Tag Archives: Karen Stephens
Slow Burn Gives New Life To Matilda Musical
Slow Burn Theatre Company’s Matilda is a lesson in theater education, showing how a regional director takes a successful Broadway show and road tour and makes it his own highly entertaining production that showcases many homegrown talents from South and Central Florida.
Armature Combines Race, Politics & Sex In Call For Change
Armature premiering at Island City Stage explores racism, politics, homosexuality, marital relations in tale suffused with humor and tragedy. The deeply committed work of the cast, co-directors and design team delivers the guts of Andrew Kramer’s overarching earnest call to aggressively address the social challenges of the day. But this admirable production illustrates the script still need a bit more work.
2020 SoFla Theater: What A Long Strange Trip It’s Been
A look back at 2020: Yes, South Florida theater was crippled by the pandemic. But its acolytes remained driven to express their artistry, and patrons remained ravenous for their work. They continued to explore projects, create avenues and seek paychecks with efforts ranged from filmed full-fledged productions to monologues newly penned in bedrooms.
Racism & South Florida Theater: Changing The Dance Steps
Asked to spotlight specific problems and potential solutions, everybody had a story of racism infecting the South Florida theater community. Some cited unintentional micro-aggressions in pressure-laden rehearsals. Others underscored systemic failings whose reform will require leaders, supporters and audiences to revaluate everything from what goes on stage to who decides what goes on stage.
“I’m Still Here” SoFla Theaters Say, But What Will ‘Here’ Be?
In-depth report: Sets still standing on stages are silent pledges that these productions and theater itself in South Florida will resume – albeit in what many believe will be a different world. But what that cultural world will look like for audiences and artists could not be more uncertain, say theater professionals who have had to rethink and rethink again their plans. It’s different from when other disasters have struck Florida like hurricanes; this one may be open-ended.
Beckett’s Existential Happy Days Gifts Triumphant Performance
Thinking Cap Theatre’s stunning production of Beckett’s Happy Days, offers an unmitigated triumph of a performance by Karen Stephens expertly molded by Nicole Stodard, but to say this absurdist bleak work is not for everyone is a gross understatement. Some will downright hate it. Others will be transfixed. Few will escape without considering whether how we use the time of our lives is meaningless.
Zoetic’s American Son Harrowingly Documents Racial Tumult In America Today
American Son at Zoetic Stage doesn’t offer solutions to the complexity of race so much as explore with increasing intensity the exact craggy contours of the gulf. Christopher Demos-Brown’s play brings the audience alongside those struggling with the conflicting and seemingly irreconcilable pressures on not just African-Americans but everyone awash in the social maelstrom.
Demos-Brown’s American Son Finally Comes Home To Miamii
When Christopher Demos-Brown’s racially charged drama American Son — which has played in other cities and bowed on Broadway — finally opens this week at Zoetic Stage in Miami, it will be, as director Stuart Meltzer says, “a homecoming.”