Theater Kids Revisited

 

[Last June, I posted “Theater Kids,” devoted entirely to “How To Tell If You’re a Theatre Kid,” an excerpt from John DeVore’s memoir, Theatre Kids: A True Tale of Off-Off Broadway (Applause, Theatre & Cinema Books, 2024), published on the American Theatre magazine website.  This past January, a New York Times article caught my attention, so now I’m going to revisit the topic of “theater kids.”  I think the titles of the individual articles I’m reposting pretty well reveal what this collection is about.

[In the introduction to the 23 June 2025 post, I define what a theater kid is:

a young person, usually a student, who is deeply passionate about and involved in theatrical performance.  They are often characterized by their enthusiastic embrace of performing arts, particularly musicals, and may exhibit traits like spontaneously breaking into song—almost always one from a musical—or quoting lines from shows.

[I go on to say, “I wasn’t a theater kid,” referencing my autobiographical post “A Broadway Baby” (22 September 2010)—though I acknowledge that that label did fit me.

[The three articles below are the New York Times report that started off a little brouhaha in the theater world, the Playbill article that called attention to that to-do, and a management association article that lays out the insiders’ response.  If you were a theater kid, or you knew one, you might find the exchange interesting—perhaps even touching.] 

“HOW ‘THEATER KID’ MORPHED INTO A POLITICAL INSULT”
by Sopan Deb 

[The New York Times article ran on 8 January 2026 in “Arts” (Section C).  It was posted online on 21 December 2025 as “Move Aside, Snowflake: ‘Theater Kid’ Is the New Go-To Political Insult.”]

Used as a pejorative, usually by the right, the phrase tags ‘the outsiders, the weirdos.’

Move over Karen and snowflake. There’s a new go-to political put-down: Theater kid.

Last month, the comedian Tim Dillon referred to New York City’s mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani, as a “theater kid,” arguing that Mr. Mamdani’s victory speech was “a little cringe.”

[Tim Dillon (b. 1985) is a stand-up comic, podcaster, and actor known for his unrestrained satirical humor and social commentary. He hosts the popular podcast The Tim Dillon Show, which covers news, politics, and culture and airs at 9 a.m. (Pacific Time) Saturdays on YouTube (video) and Spotify (audio). The referenced show about Mayor-Elect Mamdani was broadcast on 8 November 2025, four days after Mamdani won the New York City mayoral election.]

After Mr. Mamdani appeared in the Oval Office for a surprisingly cordial meeting with President Trump [Friday, 21 November 2025], Jack Posobiec, a Trump loyalist and conspiracy theorist, wrote on X, “Theater kids always crumble if you actually press them.” (He also released an episode of his podcast titled “MAGA vs The Theater Kids: Do You Want Drama or Do You Want Victory?”)

Mr. Mamdani, a former improv student, actually is a theater fan. But he’s not the only target.

When Senator Alex Padilla, Democrat of California, was forcibly removed from a news conference in June after trying to question Kristi Noem, the [now-former] homeland security secretary, The Daily Caller [right-wing news and opinion website based in Washington, D.C. and founded by political commentator Tucker Carlson and political advisor Neil Patel] published an article with the headline ”Democrat Theater Kid Learns He’s Not Above the Law.”

Weeks later, the conservative publication American Thinker [daily online magazine dealing with American politics from a politically conservative viewpoint] ran an article saying that Mr. Padilla and a Who’s Who list of prominent Democrats were, you guessed it, theater kids. After a group of Democratic lawmakers released a video last month reminding troops that they could refuse illegal orders, Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center [U.S. government agency responsible for national and international counterterrorism efforts], described them as ”theater kids encouraging an insurrection.”

You get the picture, which raises the question: What did theater kids do to attract so much scorn?

It depends on whom you ask.

For Scott Jennings, a conservative CNN commentator, the increased use of the term is a result of “performance-based radicalism” on the left. As an example, he cited a video from 2019 that resurfaced in the final weeks before a special election for a House seat in Tennessee. It showed the Democratic candidate, Aftyn Behn, in tears, being dragged out of Gov. Bill Lee’s office during a sit-in protest, which called for the removal of a state legislator accused of sexual assault. (Ms. Behn lost by 9 percentage points in a district that Mr. Trump carried by 22 points last year.)

“These people are a sandwich board and a megaphone short of the loony bin,” Mr. Jennings said in an interview. “They think it’s actual politics. They think this is something good, and the rest of us are looking at it going, ‘Man, there go the theater kids again.’”

It’s not clear when the term gained currency, but an early example of its use as a pejorative dates to the final weeks of the 2024 presidential campaign when the conservative operative Matt Whitlock said on social media that Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, was “just a theater kid performing a sketch.”

Caricaturing political opponents with simple insults has become a hallmark of Trump-era politics. Think “Low Energy” Jeb Bush. Republicans, led by the president, have elevated name-calling to an art form, but Democrats have dabbled, too, with mixed results.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, called Republicans “weird” and turned it into a calling card of his candidacy. More recently, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a leading Democratic critic of Mr. Trump who has worked to position himself for a possible 2028 presidential run, has taken to mimicking the president’s approach — calling him “Dozy Don,” among other insults.

Social media has made such put-downs catch on faster.

“In politics, just like in journalism, you’re always trying to make 10 words five, five words three, two words one, right?” Matt Gorman, a Republican strategist, said. “The way to do that really effectively, and we’ve seen this for generations, is you find ways to short-circuit that through connotations.”

Using “theater kids” pejoratively is a way of tagging opponents as dramatic and performative without having to use those words, Mr. Gorman said.

Theater kids became an indelible part of the culture when television series and films like “Glee,” “High School Musical” and “Smash” [see “‘What I learned from Smash (if I didn’t know anything about theater)’” by RonAnnArbor (9 June 2013)] hit the airwaves, though the popularity of those shows set theater kids up as the subject of parody.

