James Armstrong, Playwright

It was a little over 100 years ago that the Czech writer Jaroslav Hašek died, leaving his satirical novel  The Good Soldier Švejk unfinishe...

Singing and Dancing Through War As disastrous as the First World War was, the Second World War was even more devastating for humanity. Eight...

Back in 2020 , I was supposed to attend a conference on Bernard Shaw in the town of Cáceres in Spain. Well, the conference got delayed two y...

Bertolt Brecht  is known today mainly for his theory of the Verfremdungseffekt, or Alienation Effect, but he himself thought he would be re...

Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka studied at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, so he was already at home in the U.K. when the Ro...

Last night I saw the Mabou Mines production of Faust 2.0  at 122 Community Center, formerly known as P.S. 122. P.S. 122 first became a per...

Today there were protests all across the United States in support of immigrants, so I wanted to blog about some of the great American drama...

The various forms of Chinese opera that developed over centuries were nearly eliminated during the Cultural Revolution of Mao Zedong. Thi...

I recently finished reading Joseph Roach's book It , which traces stardom from Restoration England to the celebrities of the present day...

Last night I saw Classic Stage Company's production of Brecht's  A Man's a Man . Duncan Sheik provided the music for the songs, ...