• Rachel Chavkin on "THE ROYALE"

    Rachel Chavkin on "THE ROYALE"

    “When I first read THE ROYALE,” Rachel Chavkin told me the other day, “I had an experience I rarely have: I didn’t move during the entire time it took me to read it. I immediately wanted to direct it.”

  • Who Was Jack Johnson?

    Marco Ramirez, the author of THE ROYALE, has said that the play is inspired by the early-20th-century boxing champion Jack Johnson.

  • First Preview: Actors and Appetites

    The late Jessica Tandy – the original Blanche in A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE and an Oscar winner for DRIVING MISS DAISY – explained to me years ago in an interview the difference between acting in rehearsal and acting for a paying audience.

  • What About the Set?

    The term “spoiler alert” in a review applies customarily to details involving the plot. Sometimes, I wish it also involved the set.

  • A Night at the Schomberg

    A Night at the Schomberg

    One night this week – when the temperatures edged back into the forties and the blizzard was almost a memory – three cast members from THE ROYALE gathered at the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture, in Harlem.