Ben Kemper
In the Garden
Or: Body and Soul Is there any better way to spend the easter (or passover) season than hunting out those stories of impossible odds,...
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Ben Kemper
May 16, 20232 min read
Mini Review: The Spectrum Festival of Devised Works
Or: Such stuff as dreams are made on. I’m rather distrustful of devised works. The stone-soup process (let’s add a bit o’everything and...
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Ben Kemper
May 16, 20232 min read
The Way West
Or: Don’t Fence Me In As painful and queasy as plays about sex are, plays about money are even worse. There is the same discomfort the...
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Ben Kemper
May 16, 20232 min read
The Great God Pan
Or: What Kids Remember Amy Herzog has a genius for human speech. Other contemporary playwrights master mystery, drama, high language,...
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Ben Kemper
May 16, 20235 min read
Graffiti Turns 40: An Evening of Dance
Or: Tears in the batter, laughter in the flames. It is a remarkable thing that a student company, handed down year to year, should have...
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Ben Kemper
May 16, 20232 min read
Mercury Half-Life
Or: The Last Dance Of all the rich menagerie of modern dance steps the Trey McIntyre Project trotted out for us in their ten years, none...
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Ben Kemper
May 16, 20232 min read
Muppets Most Wanted
Or: “Izzz Not Eeezeee Beeeingk Meeean” The last time I remember laughing out loud in a movie theater (that solemn, silent place) was Wes...
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Ben Kemper
May 16, 20237 min read
The 10th Annual Northwestern Toy Theater Festival
Or: Minerva in the Minutia The idea of a toy theater comes from the Victorian era, and like most things of age it can be described as...
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Ben Kemper
May 16, 20234 min read
Ghost Bike
Or: Like a Bike Out’a Hades I am much obliged to playwright Laura Jacqmin for her smart and resourceful welding together of the...
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Ben Kemper
May 16, 20238 min read
The 5th annual 10 minute play festival Or: The Children's Hour
Its curious that playwright’s as a whole gravitate towards three universal themes: fornication, death and children. It’s curious but not...
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Ben Kemper
May 16, 20235 min read
Coriolanus at the National
Or: “There’s a place in this world for the angry young man” It is most fitting that the National Theater of England should choose to...
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Ben Kemper
May 16, 20233 min read
A Crime in the Neighborhood
Or: The Age of Innocence “Watch Yourself” is a confounding phrase: part censure, part injunction, part warning, part distant, underdone...
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Ben Kemper
May 12, 20236 min read
Dance Works 2014: Hot Buttons
Or: There, but for the grace of grace, goes my chair Passé by Sarah Edgar We begin in stately fashion: a harpsechord player and a...
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Ben Kemper
May 12, 20234 min read
The Diary of Anne Frank
She’s still there, when you walk in. Perched up in the corner of her desk, scribbling away. A vibrant little grasshopper preserved in...
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Ben Kemper
May 12, 20233 min read
The Transition of Doodle Pequeño
Or: A Goat and her Boy. In her director’s note, Lindsay Amer takes great pains to lead us back to the age of childhood, the kingdoms of...
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Ben Kemper
May 12, 20234 min read
The Little Foxes
Or: Southern Comfort Not long ago, when I was still uncertain whether this play was a TYA show about anthropomorphic forest critters or a...
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Ben Kemper
May 12, 20234 min read
A Wrinkle in Time
Or: The Weird and the Wonderful It is a great shame that we’ve lost touch of our an appreciation for, or at least acknowledgement of,...
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Ben Kemper
May 12, 20233 min read
Miss Marx
Or: You say you want a revolution. There are no shackles like the ones that clamp around the heart. Links of iron can be broken, chains...
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Ben Kemper
May 12, 20233 min read
The 2014 Lipstick Theater Vagina Monologues and Dick Dialogs
Or: Bearing All As ensemble member Avra Shapiro states in her dialog “Dear Eve”, Ensler’s “The V- Monologs” are a work shrouded in worry...
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Ben Kemper
May 12, 20234 min read
Rites and Scarifies: A New Play by Jennifer Mickelson
Or: Bring up the Bodies War hasn’t changed all that much since the times of the Euripides. The communications have gotten better and the...
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