Amelia Merrill

Successful athletes help a state maintain soft power, and perhaps no leader knows this better than Vladimir Putin.
Ivan Kuliak wasn’t a very well known gymnast before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. After racking up domestic accolades as a junior elite athlete, he made headlines worldwide at the World Cup in early March, when the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) announced that Russian and Belarusian athletes and officials would be banned after the conclusion of ongoing competitions....

Mickey: The Story of a Mouse asks a lot of questions. Why is the character of Mickey Mouse so iconic, and why is his simple, three-circle image so powerful the world over? What role does Mickey Mouse play in the development of not only American popular culture, but also of propaganda and cultural mythology? Are we going to talk about Walt Disney’s controversial views on utopian society, or the people his company displaced in an attempt to create that society? Of course not. Those questions wo...

When Millie (Ana Scotney) gets a fancy internship at a fancy New York architecture firm, she becomes the envy of her friends, school, and community. She gets featured in commercials and brochures for her school, her hair straightened out to something almost unrecognizable. She gets a spot on the local news as her best friend and rival, Carolyn (Jillian Nguyen), tries to reassess her own architecture work, which she believes Millie has copied. And she gets plastered on a huge billboard in the ...

I grew up near my paternal grandparents, and would spend St. Patrick’s Day with my Nana as it often coincided with my school’s spring break. We’d dress in green head-to-toe, with shamrock pins and “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” buttons; Grandad, ever the curmudgeon, would wear a button reading “Honorary Irish.” Nana was proud to be “one hundred percent Irish” and would tell me how she and her sister were the only members of her family left who were — everyone else had passed away or married people of o...

George Anthony Morton has straddled two worlds his whole life: Parent and child. Incarcerated and free. Former drug dealer and classically trained painter. As an adult in his hometown of Kansas City, he tries to fit back into his old life, to joke with his siblings and bond with his nephew, without being sucked back into a vortex of manipulation and guilt. It’s not just that his family has trouble tr...

Though dramaturgs, agents, literary managers, and, of course, playwrights have worked non-stop through the two years of the pandemic, many new-play development opportunities have stalled. The industry has been in a sort of time warp when it comes to developing new works, with premieres planned for 2020 and 2021 still falling victim to calendar reshuffles. Elsewhere, familiar homes for emerging writers, like the Lark in New York, have shuttered, further exposing gaps in support for early- and mid-career playwrights. Enter the Black List: In January, the popular screenwriting and television writ

Since its 2017 premiere, Amy Sherman-Palladino’s period comedy “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” has had a polarizing reception among Jewish viewers. The story of an affluent housewife (Rachel Brosnahan) who embarks on a career as stand-up comic after her husband leaves her, “Maisel” has received plaudits for the performances of its cast members, its highly stylized, whimsical costume and scenic design, and the quirky, fast-paced humor central to all Sherman-Palladino offerings (most notably “Gilmo...

This week the editors talk to a giant in the field, New York Theatre Workshop artistic director Jim Nicola, who in June will leave the Off-Broadway powerhouse he’s run since 1988. In a wide-ranging conversation, he talks about the highlights and challenges of his momentous years producing work by everyone from Ivo van Hove to Aleshea Harris, about the dangerous temptations of enhancement money, and about his hopes for the theatre he leaves to the next generation (his successor has not yet been announced).

James Caverly and Andrew Morrill’s play Trash is a case of kitchen-sink realism in more ways than one. In addition to following two men who find themselves locked in the grind of city life, scraping to make ends meet, Trash—having a free workshop staging this weekend at New York City’s IRT Theater, and a run at Brooklyn’s JACK April 28-30—also literally takes place in a kitchen, as the roommates argue over whose turn it is to take out the trash. The quarrel over this mundane task, a source of friction and comedy for many a sitcom and real-life couple, plays out not in rising voices, but in Ame

Offscript, American Theatre’s flagship podcast for a number of years, is back as a Facebook Live chat with the magazine’s editors and special guests as well as an audio podcast.
On this episode featuring contributing editor Amelia Merrill, we’re joined by Debra Ann Byrd, the new artistic director of Arizona’s Southwest Shakespeare and the founder of Harlem Shakespeare Festival, to talk about the company, the state where it’s located, and the state of classical theatre in general. Byrd, who ha...

Through the eyes of a child, schoolyard bullies are fickle creatures, able both to destroy you or to protect you from harm. This is the central predicament for Nora (Maya Vanderbeque), a young elementary schooler who finds her social status upended when her older brother, Abel (Günter Duret), goes from tormentor to tormented in Laura Wandel’s Playground (Un monde, literally A world). The film, which is Belgium’s entry for Best International Feature at the Oscars, sticks closely to Nora’s pers...

Cooper Raiff’s new film “Cha Cha Real Smooth” is, on the surface, not a Jewish movie. A coming-of-age tale, it follows protagonist Andrew (played by Raiff) after his college graduation, jobless and aimless, moving back into his mom’s house and sleeping on the bedroom floor of his little brother David. As David’s de facto chaperone, Andrew winds up accompanying him to the bar mitzvah parties of his classmates, where he discovers his penchant for “party starting,” or being the hyped-up DJ and g...

Shows postponed or canceled. Heated debates over ventilation systems, the “hygiene theatre” of masking, and whether the promise that everything will be back to normal in a few weeks is a fallacy. Sound familiar? If you’ve found the last six weeks too reminiscent of March 2020, you’re not alone: Artists and arts administrators across the country have been up to their ears in discussions of budgets and grants, season calendar rearrangements, rights and royalties disputes, and other quotidian bu...

There is a Jewish interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve that situates the two back-to-back. Instead of God creating woman from the stolen rib of Adam, the two walk away and split — crack — into separate beings.
This is where we now find the Coen brothers, the Jewish filmmaking duo who have captivated audiences with their wacky, zany, beautiful, grandiose work for over thirty years: once a single unit, each indistinguishable from the other to the eyes of the average moviegoer, no...

Though the 2018 web special isn’t a full episode, Broad City was full of so much Jewish humor throughout its run that the lack of a Hanukkah special isn’t a big deal. In the webisode, Ilana wears a Hanukkah onesie and has decorated her apartment with gel Stars of David to exchange gifts with Abbi via video chat. Ilana’s gift is appropriately inappropriate, and the scene is decked out with many a menorah.
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