From a small town in Sicily called (prophetically?) Chaos, there emerged one of the comic geniuses of modern European drama. Luigi Pirandello was always ahead of his time, scandalizing hoi polloi with ultra-Modernist experiments in structure, narrative, and staging. The grandfather of the absurd '- I
In her poetical, feminist tracts, French Lacanian theorist Luce Irigaray imagines the female genitalia as a second set of lips, a second mouth if you will, a second means of communication. Playwright and monologist Eve Ensler has certainly taken that proposition to heart in her most performed work to
Growing up white, Jewish, and homosexual in the turbulent South of the '60s does not lay the groundwork for a complacent life. Finding himself a one-man experiment in the limits of tolerance, Kushner has used theater to explore issues of prejudice and community. His plays shed special light on the po
A protege of dancers Eubie Blake and Noble Sissel, 15-year-old Josephine Baker began her career on the vaudeville circuits, touring with Bessie Smith as a chorus girl. After Broadway appearances in "Shuffle Along" (1921) -- which marked the advent of the black theatrical renaissance, and "Chocolate D