By Sabrina Khan

A sharp and witty play about an upper class, modern Black family, Stick Fly is making strides on Broadway in a fresh yet familiar way. It’s inspiring as much conversation outside the theatre as it is within it — even while the show is playing.

@AngelMayReed tweeted: “Not sure what was more entertaining the play or the audience reaction!!!”

It’s certainly a melodramatic show, and the audience seems to be just as melodramatic while viewing it.  There’s even been controversy surrounding how the audience has been responding vocally to the wild and sometimes explicit lines running off the actors’ lips. And why not?
( Read more )

By Dalia Wolfson
12th Grade, Hunter College High School

Several years ago, a funny little game named “translation party” went viral: if one followed the prompt, “Start an English phrase,” and clicked “Find Equilibrium,” the game generated a Japanese equivalent. The output was often wordy cabbage – as if someone had stripped away the leaves of grammar and left stuff of nonsense at the core.

Oftentimes, plays about language fall into a similar trap. It’s easy to get quick laughs by putting words that are simply wrong into characters’ mouths; any mistranslation blog is raw material. It is infinitely harder, however, to forego the puns and plumb the causes of miscommunication, such as generational gaps, cultural differences or estrangement. ( Read more )

By Liz Oakley
12th Grade, Brearley High School

What happens on stage, happens on a stage. As an audience member, you know that the events unfolding before you are being presented by actors, and are shaped and colored by other members of a show’s creative team. So if watching a play is inherently a lie of sorts, how can theater feel so true? Especially when the actors are puppets? ( Read more )

By Ben Wolfson
12th Grade, Hunter College High School

Cabaret, Chicago, and Rent are among the many flashing headlines you are apt to see when strolling down Broadway. Revivals of older musicals, these glitzy and glamorous shows tend to catch your eye and entice you to buy tickets. Clearly bringing back dated plays seems to be in vogue, yet people often sneer when I tell them about watching new productions of King Lear or Hamlet. “Why would you watch Shakespeare?” they ask. “Victorian English is too archaic,” and, “Shakespeare’s plots are overly dramatic,” they add. Such dismissals are not only unsubstantiated, but blatantly untrue. ( Read more )

By Derick Sherrier

Have you ever…really been heard?

If you only had one word left, what would you say?

Theatre, a place for exploration and creativity, is where actors can truly discover themselves—UNCENSORED gives us that opportunity.

Members of the MCC Youth Company, comprised entirely of NYC high school students, spend months after school creating monologues, scenes and poems about our lives. Some of these pieces become part of UNCENSORED, the Youth Company’s annual spring performance.

Having a piece in UNCENSORED is an amazing feeling because it is something that you have created, literally leaping from paper to stage and announcing itself. Every word and sentence of each piece is chosen carefully; we fine-tune our pieces and play around with the language and staging in order to find the best representation of our work. Sometimes we find that a piece is stronger when other voices are involved, so a monologue might be broken up for three people to say. The hardest part of the process is hearing that one of your pieces will be cut. It’s frustrating, but sometimes less is more.

Being in UNCENSORED is letting your voice be heard.

How to see the show: April 23-25 & April 30-May 2 at 7pm · $5 student tickets · Cherry Lane Theatre, 38 Commerce Street. Visit http://www.mcctheatre.com/youthcompany/performances.html