“We are a ton of energy and we can be chaotic, but I find that that’s not actually the qualities that people are pointing out when they talk about the theater kid,” said Zhailon Levingston, a director of the upcoming Broadway production of “Cats: The Jellicle Ball.” “What they’re talking about is the person who refuses to stay silent in the face of something that needs to be spoken to.”

For the last half-century or so, it hasn’t been considered “cool” to be a theater aficionado, said Julia Knitel, who was nominated for a Tony Award for her performance in the musical “Dead Outlaw” [2025].

“‘Theater kid’ being the bullied party is a tale as old as time,” Ms. Knitel said. “We’ve always been the outsiders, the weirdos. It’s a quick cultural shorthand to treat us as the underdog.”

Some see a more harmful motive for deploying the moniker as a political insult.

“My initial reaction was just that it feels homophobic,” said Jacob Kerzner, an assistant professor of musical theater at Syracuse University. Mr. Kerzner added that theater is an unusual art in that “you couldn’t replace theater with any other art form in this context.”

“‘They’re all painters now’ doesn’t quite have the same ring to it,” he said.

Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, the author of a recent biography of Lin-Manuel Miranda [Lin-Manuel Miranda: The Education of an Artist (Simon & Schuster, 2025)], said that using the term was part of a larger culture battle.

“A lot of kids playfully adopt the ‘theater kid’ moniker, even with its tinge of attention-seeking excess, because theater offers a space for performing a wider range of emotions and identities than much of our society allows,” Mr. Pollack-Pelzner said in an email. “Since right-wingers want to crack down on exploring gender, race and sexuality in schools, it’s sadly not surprising that they’d try to wield ‘theater kid’ as an insult to discredit progressive politics.”

The dings against theater lovers have come mostly from the right, but not exclusively so. Dhaaruni Sreenivas, a data scientist who has worked for Democratic consulting firms, wrote on X that the perception of the Democratic Party “as a safe space for rule-following theater kids is really bad for our image.” She followed that up with a Substack post [Substack is an online, ad-free platform that enables writers, podcasters, and creators to publish content directly to subscribers via email, while offering options for monetization through paid subscriptions] titled, “Theater Kids and Playing Risk.”

“You know the kids in ‘Glee’? Super cheerful and go-getters?” Ms. Sreenivas, who was a delegate for Kamala Harris at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, said in an interview. “They’re kind of despised by their peers. And it’s a problem because Americans kind of are nerdist. They do not like nerds.”

To Ms. Sreenivas, theater kids are “desperate for the approval of authority figures” and “really want to follow the rules and get rewarded for it.” Basically, she added, “they want to perform being good kids.”

Not everyone minds the moniker. Theater kids, Ms. Knitel said, are emotionally intelligent, empathetic, communicative, charismatic and in touch with their feelings. Those qualities, she said, don’t align with the “current administration.”

“They don’t want us to be empathetic and they don’t want us to care about those around us,” she said, “and they don’t want us to be open to expanding our horizons and feeling things deeply, because then we’re not as easily going to fall in line.”

[Sopan Deb is a New York Times reporter covering breaking news and culture.]

*  *  *  *
“IN RESPONSE TO NEW YORK TIMES,
EDUCATIONAL THEATRE ASSOCIATION LAUNCHES
PROUD THEATRE KID CAMPAIGN”
by Diep Tran

[Playbill, the National Theatre Magazine, picked up the story with a report on 23 December 2025 revealing that the Educational Theatre Association had taken umbrage at the content of the Times’ article.]

The campaign is in response to an article that said that “theatre kid” is the new conservative insult.

On December 21, the New York Times published an article with the headline: “Move Aside, Snowflake: ‘Theater Kid’ Is the New Go-To Political Insult” [that's the online title; see above]. It attributed the rise of conservative pundits using “theatre kid” as an insult, to denote a “performance-based radicalism”—such as a conspiracy theorist calling incoming New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani a theatre kid (though Mamdani has said he listens to Hamilton and Dear Evan Hansen in the car).

In response, the Educational Theatre Association has launched the Proud Theatre Kid campaign to celebrate theatre kids everywhere. Said Dr. Jennifer Katona, executive director of EdTA, “This weekend, our members made it clear that the New York Times article touched a nerve. We felt it was important to stand up as leaders of the theatre education community and affirm what ‘theatre kid’ really means: creativity, discipline, collaboration, and empathy. The response today has been overwhelming, and it underscores the pride and unity of this community.”

The Association asked its followers to share why they are proud theatre kids. One respondent, who is a reverend, wrote: “My son is 14 and is confident, kind, and creative. I couldn’t be prouder! What a wonderful life both of us have found in the theatre. The world needs more of what theatre creates.”

Another respondent wrote: “The best description of theatre that I’ve ever heard is ‘the gym for empathy.’ It strengthened my ability to listen, to express complex ideas, and to put myself in others’ shoes. I can see why that’s threatening to certain politicians and pundits.” 

The Educational Theatre Association is a nonprofit focused on theatre education, serving as a professional association for theatre educators. EdTA is the parent organization of the International Thespian Society, a student honor society that has inducted more than 2.5 million thespians since 1929. Additionally, EdTA operates the Educational Theatre Foundation, the organization’s philanthropic arm dedicated to increasing opportunity and access to school theatre.

Said a representative from EdTA: “At the heart of this campaign is a simple belief: if even one student misses out on the life-changing impact of theatre education, we are all worse off. We want our community to stand together and refuse to let anyone else define what ‘theatre kid’ means.”

EdTA and Playbill are currently collaborating on a new Content Creator Scholarship that will send three students to the 2026 International Thespian Festival.

[Diep Tran is an arts journalist and editor based in New York City.  She is currently the Editor in Chief of Playbill.  Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, NBC News, New York magazine, Time Out New York, Backstage, CNN, Salon, Primetimer, Broadway News, New York Theatre Guide and other publications.  Her previous day jobs include being features editor of Broadway.com and senior editor of American Theatre magazine.  In 2023, she was named on Gold House’s A100 list as one of 100 most impactful Asians.  She loves musical theater, period dramas, and sci-fi/fantasy TV shows.]

