Chika Shimizu

Salesman 之死

October 22, 2023

Not only is Jeremy Tiang’s "Salesman 之死I" an important document of a classic American play, it is also an illustrative reminder of the cultural differences between China and the United States. Under the direction of Michael Leibenluft, the cast of six is always engaging and always convincing playing both men and women alternately. The design puts the audience directly into the rehearsal room from March to May 1983. The play also allows us to watch major American playwright Arthur Miller as he explores and rethinks a play he had written over three decades before. The fact that the Chinese actors eventually did so well with this typically American text demonstrates the universality of Miller’s greatest play. [more]

Bite Me

October 11, 2023

Both Garelik and Samuel’s performances as teens are fully formed and not stereotyped; their portrayals as young adults at their ten-year high school reunion are just as authentic. Direction by Rebecca Martínez is terrific, guiding both actors organically through their curiously intimate and emotionally climactic moments, at both stages of their characters’ young lives. Pipes has written an excellent play; she draws the disparate socio-economic and racial lines between Nathan and Melody with a fine pen. The arc and landscape of their friendship and its ultimate struggle is carefully wrought and effective. [more]

Awake

January 24, 2019

Manning’s direction and script are both expertly crafted. The play’s moral questions are cleverly woven into each of its fully-dimensioned characters’ words, and their tales are often presented without bias, leaving the audience to draw its own conclusions. The actors find their full potential in this play, each one as compelling as the next, filling their portrayals with humor, earnestness and passion; they listen to each other in every moment and are a joy to watch. [more]

The Winning Side

October 11, 2018

In dramatizing the story of Wernher von Braun, James Wallert’s "The Winning Side" makes compelling the concept of ethics in science: should we admire a mathematical genius who has had antithetical political ideas or are his scientific achievements too valuable to hold his former political beliefs against him? Though the program notes indicate that the play “is a work of dramatic fiction and liberties have been taken,” The Winning Side does show us a genius at work who was also an opportunist and changed his stories depending on what suited the occasion. As such it has become relevant all over again in an era when truth counts for so little and men of morality are all the more valuable. [more]

The Naturalists

September 12, 2018

Ms. McCarrick’s appealing premise of redemptive romance is in fact subsidiary to the IRA angle as in the program she states that this event is the inspiration for her play. The two threads haven’t been skillfully fused together, resulting in a disjointed experience totaling 13 scenes. McCarrick packs in a great deal of backstory to her well-drawn characters and her effective dialogue is marvelously Irish in style with plenty of wit, eloquence and reflectiveness. [more]

Tomorrow in the Battle

October 18, 2017

Ruth Sullivan, Allison Threadgold and Patrick Hamilton in a scene from “Tomorrow in the [more]

False Stars

August 23, 2017

Nora Sørena Casey’s "False Stars," part of this year’s Corkscrew Festival at the Paradise Factory, starts slowly but gradually grows more involving as all the interconnections between the characters slowly reveal themselves. [more]