In Twice Born, Hester Kaplan Merges Biography and Memoir to Understand Her Elusive Father

by Alizah Holstein

The opening entry in the magisterial compendium begun in 1855 and now known as Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations is an excerpt from “The Song of the Harper,” a poem found in the tomb of the Egyptian king Intef. Dating to around 2600 BCE, the poem speaks [...]

Happy Land : The Historical Novel Being Read Across Rhode Island

by Diane Josefowicz

Approaching 40 with a surly teenager, an estranged mother, and an imperious grandmother with an urgent problem, Nikki Lovejoy-Berry, the burdened protagonist of Happy Land, is—in a word—unsettled. What she learns over the course of this graceful novel is that she’s never going to feel [...]

When the Lights Go Out: Reverie Theatre’s Dystopian Thriller Hits Close to Home

por Judith Clinton

Reverie Theatre Company’s new production of A Girl in School Uniform (Walks Into A Bar) lands with a jolt of eerie timeliness. Written in 2016, Lulu Raczka’s dystopian thriller imagines a society plagued by unexplained blackouts—moments when the lights fail, systems collapse, and women vanish. [...]

Telling on Herself: Kate Colby’s Paradoxx

by Diane Josefowicz

“A certain unpleasant episode has taken dominion of my life,” declares the Providence writer Kate Colby in her new essay collection, “but I’m leaving it to a few light references in my life on paper.” Over the course of a year beset with difficulties, Colby [...]

The Roommate — A Sharp, Funny, and Unexpectedly Tender Study of Reinvention

por Judith Clinton

Trinity Rep’s latest production, The Roommate, offers a sharply observed portrait of two women whose unlikely connection becomes a catalyst for reinvention. The play’s humor and heart lands with precision, thanks to two exceptional performances and Curt Columbus’s deft direction in his first outing as [...]

“Innocent Knowledge,” An Exhibition of Artwork by Israeli and Palestinian Children

by Lynn Holstein

Providence lies more than 5,500 miles away from the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict. Despite this geographic distance, images from civilians suffering from the conflict are now on display at Brown University’s Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery & Justice, documenting the experiences of [...]

Celebrating “The Great Connector” at VegFest

by Margaret Rizzuto

Founded by longtime vegan and communications professional Robin Dionne, VegFest grew out of years of attending plant-based food festivals around the country and wondering why Rhode Island didn’t have one of its own. After years of  planning, research, and development, Rhode Island VegFest was ready [...]

When Silence Speaks Volumes: Small Mouth Sounds Finds Profound Meaning Without Words

por Judith Clinton

It has been said that there are three kinds of silence in the theatre: the silence of emptiness, the silence of anticipation, and the silence that settles over an audience when something deeply recognizable is unfolding onstage. Small Mouth Sounds, while employing all three, belongs [...]

Hectic, Antic, Frantic: The Stories of Mary Paula Hunter

by Diane Josefowicz

The fourteen stories collected in Can I Have a Hug First?, the second full-length work of fiction by Providence writer Mary Paula Hunter, have an enjoyably frantic energy. Charming and often very funny, Hunter’s stories feature characters, mainly women, whose response to the competing attentional [...]

Local Translator Brings Pacheco’s “Pandora” to English Readers

by Diane Josefowicz

Written by the award-winning Brazilian fabulist Ana Paula Pacheco, energetically translated from the Portuguese by Julia Sanches, Pandora is a strange and unsettling novel. For this reason it is also perfectly attuned to its equally strange and unsettling subject: the surreal nature of life under [...]