Category Archives: History

THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY PRESENTS “TAKING IT TO THE STREETS,” AN ARCHIVAL EXHIBIT OF ITS FIFTY-FIVE YEARS OF STREET THEATER HISTORY · Aug 25th

(via Jonathan Slaff and Briana Bartenieff)

Theater for the New City (TNC), the historic Off-Broadway Venue that has produced new and avant-garde theater since 1971, is hosting a special exhibit to celebrate 55 years of its Summer Street Theater, an annual production of a new musical with book and lyrics by TNC Co-Founder and Executive Artistic Director Crystal Field. The composers of TNC’s Street Theater over the years are David Tice, Mark Hardwick, Joseph Vernon Banks and Peter Dizozza. The exhibit will feature photos, recordings, posters, print materials, costumes, props, and other memorabilia, highlighting the people, productions and cultural impact of the Summer Street Theater throughout the decades. The opening is set for Wednesday, September 16, 2026 at 6:00 PM in TNC’s gallery located at 155 1st Ave, New York, NY, 10003.

 As part of the exhibit, there will be presentations of video recordings of selected Street Theater performances from every decade from the 1970’s through present day on every Sunday from September 20 to October 25 at 7:00 PM. 

The exhibit is curated by TNC’s Director of Marketing and Development Briana Bartenieff. To do so, Bartenieff went through thousands of photos, and digitized VHS’s and video tapes going back to 1972. She writes, “It is so important to preserve these performances, to be able to make theater history accessible to all. It has been a wonderful experience to give these shows a new life, and to remember those we have lost. I am looking forward to seeing the hundreds of company members that Street Theater has impacted throughout the years!” 

A hit with audiences all over the city since its inception in 1971, the annual Summer Street Theater has made it its mission to bring new, accessible theater to people all over the city. The tours are presented annually every weekend from early August until mid-September, visiting all five boroughs, free of charge. The performances always attract a mixture of established fans and new audience members, especially families with kids. Productions always feature timely messages and stories centering on the people of New York City and their needs. Previous years’ productions have focused on subjects like social work, public transit, global warming and the ups and downs of U.S. politics. This year’s iteration, titled “The Root of It All: A Dentist’s Tale,” will be playing through September 13.

This archival exhibit is open to all, free of charge. It can be viewed in TNC’s gallery from 10:00 AM to 10:00 PM seven days a week from September 16 through October 18, 2026. In addition, there will be free Sunday screenings of performances at 7:00 PM on the following schedule:

9/20 — “Sky Salesman” / “Minding the Store” (1972, 1hr) & “Mama Liberty’s Bicentennial Party” (1975, 1hr)

9/27 — “Hit the Road” w/ documentary about TNC moving from 2nd Ave to 1st Ave (1987, 90 min)

10/4 — “Pirates!” (1997, 1hr)

10/11 — “The Patients Are Running the Asylum” w/ documentary (2001, 2hrs)

10/18 — “99% Reduced Fat or You can Bank on Us!” (2012, 1:15)

10/25 — “Socialization of a Social Worker or Justice in a Time of Need” (2024, 1hr)

 

HOW IRISH KINDNESS IN A WAR-RAVAGED FRENCH TOWN INSPIRED UNKNOWN WRITER SAMUEL BECKETT · Aug 21st

(Frank McNally’s article appeared in the Irish Times, 8/20/26; Samuel Beckett’s short poem, which appeared in The Irish Times 80 years ago, was inspired by his visits to Saint-Lô after the second World War.) 

Short poem in The Irish Times was too obscure for some, but Beckett’s time in Saint-Lô warranted a verse with deep meaning

Samuel Beckett’s short poem, which appeared in The Irish Times 80 years ago, was inspired by his visits to Saint-Lô after the second World War. 

Eighty years ago this summer, The Irish Times published a poem by a little-known writer named Samuel Beckett.

Fenced off in a box on page five, between An Irishman’s Diary and Letters to the Editor (which led with a row about the price of tomatoes), the single verse was entitled “Saint-Lô 1945“, and read as follows:  “Vire will wind in other shadows/unborn through the bright ways tremble/and the old mind/ghost-abandoned/sink into its havoc.”

The poem was too obscure for one reader, a “bewildered” resident of Sutton, who assumed “Vire” to be a common noun. The reader searched through dictionaries and found only the definitions “small ring” and “crossbow bolt”, neither of which helped.

