i enjoyed yesterday's play a lot but i found myself frustrated that it felt very… overwritten i guess? like the playwright had a lot of Big Important Ideas about Big Important Issues and they wanted to make sure that the audience Got all of those ideas, so a lot of the play was the characters very explicitly stating those ideas out loud, sometimes quite literally turning to address the audience to make sure there was no hint of doubt as to what each moment (each conversation, each metaphor or bit of symbolism) was About. and honestly i've felt that in a lot of new plays i've seen recently where it feels like the playwright really wants to hold your hand and make sure there is no chance that anything is misunderstood or missed

so i guess what was so refreshing about the play i saw today was it really felt like the playwright had the confidence that these characters and the interactions between them were strong and developed enough to stand on their own. and it's not like there weren't really huge Big Ideas in this play, there absolutely were, but it felt like the playwright just trusted the audience to read between the lines and connect the dots of what was not being said. so many of my favorite scenes in tonight's play had no dialogue, or very little kind of stilted uncomfortable dialogue that felt like a real stilted uncomfortable conversation, but a million things were happening underneath every moment of silence (or every moment of rambling patter seemingly About Nothing) and the playwright trusted that 1) the actors could convey emotions without words and 2) the audience would have enough insight and experience as people who have also Lived their own lives in this world to not need their hands held through it

okay this post was about daryl roth (produced liberation and suffs recently, as well as a like a hundred other ostensibly Progressive productions; husband is ceo of the realty firm that is the largest commercial landlord in new york city) but apparently is also true of christine schwarzman who accepted the best musical tony for schmigadoon the other night and is literally married to the ceo of fucking BLACKSTONE who is worth $50 billion and is obviously a longtime personal friend of trump, actively involved in his administration, and donated $40 million to republican candidates in the 2024 elections

but like. congrats to liberation and schmig for best play and best musical i guess! here's daryl roth (holding the award on the left) and christine schwarzman (giving the acceptance speech on the right). do you think they effectively utilized girl power and demonstrated The Power Of The Arts In Times Like These while their husbands were having dinner with their best friend donald and donating tens of millions of dollars to his projects. do you think they effectively utilized girl power when their billionaire husbands compared political calls to tax the rich to "racial slurs" (roth) and "hitler's invasion of poland in 1939" (schwarzman)

spent all day at work on the verge of a breakdown due to the Bad Brain but i DID leave the house this evening for new theater thwednesday so. that's something

very cool set very cool use of this space