Spalding Gray splashed into the national consciousness with the epic monologue-cum-performance piece "Swimming to Cambodia" (1985), a distinctive solo show that has been on the road in some incarnation for well-nigh 20 years. He cut his teeth on Postmodern performance theory with SoHo's experimental
Italian playwright, performer, and 1997 Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo is known for his subversive political savvy and ludicrous farces. Fo has often been called the true heir of Aristophanes for his gift of outrageous political satire and slander. Fo's humble beginnings as a mime inform his comedies wi
Playwright Alice Childress blazed across off-Broadway like a supernova, startling audiences and critics with her candid, finely crafted characterizations of African Americans. Childress remarked that she concentrated "on portraying the have-nots in a have society, those seldom singled out by mass med
According to Lotte Lenya, longtime leading lady and intermittent wife of collaborator Kurt Weill, Bertolt Brecht was a brilliant and shameless appropriator of other writers' material. Whether a brilliant reinterpreter or shrewd plagiarizer -- the critics have been divided -- there's been no debate