*  *  *  *
“TEACHERS’ GROUP LAUNCHES
EFFORT TO RECLAIM ‘THEATER KID’”
by Mark Athitakis  

[EdTA’s position and its response were laid out in Associations Now in a 13 January 2026 post.  Associations Now is a daily news platform of the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE), which serves professionals in the association management field.]

The Educational Theatre Association’s #ProudTheatreKid campaign caught attention on social media, providing a boost to its advocacy message. 

A national theater organization launched a pop-up campaign to push back against the increasingly pejorative use of the term “theater kid,” galvanizing its member base in support of its advocacy goals.

On December 21, the New York Times published an article titled “Move Aside, Snowflake: ‘Theater Kid’ Is the New Go-To Political Insult” [see above]. The story showed how the term has been used to criticize New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA), and other Democratic lawmakers.

The story naturally caught the attention of the Educational Theatre Association (EdTA), which represents theater-education professionals and supports middle- and high-school theater students through its awards and foundation programs. 

“We absolutely felt like there was no space to not respond,” said EdTA Executive Director Dr. Jennifer Katona.

According to Katona, the organization has two million alumni across its 97 years of existence. “That’s two million theater kids,” she said. “The theater kid is our brand. It’s who we are, it’s who we care about, it’s who we talk about every day. We take a lot of pride in that, and we truly believe that a theater program in a school is not just about the performances, but about all the skills that are developed for students’ involvement in that, and also what that program does to the school and the community at large.” [See the post on this blog “The Relation of Theater to Other Disciplines” (21 July 2011).]

Though EdTA’s staff was largely off for the holiday break, it developed a rapid social-media response, using the hashtag #ProudTheatreKid on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. “Theatre kids are academically strong,” the posts read in part. “They are emotionally intelligent. They are collaborative leaders and creative thinkers.” Readers were encouraged to share their own theater experiences growing up.

The posts struck a chord with EdTA members theater fans in general. The Broadway industry bible Playbill covered the campaign [see above], and the posts drew more than 1,200 shares on Facebook and more than 7,700 likes on Instagram. “If it wasn’t up by that evening, it was the next day,” Katona said. “It’s probably four or five times the reshares, if not more, that we usually get,” she said.

More than just attempting to blunt the use of “theater kid” as an insult, the campaign has given EdTA a platform to promote its advocacy work entering 2026. Last week, EdTA used the term “proud theatre kid” as a way to encourage registration for its annual March advocacy summit, which includes a visit with legislators on Capitol Hill and workshops on how participants can promote theater education in their own communities. 

“This comes at a time of years of their craft being under attack, with no-drag bills, the slicing of budgets, and the way some of our states and teachers have been censored,” Katona said. “So this felt like a line in the sand for everybody. This is really propelling us into action. It goes beyond just asking people to change your Facebook status. It’s: Let’s try to come together and go to DC and talk about the value of what we do. That’s where we’re taking it.”

[Mark Athitakis, a contributing editor for Associations Now, has written on nonprofits, the arts, and leadership for a variety of publications.  He is a coauthor (with Mark Lasswell) of The Dumbest Moments in Business History (Portfolio. 2004).]

Theater Kids

 

[The term "theater kid" (or “theatre kid,” as it is below) typically refers to a young person, usually a student, who is deeply passionate about and involved in theatrical performance.  They are often characterized by their enthusiastic embrace of performing arts, particularly musicals, and may exhibit traits like spontaneously breaking into song—almost always one from a musical—or quoting lines from shows. 

[I wasn’t a theater kid.  As I explain in “A Broadway Baby,” posted on Rick On Theater on 22 September 2010, I was introduced to theater as a young boy, but though I did the usual school performances in elementary and middle school, I wasn’t “deeply passionate” about acting.

[I also don’t insist on spelling it t-h-e-a-t-r-e, as John DeVore asserts below that all theater kids do.  I will honor the preference of each theater organization for the spelling of its name, but otherwise, I go with the American spelling.  I do not buy the distinction that theatre refers to the art form and theater to the venue.

[By the way, "Broadway baby" most commonly refers to someone, often a performer, who is deeply involved with or passionate about Broadway theater.  I guess that applies well enough.  Though, I go to a lot of Off- and Off-Off-Broadway theater, and regional repertory productions as well.

[I did a couple of plays in high school, but only my first two years.  I transferred to schools in Switzerland for the rest of high school, and they didn’t have student theater—and I didn’t miss it.  (See “Going to a Swiss International School” [29 April, 2, 5, 8, 11, and 14 May 2021].)

[I did more stage work in college and joined the university’s Troubadours, the extra-curricular theater group, and then, when I was in the army and stationed in Berlin—and no longer a “kid”—I found myself drawn to theater and acting as an amateur.  (See “Berlin Memoir” [16 and 31 December 2016, 20 January 2017, 9 and 19 February 2017, 11 and 29 March 2017, and 13 April 2017].)

[Then I got out of the service and came to New York City—I’m a native Washingtonian—to go to acting school.  I got an MFA in acting, knocked around New York auditioning, doing a lot of Off-Off-Broadway shows, trying my hand at directing and doing a little teaching. 

[Then I saw that I wasn’t advancing in the profession.  I went back to school for a doctorate with an eye on teaching full time—just at the moment when I was offered a role by one of the theaters back in the city where I was born!  I’d already committed to attending school for that Ph.D., but I toyed with blowing it off for the stage gig . . . but I decided it was a chimera, and stuck with my original plan. 

[I discovered that what I was good at was writing about this subject.  I got some articles published, delivered a few papers at conferences—not really my favorite thing, it turned out—and contributed to a couple of books.  I even won a prize with one of my essays.  Then, in 2009, I started this blog.  This will be my 1,281st post—though not all of them have been on theater, or written by me.

[Now, to the matter at hand in this post, John DeVore’s memoir of his sojourn into the land of theater.  He says theatre, but I’m stickin’ to my guns (prop guns, of course).  In addition to “A Broadway Baby,” which is my memoir of encountering theater at a boy, I have posted a number of pieces here that touch on children and young people’s encounters with theater. 

