’s up to the cousins to follow her list of instructions and — ahem — figure it out. Ijames punctuates this scenario with a handful of additional plot points: Nicole’s brought her influencer/artist boyfriend Donovan along and no one’s seen Micah for years (and for good reason). And while I suspect/hope that future iterations of this script will evince more dynamic plotting for this rich scenario, the formidable accomplishment of this Wilderness Generation is the sensitivity and precision with which Ijames creates a dramatic vocabulary for the distinctively charged familial intimacy that can exist among grown cousins. And both the acting ensemble and director Taibi Magar rise to Ijames’s challenge of finding how to express the depths of connection felt among this motley bunch, while simultaneously charting the prickly reality of the time, distance, and past actions that estrange them. As one who came up alongside a cohort of cousins who will forever be part of my internal architecture, I found the world created within this Wilderness Generation deeply moving, marked by irrational laughter — the brilliant scene with Smitty and Micah preparing for bed — and by eruptive pain. But it was the sequence where the cousins, in spontaneous and uncertain collaboration, somehow together remember the worlds of the James Weldon Johnson poem that Grandma Bobbie insisted they recite? That simple scene sang with a spirit that called me to believe in the myriad truths layered within this Wilderness Generation.
See also:
for BillyPenn/WHYY, veteran Philadelphia arts/culture writer Jane M. Von Bergen digs into how Wilderness Generation takes up the question of “what happens when the center [of a family] no longer holds? What keeps cousins – first, second, once-removed, twice-removed – connected?”;
at TheatreMania, independent theatre writer/critic Cameron Kelsall reads Wilderness Generation as Ijames “trying to slot his entry into the sweepstakes of important American family plays”;
The Broad Street Review’s Kirna Pandey highlights how Wilderness Generation “entertains on a scene-by-scene basis, where Ijames’s penchant for lived-in banter is on full display.”
#059: The Elementary Spacetime Show
Book and Lyrics by César Alvarez & Emily Orling • Music by César Alvarez • Directed by Dante Green • Montclair, NJ : Montclair State University (Alexander Kaiser Theatre) • April 2026.
César Alvarez and Emily Orling’s The Elementary Spacetime Show might be aptly described as an irreverent pop-punk musical about queer teen suicide. I might also characterize it as a truly heart-opening piece about the complex experience of suicidality that deftly but emphatically rejects the familiar narrative habits and tropes entrenched by the “sensitive” and sensationalizing depictions of teen suicide that have become commonplace since the 1960s. With exuberant musical theatricality, Elementary Spacetime Show activates a meta-theatrical scenario — an existential game show — to rehearse new empathic and representational vocabularies for comprehending (and connecting around) the constellation of thoughts, feelings and choices that comprise suicidality. It is not an overstatement to say that my first encounter with this musical in 2019 forever transformed how I think, how I speak, and even how I feel about suicidality as a human experience. With a heart as big as its ideas and stuffed with gloriously tuneful songs voiced by a memorable ensemble of hilariously/horrifyingly humane characters, The Elementary Spacetime Show came to glorious life in this production — so skillfully directed by Dante Green — at Montclair State University. (Click through this dazzling slideshow for a hint of the many thrills of Orling’s design and Green’s staging.) Special shoutouts to soon-graduating-senior Jack Gemmell — who played my favorite character Rhubarb with a sly but tender wit — and to first-year students (?!?!) Elena Domenico (as Eunice x9) and Andrea Avilés (as Razmush) who kinda totally knocked my socks off. Avilés especially helped me to delight in the wild mix of fury, filth, and fun that animates Razmush as an avatar of our fear/shame around our own physical bodies. (Her horrifying yet hilarious costume — basically a bouncy bundle of earthtone polyps — also helped.) And Leilani Ford’s tender yet fierce and beautifully sung performance as Alameda — at the vulnerable heart of this rich, dark, funny and deeply-felt show — underscored the particular potency of this production as an offering by an ensemble of dazzlingly skilled musical theatre artists (all still teens or not so far from being teens themselves) embodying the complexity of this dazzling musical about queer teen suicide. I count myself a fan of the show and I thrill at the possibility that, with more productions like this, many more might have the chance to become fans of Elementary Spacetime Show and, in so doing, become curious about the rest of César Alvarez’s extraordinary musical/theatrical catalog.
See also:
The Montclairion’s Daniel Scharf celebrates how The Elementary Spacetime Show “is not just a show about suicidality, or what it means to die [but rather] a musical about the importance to keep on living”;
Playbill’s Margaret Hall highlights this weekend’s concert presentation of The Elementary Spacetime Show at Lincoln Center's David Rubenstein Atrium (more info here).
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