Justin Tracy

New York Theater Review 2009 Justin Tracy First edition

The fourth annual edition of the New York Theater Review continues our exploration of the finest in contemporary NYC alt-theater blended with an ongoing investigation of its colorful and often underrepresented past.

Justin Tracy leads off the 2009 edition with an appreciation of playwright, teacher and critic Arthur Sainer; Cynthia Croot sits down with six Arab and Arab-American theater artists to discuss similarities and differences in Middle Eastern and NYC theater and Lane Pianta contributes an insightful piece on the theater of Ben Spatz and his Urban Research Theater.

In plays, NYTR branches out this year with the inclusion of twelve short plays from Manhattan's Blue Box Productions' Sticky series plus Ellen McLaughlin's Kissing the Floor, a disturbing Depression-era riff on Sophocles' Antigone that explores the lengths and limits of family blood ties and David Ian Lee's Sleeper, a continent-hopping, time-shifting dissection of America's troubled post-9/11 legacy.