[Some are about youngsters engaging in the theater world itself, and others are about theater in the schools.  What I’m not going to list here are the posts about “children’s theater” or “theater for young audiences,” which cover theater for young people by adults.  That’s an important gateway for kids to get into theater, but it’s different, I feel.

[Here’s the list, with links, to ROT’s coverage of theater and kids (note that several of these titles contain multiple articles):

    • “Missoula Children’s Theatre” (28 August 2009
• “Making Broadway Babies” (25 November 2013)
• “Kids on the Broadway Boards” (30 November 2013)
• “Nobody Wants to See a Tired Bat on Stage” by Oona Haaranen (9 January 2014)
• “Musical Theater Programs for Kids” (18 May 2018; rerun on 5 February 2023)
• “Jimmy Awards” (2 September 2024)

[For the other posts on children and theater and the arts in schools, I suggest using the search engine a the top left corner of the screen, or browse through the archives to the left of the text column.  You can also click on an appropriate label at the bottom of the post.]

“HOW TO TELL IF YOU’RE A THEATRE KID”
by John DeVore

[This excerpt of John DeVore’s memoir appeared on the American Theatre website.   The piece is categorized as “Book Excerpts” and is dated 6 September 2024.  It wasn’t published in the print edition of the magazine.]

In this excerpt from a new memoir about his years toiling Off-Off-Broadway, the author reflects on what it means to be young and bitten by the acting bug. 

Lights up on a small theatre in Brooklyn, New York. Enter John DeVore, late 40s. His hair and beard are streaked with gray. He stands in a spotlight centerstage and says: 

My name is John, and I’m a theatre kid. I’m a theatre kid the way a raccoon is a raccoon, or a pineapple is a pineapple. I like to think of it as my astrological sign, something about me that is fixed. It is who I am, and I had little choice in the matter.

During one of my very first school plays, a teacher suggested I had been bitten by the acting bug, contracting a virus with no known cure. But I knew better: I had been screaming for attention since I was born. If I could have been the opposite of a theatre kid, I would have. But I can’t be who I’m not. I’m pretty sure the opposite of a theatre kid is a Dallas Cowboys fan.

Being a theatre kid is like that Groucho joke about not wanting to join a club that would have you as a member. That’s my experience, at least. I’ve never been a joiner. If I could change that about me, I would. I want to be loved and left alone at the same time. That is my default setting. My therapist is always telling me to open my heart to other people, and my usual response to his gentle requests is, “I’m trying, Gary.”

[Groucho Marx (1890-1977) was a comedian, actor, writer, and singer who performed on the vaudeville stage and in films and on television, radio, and the stage. Groucho made 13 movies with his brothers (Chico [1887-1961], Harpo [1888-1964], Gummo [1892-1977], and Zeppo [1901-79]), who performed under the name the Marx Brothers. He later had a successful solo career, primarily on radio and television, most notably as the host of the game show You Bet Your Life (radio: 1947-60; NBC-TV: 1950-61).

[As for the joke about joining a club, it was long attributed to Groucho, and in both his son’s biography of his father, My Life with Groucho (Simon and Schuster, 1954) and Groucho’s own memoir, Groucho and Me (Bernard Geis Associates, 1959), both men quote the “Resignation Joke,” which they record as Groucho’s withdrawal from the Friars Club (sometime around 1950-52). In Groucho’s rendering, he sent a telegram stating: “Please accept my resignation. I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.”]

I once denied being a theatre kid, a bit like how the apostle Peter repeatedly lied when asked by the mob if he knew Jesus. My denial happened years ago, in the late aughts. 2008? Right before the economy cratered. Those were dark times for me. I had gone on an impromptu weeknight bender with a former colleague—a lonely old journalist with a talent for sniffing out bullshit and a sickening thirst for crème de menthe—who suspected I had acted in high school or college. I just laughed him off. Me? A theatre kid? No.

And my ruse would have worked had we not stumbled, piss-drunk, into a nearly empty karaoke bar and had I not insisted on performing a sloppy, surprisingly poignant rendition of the popular torch song “On My Own” from the blockbuster 1987 Broadway mega-musical Les Misérables—which, if you’re not aware, is a weepy, blood-and-thunder pop opera written by Claude-Michel Schönberg [French; b. 1944] and Alain Boublil [French, born in Tunisia; b. 1941] and based on Victor Hugo’s [French; 1802-85] 19th-century novel [1862] about poor French vagrants suffering beautifully. “On My Own” is sung by the forlorn street waif Eponine, who pines after handsome revolutionary Marius, whose heart in turn belongs to Cosette, the adopted daughter of our hero, ex-convict Jean Valjean. Eponine is a lonely victim of unrequited love, and later she dies in Marius’s arms, fulfilling the deepest, darkest, most pathetic fantasy of anyone who has ever longed for someone they could never have.  

[The French version of Les Misérables premièred in Paris at the Palais des Sports on 24 September 1980. Its English-language adaptation, with lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer (1925-2020), produced by Cameron Mackintosh (b. 1946), has been running at the Barbican Centre London since 8 October 1985. The London show had its 15,000th performance on 28 September 2023.

[The musical had a pre-Broadway tryout at the Kennedy Center’s Opera House in Washington, D.C., on 27 December 1986 and ran there for eight weeks through 14 February 1987. The production then transferred to the Broadway Theatre on 12 March 1987. It moved to the Imperial Theatre on 17 October 1990, and after 6,680 performances in 16 years, it closed on 18 May 2003. It won eight 1987 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, and Best Original Score. There were Broadway revivals in 2006 and 2014.]

My former colleague could see the truth in my tear-filled eyes as I sang with everything I had. I couldn’t help myself. I was feeling it. I sang like I was competing for a Tony Award. I did that thing Broadway divas do where they slowly push one jazz hand toward the heavens as the emotions swell. I was in church, and from the back pew, I could hear him laughing and pointing at me like I was a fool. He knew a theatre kid when he saw one.

