Richard Roeper on Our Lady of the Underpass

Richard Roeper in yesterday's Chicago Sun-Times writes about the Our Lady miracle and its effect four years later.

16th Street Theater in a co-production with Teatro Vista... Theatre with a View presents Tanya Saracho's Jeff-nominated play Our Lady of the Underpass on the 5-year anniversary of the Holy sighting on Fullerton Avenue.

We will be cheering Tanya on as she competes against herself for Best New Play at the Jeff Awards on October 18. She also is nominated for her play Kita y Fernanda which we produced last fall here at 16th Street.

Tanya also is up against Pulitizer-prize winner Lynn Nottage, Masha Obolensky and the excellent Lisa Dillman. All women, I might add.

Keep the faith!

Read Roeper's full article here.

Anna Deavere Smith's new play in New York

Anna Deavere Smith's latest show Let Me Down Easy is now playing at Second Stage Theatre in New York. Below is a brief excerpt from an in-depth article published September 30 in the New York Times about Ms. Smith and her work, including Fires in the Mirror which 16th Street produced earlier this year:

A theater critic once wrote that Smith doesn’t impersonate characters so much as she does impressions of their souls. As lovely as that sounds, it’s not what she’s striving for. Her project, since the ’70s, she told me, has been about trying to understand “the relationship of language to character.” She explained: “By that I mean the rhythms, the sounds people choose to make while they’re speaking.” Pursue those, she argues, and you’ll get somewhere interesting, even if it’s not precisely inside their heads or inside the part of you that can relate emotionally to what’s inside their heads. Read the entire article by Susan Dominus here.

Thanks, Kathleen, for passing this article on. Enjoy!