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.
Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins gives us something to think about in the opening moments of his play, An Octoroon, by Definition Theatre Company, directed by Chuck Smith. An actor (Breon Arzell) appears […]
The About Face Youth Theatre is staging an energetic and thoughtful world premiere, titled Brave Like Them, which revisits the riot grrrls punk movement of the 1990s. The movement countered […]
The play opens with a bubbly Sylvie (Melissa Young) singing and dancing to “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate” on the stage of an old New York […]
Two black men on a street corner, drinking beer. One is a college student, the other a dad talking about how he loves to buy books for his daughter. Two […]
The Prince of Denmark is going to the park this summer. You’ll be able to see a 100-minute version of Hamlet at four city parks in July and August. Venues […]
On the surface and in all its promotional materials, Steppenwolf Theatre’s startling new production of Taylor Mac’s Hir (pronounced “here”) is about transgender people, and the state of being nonbinary. […]
Lela & Co. sounds like a chic boutique, a business story. And it is. It’s a horrifying story of a woman alone in a conflict zone. The business theme is […]
Six friends sit around a table, in a weekend home outside Chicago. The table is covered with the detritus of dinner. Wine glasses are filled and emptied. Several conversations are […]
The American Theater Company is remounting its stirring documentary play, The Project(s), this month, performed in an abbreviated 50-minute version by the ATC Youth Ensemble. The production, which tells the story […]
Two 3CR writers—Nancy and [Karin]—went to see Erik Jensen’s one-man performance of the life and times of rock critic Lester Bangs. Nancy wrote the review and Karin added comments. This […]
Ah, Wilderness!, Eugene O’Neill’s only comedy, is a charming, light-hearted play with an element foreign to most O’Neill scripts: a happy ending. The hero, teenaged Richard Miller (truthfully played by […]
[soliloquy id=”14888″] Larry Broutman, a Chicago-based photographer, has traveled over the world in his quest for travel and wildlife images. He has concentrated on remote tribal cultures and African […]