Like I said: dark times.  

How can you tell if someone you know, or even love, is a theatre kid? Ask yourself this: Do they take a lot of selfies? Do. They. Enunciate. Every. Word? Do they frequently sigh heavily? Do they talk about themselves and their manifold feelings incessantly? These are just a few of the signs. Do they spell it t-h-e-a-t-r-e instead of t-h-e-a-t-e-r? That’s a good one. Only a true theatre kid spells it “theatre.” A “theater” is where you watch “theatre.” You see? No? This difference matters, and if you don’t think it does, you’re probably not a theatre kid, which may come as a relief to many of you.

Now, I need you to know that I know that t-h-e-a-t-r-e is just the British spelling of the word. But I much prefer the other explanation, don’t you? It’s more romantic. The theatre is an ancient art, a sacred, almost holy occupation. It’s a way to teach moral lessons and to celebrate the human condition; it is a story full of sound and fury that can levitate you or knock you sideways. The theatre is a spirit—and the theater is where you sit and cough politely, and then the curtain rises. There might not even be a curtain. A theater can be a space, any space. A storefront, an apartment living room, a parking lot.

This wisdom has been passed down from theatre kid to theatre kid from time immemorial. It was a veteran of my high school’s drama program who taught me the difference between theatre and theater. She was a full year older than me, but she knew things. I thought she was brilliant. I remember listening to her intently: Theatre was life. This lesson probably happened over cups of creamy, sugary coffee and plates of baklava at the local 24-hour diner, where all the theatre kids at my high school would go to celebrate after a successful production—a one-act or the spring musical.

We’d pour into the diner like an army of frogs, laughing and talking a mile a minute and singing show tunes, and the poor servers endured our overbearing youthful cheerfulness. My true theatre education happened either at that diner or backstage, during rehearsal breaks, and these impromptu lectures are the closest thing to an oral tradition in action I’ve ever encountered.  

These 16-year-old elders patiently explained the superstitions and rules of the theatre, and I did the same when it was my turn to pass on the lore. I remember the rules like commandments: Never whistle backstage or say the name of Shakespeare’s famous tragedy about that Scottish couple who make a series of poorly thought-out career decisions. Both of those things are bad luck. [See my four-part series “Ghosts, Curses, & Charms: Theater Superstitions” (14, 17, 20, and 23 August 2020).]

Saying “good luck” is also bad luck. You’re supposed to say “break a leg.”  

There are all sorts of explanations as to what that phrase means. I was told, over a plate of french fries, that in ye olden times, the mechanism that raised and lowered the curtains was called a leg, and so to break a leg would mean that the audience cheered for so many encores, the curtain went up and down and up and down until it broke. Is that true? I have no idea. That’s just how I heard it.  

Here are a few more sacred rules: Give flowers after a performance, not before. Always open the stage door for one of your fellow castmates and invite them to enter first with a graceful bow. One of my favorites warns against putting your shoes on any table backstage. Don’t do that. Why? I don’t think you want to find out. 

There were also practical, straightforward rules about rehearsal and being part of a production. Always be on time. (“If you’re 10 minutes early, you’re on time. If you’re on time, you’re late.” That was the mantra. I was told to repeat it and to repeat it.) Don’t skip rehearsal. Memorize your lines. Stretch before every performance, and drink nothing but hot water with lemon juice and honey if you catch a cold. And never, ever become romantically involved with someone in the cast—a rule that was broken during every production at my high school, sometimes multiple times. Show romances were a huge no-no. This rule was meant to keep rehearsals drama-free. But rehearsals are intense and intimate, and it’s almost impossible to keep theatre kids from trying to make out with other theatre kids.

Show romances—also known as “showmances”—were looked down on, even by those who had them. The only exceptions were hookups between cast and crew, which worked in my favor. I will always be a sucker for a girl who can use power tools, because I cannot use power tools, and I fell for stage managers and set builders. A boy never hit on me, but I was ready for it, just in case, and had practiced a flattered, “I like you, but I don’t like-like you” speech in the mirror. I never got to perform that speech, which disappointed me. A few years later, in college, a beautiful man kissed me on the dance floor of a party. It was a deep and playful kiss, and before I could stammer, “I like you, but I don’t . . .,” he had disappeared into the crowd, and now that I think about it, that was disappointing too.

When I was a senior I gave the newbies at the diner a variation of the speech I was given in ninth grade. It went something like: “Look around at this table. These are the friends you’ll have for the rest of your life.” That wasn’t true, but in the moment it felt true, and that’s good enough. I also passed along to them what was passed to me, from senior to frosh, and that is to always, always attend the closing night cast party, and to stay until the very end.

*  *  *  *

The publisher’s description:

Friendship. Grief. Jazz hands.

In 2004, in a small, windowless theater in then-desolate Williamsburg, Brooklyn, an eccentric family of broke art-school survivors staged an experimental, four-hour adaptation of William Faulkner’s [1897-1962] novel As I Lay Dying [1930] inside an enormous wooden coffin that could barely fit the cast, much less an audience.

The production’s cast and crew—including its sweetly monomaniacal director—poured their hearts and paychecks into a messy spectacle doomed to fail by any conventional measure. It ran for only eight performances. The reviews were tepid. Fewer than one hundred people saw it. But to emotionally messy hack magazine editor John DeVore, cast at the last minute in a bit part, it was a safe space to hide out and attempt sobering up following a devastating loss.

An unforgettable ode to the ephemeral, chaotic magic of the theatre and the weirdos who bring it to life, Theatre Kids is DeVore’s buoyant, irreverent, and ultimately moving account of outsize ambition and dashed hopes in post-9/11, pre-iPhone New York City. Sharply observed and bursting with hilarious razzle-dazzle, it will resonate with anyone who has ever, perhaps against their better judgment, tried to bring something beautiful into the world without regard for riches or fame.

