“Attention Must Be Paid,” review essay on Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt and other stage works addressing antisemitism, Jewish Currents
” long-form narrative account of cultural resistance in Budapest, forthcoming in print Theater 53:2.
“Highland Park Artist Helps Her Community Transform Grief Into Action,” essay on the memorial to victims of the July 4 mass shooting in my hometown, Hyperallergic, 21 September 2022.
“Tossed About in Whirlwinds,” review essay on Mona Mansour’s play, The Vagrant Trilogy, The Nation, 23 June 2022.
“Boxed In: The Lehman Trilogy’s theater of financial malfeasance,” review essay on the epic play, The Nation, 26 January 2022.
“9/11: Witness to the Fall – Reporting on the Coming Dangers,” essay recalling reporting on 9/11/01, Village Voice, 8 September 2021
“Rediscovering a Pathbreaking Queer Jewish Writer,” an interview with Jonathan Ned Katz on the life of Eve Adams, Jewish Currents newsletter, 10 June 2021.
“How Covid Transformed US Theater,” widely reported overview of the theatrical landscape a year into the pandemic, The Nation, 3/10 May 2021.
“Let’s Put on a Phone Bank!” report on a group of theater artists organizing weekly civic activism in New York, American Theatre, 4 March 2021.
“Fiddler on the Roof: Original Broadway Cast Album,” essay for the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress; essay posted January 2021.
“Shakespeare’s Contentious Conversation with America,” review essay on Shakespeare in a Divided America by James Shapiro, The Nation, 17 December 2020.
“Degrees of Separation,” an interview with playwright and memoirist David Adjmi, Jewish Currents, 8 October 2020.
“It Happened Here,” review essay on the HBO series (based on the Philip Roth novel), The Plot Agains America, Jewish Currents, 1 July 2020.
“Larry Kramer’s Righteous Rage,” an obituary of the writer and AIDS activist, The Nation, 4 June 2020.
“Yikhes,” a review essay on Matthew Lopez’s The Inheritance, Jewish Currents, 3 March 2020.
Tony Kushner on Making Serious Political Theatre in 2019: an interview with the playwright, The Nation, 28 October 2019.
Translator Profile: Elissa Bemporad, PaknTreger, Fall 2019. (Excerpted here; full version in print magazine only.)
“Crisis Intervention: In What the Constitution Means to Me, Heidi Schreck confronts the promise and perils of the country’s founding document,” critical essay, The Nation, 6 August 2019.
“Torch Bearers of Off-Off-Broadway: Promenade’s Maria Irene Fornes and Al Carmines,” Playbill and City Center blog, 25 June 2019.
“Suzan-Lori Parks Dares to Get Into Your Head,” critical essay on Parks’s play, White Noise, The Nation, 28 May 2019.
“Stacked Deck: With The White Card, Claudia Rankine Turns to the Stage,”critical essay, The Nation, 10 April 2019.
“The FBI’s Interrogation of Reality Winner Was Like a Play — And Has Been Turned Into One,” feature on the production devised by Tina Satter and Half Straddle, The Intercept, 2 January 2019.
“Who Knows Where or When? AIDS and Theatrical Memory in Queer Time,” Theater 48:3, November 2018. (paywalled)
“Passion and Presence: Maria Irene Fornes, 1930-1918,” an appreciation o one of America’s greatest playwrights and discussion of the recent film about her, “The Rest I make Up,” PublicBooks.org 30 November 2018.
“To Love and Repair, by Trial and Error: Peter Brook in Conversation with Alisa Solomon,” Theatre for a New Audience 360: The Prisoner, 28 November 2018.
Young Jean Lee’s Straight White Men: a review of the Broadway production, The Nation, 11 September 2018.
“A fidler afn dakh: Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish,” the history of the Yiddish-language version for the Digital Yiddish Theater Project, 17 July 2018.
“Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, 1945 – 2018,” remembrance of the writer and activist, co-written with Esther Kaplan, Marilyn Neimark, and Donna Nevel, Jewish Currents, 17 July 2018.
