This is a newsletter about American Theater.
And, when it comes to talking about productions, it's mostly about Philadelphia theater, because that’s where I live.
Plays Unpleasant aims to fill two gaps: the evaporation of local theater coverage and criticism in Philadelphia media (and almost every other market), and frank thinking about national issues in the American theater, from the perpetual crisis, to the crisis of the moment, to whatever I feel like writing about.
If you’d like to know more about what I’ve set out to do here, read on here:
A New Newsletter About American Theater
“Plays Unpleasant” is how George Bernard Shaw described his first three plays, published together under that title in 1898. Why? “The reason is pretty obvious,” he wrote, “their dramatic power is used to force the spectator to face unpleasant facts.”
My aim here is that we’ll be doing the same thing: confronting unpleasant facts about the American theater.
Okay, but who are you?
My name is Matthew. I’m a writer and I believe in theater.
I hope my work here will speak for itself, but if you want to know my credentials: I studied at Purchase College and the University at Buffalo and trained with SITI Company. I’ve done a little bit of everything in the theater, the internships hauling lights around, acting on the regional stage, directing contemporary theater, and hauling gear around for touring bands.
My adaptation of Detour for Torn Space Theater was called “effective enough to make you wake up in a cold sweat” by The Buffalo News. My first paying theater job was playing Benvolio in a really rather bad production of Romeo and Juliet. My plays have been called, “weird and wild, in the best possible sense.”
I’ve published scholarship in Theatre Journal and Studies in Musical Theatre, essays in Protean and Jacobin, and poetry in Peach Mag and Prolit. You may recall my call to action in HowlRound, “No More Mamets.”
I grew up in upstate New York and in my spare time I care for a small urban orchard. I do a little community organizing when I’m not burnt out.
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Each week will be something different, a long form review of a show, a roundup of season highlights, commentary, and even the occasional reported feature.
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