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Logan Vaughn

The Light

February 20, 2019

With the audience sitting ringside on three sides of the new theater, and performed by Masden and Belcher at the top of their game, The Light is thrilling theater. Their Gen and Rashad are both sympathetic, attractive characters and their story and their dilemma is entirely gripping. As the former football star (and a boxing pro in The Royale seen at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater,) Belcher has a tremendous physical presence. Masden is so articulate as the school principal that she elevates the debate to a high level of drama. Even if there are coincidences or sudden revelations that are hard to believe, this play that makes use of the themes of both the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements is cracklingly provocative theater. And like an excellent boxing match, director Vaughn has her actors come out ready to spar from the moment they enter the stage. [more]

Summer Shorts 2016 – Series B

August 15, 2016

Richard Alfredo’s 'The Dark Clothes of Night," a brilliant parody/homage to film noir and hardboiled fiction, the third play of Summer Shorts – Series B, is so good it alone is worth the price of admission. The other two plays which precede it in this year’s 10th Festival of New American Short Plays have interesting but undeveloped premises. But "The Dark Clothes of Night" is an instant classic, a humorous satire that is also a brilliantly theatrical study in paranoia, fear and evil and the elements that made film noir irresistible. Directed by playwright Alexander Dinelaris, the three actors in this memorable short work play multiple roles with assurance and aplomb. [more]

Summer Shorts 2015 – Festival of New American Short Plays – Series B

August 5, 2015

Series B of Summer Shorts 2015 is similar to Series A in that all three plays are also relationship dramas, here between a woman (or three women) and a man in which the men aren’t sure they want to give in to the women. Unlike Series A, all three have endings that are open ended and rather unsatisfying to varying degrees. Although two of the three authors have excellent credits (Lucy Thurber and Robert O’Hara), the plays may feel unfinished or early drafts. [more]