Nor could they have, because the Vire is a small river in France, flowing through Saint-Lô on its way to the English Channel.

In fairness to the Sutton reader, it hadn’t been famous enough to make the cut for the celebrated rivers passage in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (1939), although that managed to namecheck 1,100 other waterways around the world.

Beckett’s poem was inspired by his visits to Saint-Lô after the second World War, by which time the town was in ruins, thanks its former status as German-army stronghold and a key target for Allied bombers clearing the way for the Normandy landings.

The “night of fire” that coincided with D-Day, on June 6th, 1944, reduced it to rubble. There were more bombs to come in July, this time from the retreating Germans, during the ensuing ground battle. On finally entering the town, one US soldier quipped: “We sure liberated the hell out of this place.”

So complete was Saint-Lô’s destruction that for a time afterwards, some people thought it should be left like that, as a museum of ruins.

But the surviving residents disagreed and went back to rebuild lives from the chaos. Among the international efforts to help was a project in which Beckett became centrally involved, and also wrote about – this time in prose – in June 1946.

Initially intended for broadcast on Radio Éireann (it’s unclear whether it aired), The Capital of the Ruins recorded the event in plain terms:  “On what a year ago was a grass slope, lying in the angle that the Vire and Bayern roads make as they unite at the entrance of the town .  . . a general hospital now stands. It is the Hospital of the Irish Red Cross in Saint-Lô, or, as the Laudiniens (residents of Saint-Lô) themselves say, the Irish Hospital.”

Beckett was back in Paris by the time it opened. In the script for broadcast, as elsewhere, he was typically modest about his role as the project’s store manager. But one of the doctors who witnessed it found him “terribly conscientious” in his work.

The many shortages he had faced included rat poison, then much in demand. After consulting experts at the Institut Curie, he improvised his own concoction.

His time in Saint-Lô has lighter moments too. One of the town’s few surviving houses – although shells had passed through the walls – was home to a miraculously intact piano. On visits there, Beckett played Mozart and Chopin from memory.

According to Beckett biographer James Knowlson, there were other places to de-stress too. Some of the project team were known to pass evenings in a bordello, where the ambulance – occasionally driven by Beckett – was a common sight.

By contrast, while showing a colleague around Notre Dame in Paris in late 1945, it was noted that Beckett “pounced on a little rosary beads” from a stall to bring back as a present for his assistant store manager, a devout Catholic.

Short as his time in Saint-Lô was, it had a profound effect. At the very least, it coincided with the start of “a frenzy of writing” in which, over the next few years, he would produce the prose trilogy Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnameable, as well as the breakthrough play Waiting for Godot.
(Read more)

 

SPIDERWOMAN THEATER’S BLOCK PARTY POW WOW: AN INDIGENOUS CELEBRATION, SATURDAY, AUGUST 15 (BROOKLYN) · Aug 9th

(via Ron Lasko, Spin Cycle.)

SPIDERWOMAN THEATER’S BLOCK PARTY POW WOW:
AN INDIGENOUS CELEBRATION
Saturday, August 15 in Brooklyn
* Honoring the 100th Birthday of company co-founder Gloria Miguel *

 
Spiderwoman Theater — the oldest, continually running, Native feminist theater company in the Americas — will celebrate its 50th Anniversary with SPIDERWOMAN THEATER’S BLOCK PARTY POW WOW: AN INDIGENOUS CELEBRATION on Saturday, August 15. This family-friendly afternoon of art, culture, heritage and neighborhood unity will be held on DeGraw Street between Court and Smith Streets on the border of historic Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill (easily accessible from the F & G lines at Carroll Street Station) from 1pm – 5pm. It is free and open to the public, no reservations required. For more information visit www.spiderwomantheater.org.
 
In the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s, Boerum Hill, Red Hook, and Cobble Hill were home to a vibrant Native community: Mohawks from Kahnewake, who built New York’s bridges and skyscrapers, and the Western tribes, all found freedom in NYC to practice their songs, dances, and ceremonies in the community where founding members of Spiderwoman Theater, the Miguel sisters, were born and grew up. Now, the Miguels will open up their childhood block for SPIDERWOMAN THEATER’S BLOCK PARTY POW WOW: AN INDIGENOUS CELEBRATION, a look back at the history of the community and the neighborhood where Spiderwoman was born… and Gloria, the eldest Spiderwoman, will be féted as she marks her 100th birthday.
 