Editorial Reviews:

“A wry and boisterous account . . . .  Electric prose elevates this homage to an enduring art form.” ―Publishers Weekly

“For those of us lucky to call John DeVore a friend, the skill and warmth with which he’s written Theatre Kids comes as no surprise. If you should not be in the elect group, however, the next best thing would be to read this book. There’s something funny, moving, surprising, or trenchant on every page. Often there’s all of these at once. Theatre Kids is a lemon tart made by someone who loves you, sweet and light and sharp and substantial all at once.” ―Isaac Butler, author of The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act (see on Rick On Theater “The Method – a Review” [12 March 2022] and “Bombast to Beckett” [13 January 2025], both by Kirk Woodward)

“John DeVore is a master storyteller, and Theatre Kids is a delightful and moving read. It's a valentine to the New York City theatre scene in the late ’90s and early aughts, told through the eyes of one of the many young people who have for generations come from hamlets, small towns, and sprawling suburbs hoping to make their mark in the glittering city. DeVore will keep you laughing, gasping, and sometimes cringing all the way to the last page.” ―Catherine Burns, former artistic director of The Moth, a storytelling theater group in New York City’s Financial District

“Like all beautiful memoirs, John DeVore’s Theatre Kids will tell you not just about the author, but about things and places and people dead and gone. DeVore brings them alive again. How glad you'll be to meet them, and him. This is a funny, sad, loving, and mournful look at what artistic strivers and dreamers put themselves and others through on the quest for greatness―or, perhaps, just plain old survival.” ―Sara Benincasa, author of Real Artists Have Day Jobs (And Other Awesome Things They Don't Teach You in School)

“"Theatre Kids is a rickety roller coaster ride into the hearts of New York City’s downtown theatricals – that rare breed that can turn a moldering black box and a couple of folding chairs into a diorama of the divine."” ―Mike Errico, author of Music, Lyrics, and Life: A Field Guide for the Advancing Songwriter

“This moving memoir recounts DeVore’s life-changing experience having a bit part in a tiny, four-hour production adaptation of William Faulkner’s novel “As I Lay Dying” as he struggled with addiction and grief. The cast and crew were scrappy but passionate as they tried to bring their vision to life in a windowless theater in Brooklyn in post-9/11 New York.” ―New York Post

[John DeVore (b. 1974) is an award-winning writer and editor who lives in Brooklyn with his wife and one-eyed mutt, Morley.  His debut memoir, Theatre Kids: A True Tale of Off-Off Broadway, was published by Applause Books and came out in June 2024.]

Yevgenii Shvarts: Three Script Evaluations

[This is the second part of my post on Soviet playwright Yevgenii Shvarts.  If you haven’t read part one, covering Shvarts’s biography and a little literary criticism, I strongly recommend you go back and do so before reading these script reports.  It will make more sense to you if you have the background provided in the earlier installment.

[These are the three script evaluations I wrote for StageArts (which is now defunct) on Shvarts plays.  I can’t remember for certain by whom I was introduced to these plays; I think it must have been my production dramaturgy professor at NYU, but I’m not sure.  (If so, she probably suggested I read The Shadow and when I found it so engaging, I went on to read the other two.)

[I only noted the sources of the texts of two of the plays—they were all in different anthologies, which is why they each use a different spelling for the author’s name—but I’m sure the books are all out of print now; they may already have been when I read them.  There’s a later edition of all three of these plays in one volume which seems to be available in both used and new copies and may still be in print: Yevgheny Shvarts, The Naked King, The Shadow and The Dragon (London/New York: Boyars, Marion Publishers, 1976).

[I see that only one of the reports is dated—but they were all written at pretty much the same time in 1984, which is when I started working at StageArts.  (I hadn’t devised a reporting form yet, so these were all written up ad hoc.)  The evaluations below are arranged in the order in which I read the plays.  (I have done a little up-dating of some historical details, but I haven’t changed my 1984 assessments.)]

THE SHADOW

Тень (Tyen’, 1940)

by Evgeny Lvovich Shvarts

Plot Synopsis:  a young Scholar, studying in a country where fairy tales come true, hears the story of a mysterious Princess who will return to the throne and rule the country when she marries.  As it turns out, the Princess is hiding out in the apartment across the street, and the Scholar sees and falls in love with her when she appears on her balcony.  The Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, not wanting to lose their positions when a new king and queen mount the throne, intrigue to prevent the marriage. 

The Scholar loses his shadow, which reappears as a rival for the Princess’s hand.  The Shadow conspires with the two ministers, and, having befriended the Scholar, deceives both the young man and the ministers, becomes engaged to the Princess, and assumes control of the country.  The Scholar, who is too innocent and honest to understand the duplicity that has been used to trick him, tries to discover why the Princess left him. 

Annunziata, the daughter of the Scholar’s landlord, has been his friend and has silently loved him since the beginning.  She tells him that his rival is his former Shadow, and tries to convince him not to pursue the Princess.  He does anyway, and the Shadow has him sentenced to death.  He is taken off and beheaded, and the Shadow’s head falls at the moment the Scholar’s is lost off-stage. 

With the help of some magic water, the Scholar is restored to life, and the Shadow, too, regains his head.  The Scholar rejects the Princess, accepts the love of Annunziata who saved his life, and leaves the country.  The Shadow disappears, and the country is left much as it was before.

Theme:  A study in duplicity and fickleness, The Shadow is a satirical comedy on social manners.  Except for the Scholar and Annunziata, all the characters are either out for personal gain or inconstant in their feelings.  Insensitivity and deception are common, and loyalty is nonexistent.

History: The Shadow was written between 1937 and 1940 specifically for the Leningrad Comedy Theater on the suggestion of director-set designer Nikolai Akimov, after The Naked King was banned from being shown in the same theater. 

The première took place on 12 April 1940 and the first edition of the text was released by the publishing house of the Comedy Theater.  The book was illustrated with Akimov’s renderings of costumes for the performance.

