Nancy S. Bishop is publisher and Stages editor of Third Coast Review. She’s a member of the American Theatre Critics Association and a 2014 Fellow of the National Critics Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. You can read her personal writing on pop culture at nancybishopsjournal.com, and follow her on Twitter @nsbishop. She also writes about film, books, art, architecture and design.
Pegasus Theatre’s play, Dontell, Who Kissed the Sea, benefits from the poetic language of playwright Nathan Alan Davis and the production’s water theme. The work is directed by Ilesa Duncan, who […]
Is there anything as lovely as theater in the park on a warm summer evening? That’s the concept behind Midsommer Flight’s annual summer series of Shakespeare in the park. This […]
“The Underground Society for Music is a play with music about a group of musicians fighting to keep their artform alive. In spite of constant threats from government actors to stop […]
We Chicagoans have memories of the old post office. You know, the building you drive through on the Ike when you’re heading into the Loop? The one where you walk […]
Chicago-based actor Keith Kupferer is your ultimate every-man performer. I’ve seen him in many stage roles over the years (The Humans, God of Carnage, Support Group for Men, Cake) but […]
Seventeen unrelated scenes. Six actors playing nameless characters. Joy and celebration, sadness and grieving, terror and violence. But no discernible plot. Attempts on Her Life, an experimental play by Tuta Theatre, […]
The Danish Play by Three Crows Theatre is a human and relevant story about the Danish Resistance during World War II. The anti-fascists in Denmark are a small but determined bunch […]
The Prodigal Daughter, now on stage at Raven Theatre, is the third and final installment in the Grand Boulevard Trilogy by playwright Joshua Allen. The commissioned work is the third […]
The tragedy of Bigger Thomas has had many iterations since Richard Wright’s novel Native Son was published in 1940. Set in 1939 Chicago, at least two film versions and several […]
Murder in the Cathedral is a solemn play, drawn from the works of master poet and Nobel-Prize laureate T.S. Eliot. The 1935 verse play is now on stage at City […]
Last Stop on Market Street, now being staged by Young People’s Theatre of Chicago, is a children’s story with lively music and song and dance performed by six talented actors. […]
The American theater business and society in general offer plenty of opportunity for criticism of “wokeness” and efforts to satisfy all sides—both in the arts, in other nonprofits and in […]