On August 15, in the heart of Brooklyn, SPIDERWOMAN THEATER’S BLOCK PARTY POW WOW: AN INDIGENOUS CELEBRATION will be a sea of color with Indigenous dancers, drummers and singers. Newly announced performers include: drummers Wicozani (from CT); The Tonepahhote Dancers, Joe Cross, Alyssa Mosely and Jamie John; the soulful storytelling and shimmering vocal blend of Ms. Josephine and David Terhune with vocalists Jayden Avery Love and ISA; and Aanmitaagzi (Penny Couchie, Sid Bobb and Ouske Couchie-Bobb) from Nipissing First Nation with dancers from their Summer Arts Program. Previously announced performers include the NYC drum, SilverCloud Singers; and MC Louis Mofsie of the Thunderbird American Indian Dancers. In addition to neighborhood vendors and speakers, there will also be screened excerpts of Spiderwoman’s work and on Spiderwoman’s stoop, an excerpt of “Tipi Tales from the Stoop,” Murielle Borst-Tarrant’s one woman show. This event is curated by Josephine Tarrant.
 
SPIDERWOMAN THEATER’S BLOCK PARTY POW WOW: AN INDIGENOUS CELEBRATION kicks off a year-long celebration that will continue in Autumn of 2026 as Spiderwoman Theater takes over La MaMa’s main East 4th Street location for two weeks, highlighting Indigenous artists from across Turtle Island and the world for a unique mixture of performances, workshops and a visual arts exhibit that will be open to the public.
 
SPIDERWOMAN THEATER is the oldest, continually running, Native feminist theater company in the Americas and is situated in the NYC Indigenous and arts communities. Activism, self- determination and storytelling are at the core of Spiderwoman’s programming and is rooted in an urban Indigenous sensibility. Live theater performance and production are the vehicles by which those core principles and values are shared with our communities and audiences. Since 1976, our body of work has addressed critical cultural, social and political issues in the Indigenous and women’s communities. Our work is informed by traditional artistic expression, teachings and values which bridge traditional cultural practice and Western theater sensibilities. The practice of creating our theater is “storyweaving”, where personal and traditional stories are layered with movement, text, sound, music and visual images. This weaving of stories is the foundation upon which we build Spiderwoman productions and a framework for our training and outreach activities. www.spiderwomantheater.org

Continue reading →

EVITA (HISTORY): ‘HE WAS TASKED WITH MAKING THE BODY DISAPPEAR’: THE MACABRE KIDNAPPING OF EVA PERÓN’S CORPSE · Jul 25th

(Fiona Macdonald’s article appeared on the BBC, 7/20/26; Photo: Credit: Getty Images.)

Argentina’s iconic first lady died in July 1952. Sixty years on, the BBC looked back at her cadaver’s bizarre disappearance – and its 16-year journey around the globe.

 

A few hours after the death of Eva Perón, on 26 July 1952, Dr Pedro Ara got to work. The renowned Spanish anatomist was tasked with embalming the Argentinian first lady’s body in the same way the Russians had preserved the remains of Lenin and Stalin. The corpse of Evita, as she was affectionately known, was kept in the Ministry of Labour building, where a monument to workers was due to be built, with a glass coffin at its base that would be her final resting spot.

Warning: This article contains details that some may find distressing. 

Yet three years later, in September 1955, her husband, President Juan Perón, was deposed in a military coup and went into exile. The new regime decided to steal Eva Perón’s body – setting off a macabre 16-year odyssey. Her cadaver would be held at the Centre for Military Intelligence, stored in a van, buried in Milan, and transported to Madrid before it was eventually returned to Buenos Aires to be laid to rest in a heavily fortified crypt.

After Eva Perón died of cervical cancer at the age of 33, her husband had political reasons for having her embalmed. Her poor rural background and her charitable works as first lady had won her fervent working-class support. “So he wanted to preserve that, [by] preserving the body,” Flavia Fiorucci, a historian of Peronism, told the BBC in 2012. “It also had to do with the importance that Perón and Peronism gave to symbols, and Evita was a symbol.”

That was clear in the weeks after her death. Dr Ara was able to embalm Evita’s body in a lifelike state using a paraffin and glycerine injection technique. Two million people visited her coffin as she lay in state in Congress for 14 days, the devotion she’d inspired while alive continuing after her death.

