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  • Director’s Note: Life is a Dream

    Our “Year of the Phoenix” begins! The plays of this season circulate around the idea of new beginnings; as the phoenix rises from the ashes, so do the protagonists of this slate of dramas “die” to their old selves and are “reborn” as something else. We hope you will join us for each production as…

  • Novissima

    ACTORS’ MASTER CLASS! This Sunday, Sept. 1, 1-3 PM, find out more here:

  • About the Current Season

    Our inspiration for this season is taken from the image of the Phoenix, the mythical bird that rises from its own ashes, renewed. The protagonists in the plays we’ve selected all experience a transformation that turns them, not into something else, but into what they always were or were meant to be. In a sense,…

  • Director’s Note: Hamlet

    The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark By William Shakespeare Directed by William Conte, March 2-12, 2022 “Oh God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.” So says Hamlet to his erstwhile friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Act II,…

  • Rich Theatre, Poor Theatre

    Mamet’s American Buffalo: Two Sides of the Coin At the moment in the United States of America there are two productions running of David Mamet’s American Buffalo. One is running in New York City in a major off-Broadway production featuring famous actors in the leading roles. It is directed by a seasoned luminary of the…

  • Director’s Note: “The Inspector General”

    We begin our season, “Found in Translation,” with a 19th century farce regarded by Russians as a national treasure. First performed in St. Petersburg in 1836, Nikolai Gogol’s Inspector General shocked its audience as no play had before. With incisive wit and raw slapstick Gogol exposed the corruption of Russia’s bureaucratic kleptocracy,  which fostered a…

  • Director’s Note: “Largo Desolato”

    Among the guiding principles of the Theatre of the Poor is to present plays that are timely and relevant. As much as possible we try to produce plays that can reflect or refract our moment in history, even though they were written long ago. We believe that theatre speaks to us in the here and…

  • “Jesus Christ Superstar”: A Passion Play

    Conte situates Weber and Rice’s landmark rock opera within the medieval tradition of Passion plays.

  • Performing “Prufrock”

    Reflections on Poetry in Performance

  • Driving “Miss Julie”

    In this essay, Conte expounds on the social and historical context of “Miss Julie” and the literary movement known as “Naturalism.”