JT ROGERS

ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

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Playwrights Who Matter: JT Rogers

JT’s writing came to my attention by way of an unsolicited submission from his agent – John Buzzetti – who sent me a copy of White People . The writing immediately appealed to me: politically-charged, muscular, straightforward and ruthlessly honest. In spite of the difficult structure of the play: three separate monologues by three characters using direct-address interconnecting thematically but almost never dramatically, the play and its characters fly off the page, begging to be staged. The character of the woman achieves tragic stature as a victim-come-to-collect from her victimizers. The men – one an unredeemed racist, the other an East Coast liberal college professor – are equally-memorable creations: tragically flawed, conflicted, contradictory.

In Madagascar, oblique intimations of incest and familial betrayal coexist with elegant talk about Roman antiquity and travel, all couched in a dense, complex, uncannily theatrical language. In The Overwhelming, the theme of the Holocaust of an African nation is taken on unflinchingly, along with an insightful examination of our American culpability and the cruel, clueless crass attitude towards the debacle of the contemporary third world that permeating our think tanks.

JT has the courage to write about the unpalatable. His courage pays off in the long run, as witness his Madagascar, which won the coveted Osborne Prize from the American Theatre Critics Association, and his The Overwhelming, picked up for a production and a tour of Great Britain by the National Theatre, no less.

Most recently, JT won the Tony Award for Best Play for Oslo, which has gone on to pre-production and casting at the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain.

JT’s day is here, finally. With a young family to support, this could not happen to a more deserving, more valiant man of the theatre.

Rafael de Acha

Rafael Music Notes – All About the Arts

 

Published by ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Rafael de Acha has enjoyed a distinguished career in the arts as a performer, stage director, producer, and educator. He was born and grew up in Cuba. At the age of 17 he moved to the United States to study Drama at the University of Minnesota, and later Languages at L.A. City College, Music at the Juilliard School of Music, at the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music, and at the New England Conservatory of Music, from which he received the Master's degree. He has taught courses on the History of Music at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and at Florida International University, and contributed writings and reviews to Seen and Heard International (www.seenandheard-international.com ) and to this blog. He co-founded the award-winning New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, where he produced and staged twenty seasons of classical and contemporary theater, including fifty world premieres of plays that went on to have international and national productions on and off Broadway, including Ana in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz (Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2002 and Tony Nomination 2003.) In 2006 he was presented with a citation from The Dade County Cultural Affairs Council for “trailblazing contributions to the arts in South Florida.”