And the symbolism of Evita’s body was the reason for the long meandering journey it took over the next 16 years. When Perón was deposed in 1955, the dictatorship led by Gen Pedro Aramburu aimed to quash all aspects of Peronism – and feared that her corpse could become an emblem of resistance.

Lt Col Carlos Moori Koenig, head of the Army Intelligence Service, moved it around Buenos Aires, paranoid that Peronists might attempt to retrieve it. Evita’s cadaver was said to be hidden in a van parked on the streets of the capital, behind a cinema screen, and inside the city’s waterworks – and wherever it went, flowers and candles appeared.

Koenig then moved the body to his office, where he allegedly stood the coffin upright, and showed it off to visitors. He was said to have become obsessed with her corpse. “I knew him from military school. He was completely normal, but after getting his hands on the body, he went mad,” said Col Héctor Cabanillas in the 1997 documentary Evita, la tumba sin paz (Evita, the grave with no peace).

(Read more)

‘A ​FRIGHTENING PIECE TO PERFORM’: ​CAN ​YOKO ONO’​S C​UT P​IECE ​STILL SHOCK? · Jul 14th

(​Janelle Zara’s article appeared in the Guardian, 7/14/2026. Photo: Cut Piece, 1964, performed at MoMA, New York. Photograph: © Yoko Ono.) 
Sixty years after its first staging, performance artist MPA is restaging the provocative piece in Los Angeles

Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind, a traveling retrospective on view at Los Angeles’s The Broad museum, features black and white footage of Ono’s 1964 Carnegie Hall performance of Cut Piece projected onto one of its walls. It was a landmark event in performance art history, in which the artist, aged 31, sat motionless on the stage as strangers took turns with a pair of scissors to cut away pieces of her clothing. As an emblem of the Fluxus artistic tradition, Cut Piece “relies on the audience’s actions to complete the performance”, says Sarah Loyer, curator and exhibitions manager at The Broad. This is precisely the work’s inherent risk: it leaves the artist’s body totally vulnerable to the viewer’s unpredictable whims. Consequently, as Ono herself told the art historian Ina Blom in a 1992 interview, “It is a frightening piece to perform.”

The tension in the footage is palpable, particularly as Ono struggles to retain her composure while a young man snips away at the straps of her undergarments. But as Loyer points out, “Looking at documentation of Cut Piece in the gallery, we are a step removed.” In order to convey the full impact of the piece, the museum is staging two Cut Piece live at the Redcat theater on 17 and 18 July to be performed by the Los Angeles based artist MPA.

(Read more)

‘A COUNTER-NARRATIVE OF HISTORY’:​ ​NYC’S SCHOMBURG CENTER’S 100 YEARS OF CELEBRATING BLACK CULTURE · Jul 10th

(Melissa Hellmann’s arti​cle appeared in the Guardian, 7/9/2026;  A photo of the Afro-Puerto Rican archivist Arturo Schomburg, a bibliophile whose personal collection formed the Schomburg’s foundation a century ago. Photograph: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Art and Artifacts Division, The New York Public Library.)
A Puerto Rico-born New Yorker’s relentless collecting on the African diaspora is still the core of a Harlem institution
Growing up in Puerto Rico in the late 19th century, Arturo Alfonson was told by his teacher that Black people had no significant history or accomplishments. He spent his life disproving the narrative by collecting art, books and artefacts that showed the opposite. At 17 years old, Schomburg settled in New York, where he used his collections to write articles about Black history for periodicals such as Negro World. In time, he became known as a pre-eminent historian and intellectual of the Harlem Renaissance.
“Schomburg always sought to collect the global Black experience,” said Barrye Brown, curator of manuscripts, archives and rare books at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. “When you look at what he was collecting, you see his vision of what the African diaspora is like … it is all around the world, it’s multilingual; there’s so many different experiences represented.”
The more than 11m items at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a New York Public Library research center, detail the injustices that Black Americans have faced, while also showcasing their culture and history. As the nation celebrates its 250th anniversary this year, the Schomburg is also honoring its 100th year of existence. The New York Public Library purchased Schomburg’s personal library of 4,600 pamphlets, artwork and books in 1926. Harlem’s population became primarily Black by the 1920s, ushering in an increased appetite for materials by and about Black people. Now, most of the staff at the center who curate and protect the items are women of color. “Schomburg was just so ahead of his time in terms of his collecting,” said Brown. “As the current curator, seeing value where others did not, I’m very proud to continue that tradition today during our centennial.”
Materials housed in the New York Public Library research center include artwork from the Harlem Renaissance sculptor Augusta Savage and items such as the author Maya Angelou’s Smith Corona typewriter. Last month, Kassidi Jones, assistant curator of manuscripts, archives and rare books, handled an early manuscript of Angelou’s autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, handwritten on yellow paper. “She would start by hand, and I think that deep engagement and that serious writing practice is part of the reason that she is the legend that she is today,” Jones said. “Everything was so meticulously thought through, it was ruminated over, it was passed over again and again and again until it sounded exactly the way that she wanted.” The Schomburg now has more than 840 boxes of Angelou’s manuscripts and personal items, making it their largest processed collection.

