Young Mary Shelley by Esao Andrews
2018 is the 200th anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, and although calling anything an “immortal creation” sounds like a cliché it seems uniquely apt in this case. Shelley tapped into something fundamental, fusing elements of the ancient Greek myth of Prometheus and John Milton’s early-modern epic Paradise Lost with 18th-century enlightenment thinking, 19th-century romantic poetry, and then-contemporary ideas about natural philosophy and scientific thought. Shelley wrote it on a dare, and what she thought was a ghost story became instead what some argue is one of the…

Before Orlando, this show meant something different. Before that tragedy, a mere two weeks ago — just two days after Rainbow Theatre Project opened Get Used to It! — it would have been easy to think of this 20-song revue as a quaint history lesson, a peek back at the political fights and personal communities of gay men in 1993 when AIDS was raging, Ellen was not yet out, and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was freshly instituted.
Now, however, the view into the past is fractured. Tom Wilson…

Recently I had the great pleasure of experiencing my play Hunting and Gathering at Rep Stage in Columbia, Maryland, ten years after I initially wrote it. It was great fun revisiting the source material as I’m currently married and raising a child, theoretically stable (although we did just move last summer), and in very different circumstances. Hunting and Gathering is a comedy about rootlessness, four characters who for different reasons are between housing options and figuring out their logistical and emotional/spiritual homes. When I wrote it, I myself was living in much this way. I’d been happily settled in…