by James La Bella. @James.La.Bella. Original Bug photo by Lily Cummings. NEW YORK, NY - Local Manhattan resident Richard “Dick” Smarge has been leading a small but vocal campaign against the quote “deeply unimaginative” revival of Tracy Letts’ Bug currently running Broadway, claiming he can get the same or better in his own East Village walk-up. “ Bug is back at my place too. You see me braggin’ about it?” Snapped Dick, double-handin’ cigarettes and dollar slices like a p

by Matt Keeley. @reallymattkeeley. PALO ALTO, CA - Backstage at the Palo Alto Playhouse, confused cast members were left with an indeterminate amount of time to prepare for the top of show when complacent stage manager Robert Gilman called for places whenever. “We were just chatting in our dressing room, still mid-hair and makeup, when we heard him announce places in, you know, whenever feels right,” said puzzled ensemble member Stephanie Schwartz, mentally calculating if she

by Kinsey Jasnoch. @kinseyjasnoch. Original photo: Carrie Coon, Namir Smallwood, by Lily Cummings. NEW YORK, NY — Ask and you shall receive! The team behind the Broadway premiere of Bug , a tense psychological thriller about a waitress who meets a drifter in a motel room and allows herself to become wrapped into his paranoias and conspiracy theories, has announced that an official cast recording will be available for purchase and on streaming later this month. “Once we saw t

by Brady Thomas. @cbradyt. TULSA, OK. — It’s official: woke is back on the menu! Just this afternoon, Emmett Jameson, president of the local Golden Age Players, has announced that, all next season, they’ll be performing land acknowledgments at the top of their productions of racially dated musicals. “At the Golden Age Players, we can’t have our eyes closed to the horrors of the past,” claimed Jameson, who only stages musicals that premiered before the passage of the Civil Ri

by Matt Keeley. @reallymattkeeley. GLENCOE, Il - Ensuring that he felt optimally prepared for his upcoming callback, local nonunion actor Timothy Hutchins dedicated two full hours to dicking around on his phone to prepare for the waiting room. “Most of my other friends and colleagues in the industry know that it’s the preparation that makes a huge difference at callbacks,” explained Hutchins, intently scrolling through his fourteenth page of Backstage’s Callback Corner forum.

by Zach Raffio. @zachraffio. NEW YORK, NY. — Oh, you just saw Robert Icke’s political thriller reimagining of Oedipus ? Yeah, I can tell, based on the way you’re pronouncing — or shall we say, MIS-pronouncing — the play name. Sorry, I don’t mean to condescend, I just think you should know: it’s not “EE-DEH-PISS,” it’s pronounced “GOD-OH.” It’s an easy mistake! Lots of academics don’t teach it right, and if you’ve only ever heard something pronounced one way, of course you’ll

Nathan Lane By Btvway - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=86673859 Laurie Metcalf By John Harrison, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8248264 We hear it time and time again: Broadway is out of fresh ideas, and would rather platform the same old, often heavily white casts, creatives and stories. Well, it works both ways buster - you gotta come out for the shows that do look to break this norm! Which is why I’m i

by Allyson Stathers. @allysonstathers. ASHEVILLE, NC — Awesome! Theatre Major Carissa Calloway’s acting professor has written an awful play called Black & White, and now wants her to participate in the live table read. “It’s one of the worst things I’ve ever read,” claimed Calloway as she highlighted her lines in anger. “I mean, it’s one thing to have your Prof write a script and tell you about it, but it’s another thing when he forces you to read it in front of an actual au

by HaleyJane Rose. @haleyisfamous. ANN ARBOR, Mi — Self-proclaimed best friends and Musical Theatre BFA recipients Theresa Marino and Rachel Lavigne announced via a celebratory Instagram post today that they are “soo Glinda and Elphaba-coded,” despite having never said a kind word about each other when the other is not present. “She’s the Glinda to my Elphaba,” exclaimed Marino before dropping to a whisper. “And that’s not just because she can’t belt as high as I can, I would

by Zach Raffio. @zachraffio. CROTON-ON-HUDSON, NY - It’s Thanksgiving Day, and local father Mitchell Reclom just finished stating out loud that “if you think about it, the time between dinner and dessert is kinda like an intermission,” in a well-meaning attempt to connect with his BFA candidate son. “It’s like, you know, we just experienced something great, and now we’re gonna take a break, and then have more great. Just like the theatre,” said Reclom, who listened to every c