​(Read more)

 

ARTHUR MILLER OPENS UP ABOUT MARRIAGE TO MARILYN MONROE IN NEWLY UNEARTHED RECORDINGS · May 7th

(Donna Ferguson’s article appeared in the Guardian, 5/7/2026; Photo: Miller and Monroe in 1957. The couple began an extramarital affair in 1955 and got married in 1956. Photograph: NY Daily News/Getty Images.)

Exclusive: Taped conversations also cover playwright’s relationship with fame, self-doubt and communism

He was one of the greatest playwrights of the 20th century and she was one of the greatest actors. In newly unearthed recordings made over a period of nearly three decades, Arthur Miller opened up about his short-lived marriage to Marilyn Monroe, saying she wanted a husband who was a “father, lover, friend and agent,” and the child she longed for would have been an “additional problem”.

In taped conversations with his friend and biographer Prof Christopher Bigsby, Miller said he had felt “death was always on her [Monroe’s] shoulder – always”. He had believed that if he did not “take care of her life” she would come to a “catastrophic end”.

“One time I brought doctors to pump her out because she had swallowed enough stuff [drugs] to kill her,” he said. “So I felt she was in a very delicate psychological position. As it turned out, it took some years, but it happened. It was beyond my powers or anybody else’s to hold her back.”

Monroe’s death from a barbiturate overdose in 1962, at the age of 36, had seemed inevitable to him. “It was impossible for her to live, let alone with anybody. You couldn’t go on with that intensity of life, and those drugs, and manage to survive,” he said.

The couple began a passionate extramarital affair in 1955 and married in 1956. Miller said it took him just months to realise he had made a mistake. “I was not really prepared for what I should have been prepared for, which was that she had literally no inner resources … She wanted a father, a lover, friend, agent, above all someone who would never criticise her for anything, or else she would lose confidence in herself. I don’t know if that human being exists.”

After Monroe had a miscarriage and an ectopic pregnancy, the couple sought medical help without success, the recordings reveal. Reflecting on their loss, Miller said he felt Monroe wanted to be a mother “in an ideal sort of way”, while working under “terrific pressure” in Hollywood: “In a way, I am not sure how good it would have been for her to have a child. It would have been an additional problem … I am not sure how it would have worked out in practice.”

He described Monroe as “delightful to be with” and “a very smart woman” who had “a terrific sense of humour, irony and generosity”, but said “a kind of paranoia” took over. “She began to suspect everybody of exploiting or damaging her.”

(Read more)

SHAKESPEARE WAS ACTUALLY A BLACK JEWISH WOMAN, NEW BOOK CLAIMS · Jan 31st

(Sami Quadri’s article appeared in the Standard, 1/28.)

Feminist historian identifies Tudor poet Emilia Bassano as true author whose identity was hidden by literary establishment

William Shakespeare was a “black Jewish woman” whose work was stolen by a semi-literate businessman, a controversial new book has claimed.

Feminist historian Irene Coslet argues the real genius behind the world’s most famous plays was Emilia Bassano, a Tudor court poet who used “Shakespeare” as a pen name.

According to The Real Shakespeare, written by the LSE graduate, Bassano’s true authorship was covered up in favour of William Shakespeare, an “uneducated interloper” from Stratford-upon-Avon.

Ms Coslet contends that Elizabethan society preferred the narrative of a “white” male genius to acknowledging a black female playwright.

Bassano had intimate connections to the theatre world as mistress of Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon – Elizabeth I’s Lord Chamberlain and patron of Shakespeare’s own troupe, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men.

Literary scholars have long speculated she could be the “Dark Lady” immortalised in Shakespeare’s sonnets.