Subsequent productions were mounted in 1960 at the Leningrad Comedy Theater, directed and designed by Akimov; 1984 at the Leningrad Academic Theater of Comedy, directed by Yuri Aksyonov and designed by Marina Azizyan; 2003 at the Saint Petersburg Academic Comedy Theater, directed by Tatyana Kazakova and designed by Emil Kapelyush.

There have been many additional productions of The Shadow, including the most recent: in 2018 at the Winter Theater of Orekhovo-Zuevo (near Moscow), directed by Alexander N. Kalinin.  Film versions were produced in 1971 (as The Shadow) by Nadezhda Kosheverova and 1991 (as Shadow, or Maybe It’ll Work Out, a musical film) by Mikhail Kozakov.

Evaluation:  No retelling of the story, however detailed (and mine above is very simplified), could faithfully capture the flavor and style of the script.  Shvarts called the play “A Fairy tale in Three Acts,” and, indeed, it is based on a Hans Christian Andersen tale of a man who lost his shadow.  The Shadow may be his most vivid, most flamboyant, most imaginative, and most profoundly shocking work. 

The fairy-tale trappings and stylized treatment do not mask but point up Shvarts’s condemnation of the petty bureaucratic, self-serving behavior that is common no less today than it was in 1940, and in the U.S. no less than in the USSR.  The charm and off-center treatment in the play make this an irresistible adventure, and an unavoidable statement that is never the wrong time to make.  It is also great fun, and will appeal to adults and, perhaps with a few small edits, children on different levels.

The acting style of the play is far from realistic, and care would have to be taken not to overstep the bounds of the script’s innate character.  Too much buffoonery will destroy the play as fast as too much solemnity.  The play has its own charm, and does not need to be pushed.

Other Considerations:  The large cast requirement (3 Acts; 5 women, 14 men, extras) may present a problem, however, I believe there are extras that can be cut, and some possible doubling and combining of characters.  This may require some scriptual adjustments, but the effort may well prove worth it.

The play describes a number of locations around the city, but since the style is non-realistic, these need only be suggested symbolically.  Imagination is far more necessary than accuracy, and several locations can easily be suggested by the same set.

The most difficult problem in the production would be the magic.  The Scholar actually loses his shadow, a fact which is pointed out in the dialogue.  The Shadow is described as losing his head, quite literally, and regaining it just as miraculously in full view of the audience.  In the end of the play, the Shadow disappears as guards grab for him, leaving only his cape behind.  At this point, I have no idea how these tricks could be accomplished, but I am sure they can be managed with imagination, and some technical assistance from a special-effects technician.

Notes:  The style and genre of this play is different from the usual material considered by StageArts.  I provide this evaluation on the behest of Nell Robinson [one of StageArts artistic directors], who took an interest in the play when I described it to her orally.  It may, in fact, be too cumbersome to produce on a limited time and financial basis.  It is, however, an unusual play, and will not have been produced recently in New York, or the U.S. in general.  A good production of such a play might, indeed, garner some critical attention.

Source: Franklin D. Reeve, ed., An Anthology of Russian Plays: 1890-1960, Volume 2, An Anthology of Russian Plays (New York: Vintage Books, 1963).

*  *  *  *

THE NAKED KING

Голый король (Golyi korol’, 1934)

by Evgeny Shvarts

2 July 1984

Plot Synopsis:  Basically this is the story of “The Princess and the Pea” combined with “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”  Heinrich, a young swineherd, falls in love with the Princess who returns his feelings.  The King Her Father sends her off to marry the neighboring King, a pompous fool.  Henry and his friend Christian follow to save her from this fate.  Along the way, the ministers of the King she is to marry endeavor to prove her royal lineage and purity (the “Princess/Pea” plot). 

When the King falls in love with her on sight, Henry and Christian pretend to be weavers with a magic cloth to show him to be a fool before the Princess’s father (the “Emperor’s Clothes” plot).  Of course, the King goes to his wedding stark naked and the people realize that all their leaders are fools and liars and revolt.  The Princess’s father flees in fear, and Heinrich turns the revolt into a salute to “love, friendship, laughter, and joy!”

Theme:  As with Shvarts’s other adult fairy tales, he presents his two main themes: the power of love and the unmasking of fools and tyrants in leadership.

History: Written in 1934, The Naked King was not published in the Soviet Union until 1960 (during the Khrushchev Thaw following the death of Joseph Stalin) because of its “dangerous allusions.”  The play’s première production in the Soviet Union was also in 1960, at Moscow’s Contemporary (Современник - Sovremennik) Theater.  Even then, it was considered an act of political tightrope-walking, but the play was popular and remained the troupe’s repertoire for decades.

In 1991, The Naked King was staged at The Russian State Theater “Satyricon” in Moscow.

Genre/Style:  Adult fairy tale; allegory

Structure:   2 acts, many scenes; panoramic

Setting:  Various locations in 2 fairy-tale kingdoms.  Realism will not work or be suitable; suggested and fanciful settings, easily shifted, would be necessary to accomplish the fast-paced scene changes.

Language:  Fanciful, stylized dialogue; much poetry and singing; non-realistic.

Characters:  Large cast with much doubling/tripling necessary.  Name characters are 1 woman (Princess), late teens-early 20’s; 6 men: 2 40-50, 2 30-40, 2 20’s.  Extras: Court ladies, Gendarmes, Soldiers, Courtiers, Ministers, Populace, etc.  (4-5 each men and women should be sufficient.)

Evaluation:  I don’t like this play as well as The Shadow, but it is amusing and pleasant.  Its large cast has many quirky characters (e.g.: the General, Officer & Sergeant who only talk in military commands) which should be fun to act.  The story is so well-known, however, that the larger issues Shvarts is raising may be lost.

The two fairy tales Shvarts amalgamated into The Naked King do not really blend seamlessly.  In fact, until the heroes establish themselves as weavers, the early part of the play seems like prologue.  It may play better than it reads, however.

