#theatre

#theatre

"I haven't heard him sing yet," Flannery confesses, in answer to the burning question, when we sit down after a rehearsal in Nuns Island theatre in Galway.

I need you to take a breath. Baby, I need you to take a breath. Just stop. What's your name? What's your name? I want to know your name. I'm Cynthia. I want to know who you are. I know you're angry and I'm so sorry.

They will normally say: All right then, bye. My gran died when I was about 18, and I was sad, of course, but in terms of tears there was nothing, no water. I never cried at movies. I didn't cry on my wedding day, nor at the birth of either of my daughters. It never alarmed me. I actually thought I might have underactive tear glands.

To pass the time, the pair play a game they've shared since Daughter's childhood, triumphantly rattling off palindromes - words that read the same backwards and forwards, such as "m-o-m," "d-a-d," "s-i-s" and "r-a-c-e-c-a-r." As the game gets increasingly complex ("name now one man"), it becomes clear that Dana's play is a dark palindrome itself, where circling dialog and damaging relationship dramas repeat themselves.

Discover the history of five Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) in the museum's recently opened "At the Vanguard" exhibit throughout the month. This week, there's a curator tour about American military history on Wednesday, and a Harlem Renaissance book talk with writer A'Lelia Bundles on Thursday (exhibit closes July 19 , free, events require registration, Smithsonian NMAAHC).

I will arise and go now, for peace comes dropping slow, reads the male lead to his bed-bound partner and their dying, severely disabled newborn boy. These lines sing out in Guess How Much I Love You?, Luke Norris's new play about a couple navigating the premature loss of their child. Yeats's words capture the play's driving emotional forces: the possibility of finding peace after such profound trauma, the lifelong burn of unexpected bereavement and the temptation to end it all.

Set in a school in a small town in rural Georgia, John Proctor... centres on five female classmates who are not only studying The Crucible, but get caught up in Crucible-like events as debate whether or the play's nominal hero John Proctor is indeed the villain, as opposed to Abigail Williams, the young woman he has an affair with and then discards.

I remember laughing so hard, largely because of how Gridley, so relaxed in her comedy, played Juliet as someone who made sense to herself, if no one else, and what did she care? Gridley's comedic stance-part purveyor of nonsense, part paragon of common sense-put her squarely in the tradition of amazing women like Imogene Coca, and "Mad TV" 's Debra Wilson, comedians who made mental pratfalls a thing.

Trans trailblazer Dylan Mulvaney is no stranger to being iconic, and her birthday gives us the perfect excuse to celebrate her. The stage star has gone from strength to strength after she first entered the scene with her now-infamous "Days of Girlhood" social media series documenting her transition. Today (29 December) marks the icon's 29th birthday, and in honour of her role as a trans activist, we've highlighted some of her best moments from this year. Her debut book Paper Doll: Notes from a Late Bloomer, which is a collection of journal entries from her first-year transition, was released on 11 March this year.

Pinocchio will be staged at Shakespeare's Globe this festive season in a new musical production aimed at family audiences. The show is presented in the Globe's famous open-air theatre, with savings of up to 60% on selected performances. This new musical adaptation retells the familiar story of Pinocchio at one of London's most recognisable theatres. The plot follows Geppetto, a solitary woodcarver, who creates a wooden puppet in search of companionship and purpose.

It has a starry cast led by Nicola Coughlan (Bridgerton), who is reuniting on stage with her Derry Girls colleague Siobhan McSweeney. With fellow Irish actor Eanna Hardwicke (The Sixth Commandment) as the male lead and direction from Caitriona McLaughlin, the Artistic Director of the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, the National has plundered the emerald isle of some of its finest thespian talent for this production.

KENREX is a one man show, co-written by its star performer, Jack Holden, alongside the show's director, Ed Stambollouian. Holden, fresh from writing The Line of Beauty, which recently enjoyed a sell-out run at The Almeida, now bounces back onto stage himself, in a role portraying the entire town of Skidmore and resident bully, Ken Rex McElroy. Skidmore is a Missouri town too small and far away from anywhere to have a sheriff.

Plaisance Theatre Pantomimes and politics: Both thrive on performance, exaggeration and audience participation. In pantomimes, the audience boos the villain and cheers the hero; in parliament, political leaders are cast in these roles with MPs jeering. It's a comparison Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn understands. "Panto every day would be a good thing. Mind you, I work in Parliament so I get that already," he said.

Blue baby, of the first generationwhose hole in the heart could be closed in an operating theatrewhere the show must and did go on, you thought yourself lucky as a sicklychild, who got to spend whole days reading long books in bed.An early obsession with Louis Seize and the costume drama of Versaillesmade you the director you were, blocking actors in your head.Or so we believed; you told good stories.

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground.

"I'm doing a play in a couple of months starting in February called Marcel on the Train, which I co-wrote with Marshall Pailet," Slater tells Inverse. "I love theatre and I love doing theatre. It's something that I always hoped to be doing as much as possible, but I really love film and it's been amazing to get to do more of that."

The play is a two-hander starring Clive Owen (Closer) and Saskia Reeves (Catherine Standish in Slow Horses) as Alfie and Julie, a successful Gen X couple both aged 59 and living in Highgate. The ninety minute one-act play has the couple wrestling with the emotional turmoil caused by Alfie's terminal cancer diagnosis as they try to negotiate their way through this ultimate disruption to their comfortable life.

I'm listening to Saves the Day's Stay What You Are on the car CD-player, on the way to play Soul Caliber and hold hands with my boyfriend after school ... It's cold, and you can still hear the dull thud of the music from the goth club in the basement under the sushi bar, and I'm wearing a cheap polyester corset, and I think I'm about to be kissed

Acting is like quicksilver. It's difficult to pin down exactly what makes one actor great and another merely good. As a critic, you can run the gamut of the thesaurus and it's still hard to capture a truly great performance with your pen. What, then, of an actor's whole oeuvre? How do you convey their career in a meaningful way, so mercurial is the talent, so ephemeral is the product they leave behind, especially when major parts of their career are on the stage?

Tom Hanks is a star who's always had one foot squarely in the past. As an actor he's forever been likened to James Stewart, a reincarnation of the charming, essentially good American everyman, a from-another-era lead who's increasingly been more comfortable in period fare (in the last decade, he's appeared in just four present-day films). As a producer, he's gravitated toward historical shows such as Band of Brothers, John Adams and The Pacific;