No one during the Bard’s lifetime ever disputed his authorship. Even his theatrical rival Ben Jonson praised him as a genius “for all time”.

Yet conspiracy theories have persisted for centuries, with some suggesting Christopher Marlowe contributed to the enormous body of work.

Shakespeare’s modest origins – a glover’s son from Warwickshire with limited schooling – have fuelled doubts about how he achieved such literary brilliance.

Ms Coslet tackles this directly in her book, writing: “Historians have not managed to explain how the Stratford man, a semi-illiterate moneylender, managed to gain such a level of erudition.”

(Read more)

‘THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN AMERICA’: HOW PAUL ROBESON WENT FROM HOLLYWOOD TO BLACKLIST · Jan 21st

Paul Robeson as Othello, 1944; photograph by Carl Van Vechten

(Howard Bryant’s article appeared in the Guardian, 1/21/2026.)

The groundbreaking singer, actor and athlete became a victim of McCarthyism and saw his shining career destroyed and his legacy tarnished

In August 1972, the front page of the New York Times arts section published a story titled, Time to Break the Silence on Paul Robeson? The legendary bass-baritone spent the first half of the 20th century as one of the greatest talents the US had ever produced, and its second, both in life and in death as an outcast, the greatest casualty of the second Red Scare period to which today’s current attacks on liberal and progressive politics draw comparison.

This week marks 50 years since Robeson’s death and the silence remains. His erasure from the lineage over the decades shows that what Robeson’s political opponents did not take from him, the years have most certainly. Robeson’s decoupling from the story of African American culture has been so complete that in the half-century since his death, even generations of Black Americans have never heard of him.

His talent was prodigious. Robeson integrated Broadway in 1943, the first Black man to play Othello in the United States. Previous productions of Shakespeare’s jealous Moor casted white actors in blackface, and Robeson’s Othello run of 296 performances remains a Broadway record for a Shakespeare production. A two-time All-American at Rutgers, he was one of the greatest college football players in history. He graduated from Columbia Law, and, before becoming world renowned as a concert singer, stage and Hollywood actor, Robeson even played defensive end for two years in the National Football League. The Robeson legacy spawned a staggering list of Black stage performers, from Lena Horne to Harry Belafonte, James Earl Jones, Andre Braugher, Keith David and Denzel Washington. At his peak, Paul Robeson was the most famous Black American in the world.

(Read more)

‘OFFENSIVE’ MUSICAL STARRING A PANSEXUAL ANNE FRANK COULD SAVE BROADWAY · Oct 18th

(Ben Kawaller’s article appeared in The Times, 10/17; Photo: The cast of Slam Frank on stage at AsylumNYC, JASPER LEWIS PHOTOGRAPHY.)

A show has turned the tragedy of Anne Frank into an ‘inclusive’ commentary on wokeness. And New York City audiences can’t get enough

I recently saw the most brilliant new musical in New York City. It’s not on Broadway. It’s not even in a traditional theatre.

It’s at a bar and performance space called AsylumNYC. And it lives up to the name of its venue.

Slam Frank, whose developmental run opened on September 17 and closes on October 26, is a reimagining of the story of Anne Frank that asks: What if her diary were inclusive? What if we addressed the lack of queer representation in that attic? What if we finally told the story of the Holocaust in a way that honours all people, not just the white people it has always centred on?

In other words: what if someone produced a musical about Anne Frank fit for the 2020s?

The result has been a hit. With mostly word-of-mouth buzz, driven by a monthly publicity budget of less than $60, Slam Frank has so far sold out 28 of its 34 performances, the show’s press agent told me.

The reason? It could be that, ever since the first election of Donald Trump, a reactionary “woke” piousness has taken root across America’s cultural institutions — especially in the theatre. Nearly every significant American theatre company continues to apologise for the arrival of Europeans on US soil and to offer pro forma declarations of its own enlightenment. And many shows of late (Thoughts of a Colored Man, The Thanksgiving Play, Liberation) have felt more sanctimonious than subversive.

But Slam Frank proves that true originality still exists in musical theatre. Sparked by a 2022 Twitter commenter who asserted that “Yeah, Anne Frank had white privilege”, it reimagines Anne as “Anita” — a pansexual Latina hiding from the Nazis in a radically inclusive attic with her militant black mother, her neurodiverse father and assorted other disordered personalities.

(Read more)