Recommendation:  Second reading

Source: Franklin D. Reeve, ed., Contemporary Russian Drama (New York: Pegasus, 1968)

*  *  *  *

THE DRAGON

Дракон (Drakon, 1944)

by Yevgenii Shvarts

Plot Synopsis:  This fairy tale for adults is too complex to relate in simple form.  It is the story of Lancelot, who comes to a town ruled by a Dragon who exacts tribute in the form of a young girl every year.  The townspeople have been caring for and supporting the Dragon for 400 years, not wanting to take the action necessary to free themselves. 

The only supporters the knight finds are Charlemagne, the Keeper of Public Records, whose daughter is the next sacrifice, and his Cat.  Everyone else is afraid to meddle with the status quo.  Finally, just before the battle, Lancelot is given some magical gifts by some last-minute supporters: a flying carpet, an invisibility hat, a sword and lance, and a self-playing musical instrument.  In a fierce battle above the town square, Lancelot defeats the Dragon, chopping off his three heads one by one.  Mortally wounded, he disappears, leaving the town in the hands of the Mayor and his son, Henry.

The Mayor, declaring himself the true Killer of the Dragon, makes himself President, and Henry becomes the Mayor.  The President is forcing Elsa, Charlemagne’s daughter, to marry him.  Just as the wedding ceremony is taking place, Lancelot returns, frees the town once again, and sends the Mayor and Henry off to prison.

cast:  3 acts; 6 women, 18 men; much doubling

Theme:  Shvarts has two common themes in these adult fairy tales (The Shadow and The Naked King are of this genre): love conquers all, and good triumphs over evil.  He was a staunch anti-Fascist, and he showed tyrants to be cowards and weaklings in his works.  In The Dragon, he showed that the people prefer the “protection” of a tyrant over governing themselves.  In the end, Lancelot says that it isn’t enough to kill the Dragon, but that all the little dragons inside man also have to be killed before the town is safe from tyranny.

History: The Dragon was written in between 1942 and 1944 while Shvarts was an evacuee from besieged Leningrad in Stalinabad (formerly and currently Dushanbe), Tajikistan.  Attempts to stage the play at the Leningrad Comedy Theater, directed and designed by Nikolai Akimov, during the rules of Joseph Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev ended with a ban; the first public performance took place in August 1944 in Moscow, but it was canceled after a few performances. 

The first full début of The Dragon in the Soviet Union was not until 1962, mounted by Akimov at the Leningrad Comedy Theater; the production was banned after a month.  In Moscow, the play was also staged in 1962—at the Moscow State University Student Theater, directed by Mark Zakharov; this production was banned after 17 performances.

In the early 1960s, the first foreign productions of The Dragon were mounted in Poland and the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany).  Subsequently, productions were staged in France, in Saint-Étienne, Grenoble, and Bourges.

The Deutsches Theater in East Berlin, the capital of the German Democratic Republic (GDR, known colloquially as East Germany) holds a special place among foreign productions of The Dragon.  Directed by Benno Besson, designed by Horst Sagert, with music composed by Rainer Bredemeier, The Dragon played for the first time there in March 1965 and remained in the repertoire until the end of the 1981 season, accumulating 580 performances.  The performance was successfully presented in many countries of Eastern and Western Europe, was unanimously praised by viewers and critics, and became an event not only in German, but in world theater.

At the Pinocchio Theater in Magnitogorsk, Victor Shraiman staged the play in 1979 using dolls and masks to depict some incarnations of the Dragon, the cat Masha, and the townspeople (putting mannequins among the audience) while the main roles were played by actors.  In 1980, puppeteer Sergei Obraztsov presented a full puppet version of The Dragon in Obraztsov Puppet Theatre.

In 1969, the (East) Berlin State Opera (the state opera of the GDR) premiered the opera Lancelot, composed by Paul Dessau for a libretto (based on The Dragon) by East German playwright Heiner Müller. 

In 1988, director Mark Zakharov made the film To Kill the Dragon based on the play.  The St. Petersburg Studio of Radio of Russia broadcast a radio play version of The Dragon In 1994.

Since the turn of the 21st century, there have been no less than six production of the Shvarts’s play, the most recent being a 2017 staging at the Moscow Art Theater Chekhov (formed in 1987 after the division of the famous MAT into two companies).

Evaluation:  Like The Shadow, this play requires a considerable amount of magic in the staging.  It has fantastic characters (talking cats, donkeys and dragons) and good deal of other special effects.  The style of Shvarts’s plays is far from realistic, and a flair for the broad humor and fantasy of children’s theater is necessary.  (This is not to say that the play is a children’s play; it is decidedly a serious piece for adults.)  Color and spectacle are certainly important aspects of the production of The Dragon, and a careful balancing of the message with the fairy-tale elements will not be easy.

The characters are all creatively imaginative, though the best lines belong to the villains of the piece.  With the right kind of actors, these would be wonderful and challenging roles for performing.  The language, because of the fairy-tale aspect and the translation, can be slightly stilted, but this can be overcome with a combination of style work in rehearsal, and some retranslation.

Shvarts’s works are not often produced in this country, and are not well known.  I believe that a good production of one of his plays will be a significant theatrical event in New York.  I recommend serious consideration of this play, and Shvarts’s other works, even though they may not be easy to produce.  The large cast requirement can be dealt with by doubling many of the characters, and the magic and fantasy can be accomplished with good, creative staging.  The innate charm and uniqueness of Shvarts’s plays will certainly attract critical attention and audience appreciation.

[A quick word about the titles of these plays: because the Russian language lacks articles (a, an, the)  the titles of The Shadow and The Dragon are sometimes rendered in English as simply Dragon and Shadow.  (I’ve never seen The Naked King written without the ‘the,’ but I suppose it could be.  Theoretically, The Shadow and The Dragon could also be translated as A Shadow and A Dragon—just as Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull is sometimes published as A Seagull—but I’ve never seen that, either.)

[The 1988 movie adaptation of The Dragon is listed with three English variations of the title that I’ve encountered: Kill the Dragon, To Kill the Dragon, and To Kill a Dragon.]