“A ‘Fiddler On The Roof’ In Yiddish — The Way It Ought To Be,” essay on the history and current meaning of Fiddler in Yiddish, the Forward, 24 June 2018.
“Atmosphere and Adaptation,” review of several new productions/adaptations of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, The Nation, 30 May 2018.
“Longing to Tell You: Finding new life in Broadway’s golden-age shows,” review essay on revivals of Carousel and My Fair Lady, The Nation, 18 June 2018.
“Gay Theatre Gets Hammered by the Canon, Again,” essay on the limited representation of gay theatre in a major Times article, American Theatre, 23 March 2018.
“‘Angels’ in the Details,” review of The World Only Spins Forward, Isaac Butler and Dan Kois’s oral history of Angels in America, American Theatre magazine, February 2018.
“The Bloodstained Distance: History, Mystery, and Adrienne Kennedy,” essay about Kennedy’s new play, TFANA 360 Series: He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box, January 2018.
“What Does it Mean to Remember AIDS?” essay on AIDS memorialization for World AIDS Day, thenation.com, 30 November 2017.
“The Village Voice’s indelible marks on NYC & Culture,” New York Daily News, 23 August 2017.
“This Play Changed My Life“: a profile of playwright Paula Vogel and Indecent, Village Voice, May 24, 2017.
“Backwards to the Future: Director Arin Arbus in Conversation with Alisa Solomon,” TFANA 360 Series: The Skin of Our Teeth, February 2017.
“Plenty’s Discontent,” review essay on David Hare, highlight his memoir, The Blue Touch Paper, and the recent revival of his play, Plenty, The Nation, 6 February 2017.
“What’s Left,” a profile of the Chilean playwright, Guillermo Calderón, American Theater, October 2016.
“Theater of the Real,” Review of Carol Martin’s book about documentary theater, The Drama Review 60:3, October 2016.
“Letter of the Law: How University of Michigan Women Got Their Varsity Jackets (a Few Decades Late),” reported essay on the victorious 40-year effort to win equal treatment of female athletes. VICESports, September 22, 2016.
“According to ‘Oslo’,” a review of J.T. Rogers’s play about the Israeli-Palestinian Oslo accords, The Nation, August 3, 2016.
“More Repossession than Revival,” critical essay on George C. Wolfe’s Shuffle Along and Paula Vogel & Rebecca Taichman’s Indecent, The Nation, July 4, 2016.
“My Epistemological Crisis: Arts Criticism in the Times of Trump,” commentary, The Drama Review, 60:1, July 2016.
“Our Masterbuilder,” critical essay on several productions and publications on the Arthur Miller centennial, The Nation, May 19, 2016.
“Chile’s Future: On the World Stage,” critical report on the Santiago a Mil Festival, The Nation, March 25, 2016.
“Jewy, Queer, Daring, and Political, ‘Transparent’ Pushes Past Parody,” review essay on the second season of Jill Soloway’s Amazon series, The Nation, January 11, 2016.
“Pacific Overtures on Broadway,” review of Allegiance and commentary on casting controversy over Lloyd Suh’s Jesus in India, The Nation, December 7, 2015.
“Tradition! The Indestructible Fiddler on the Roof,”a consideration of the show on the eve of its fifth Broadway revival, NewYorker.com, October 8, 2015.
“How Hamilton is Revolutionizing the Broadway Musical,” The Nation, August 27, 2015.
“Alfred Jarry’s Fun Home,” The Nation, August 13, 2015.
“Why ‘The Heidi Chronicles’ Failed to Find a New Audience,” The Nation, April 24, 2015.
“The ‘Immortal’ Judith Malina, 1926-2015,” The Nation, April 13, 2015.
“Musical of the Month“: guest blog entry for the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, September 29, 2014.
“The Haus of Maus
: Art Spiegelman’s twitchy irreverence,” essay on the Spiegelman retrospective at NYC’s Jewish Museum — and beyond. The Nation, September 15, 2014.
“Ruby Dee’s Jewish Turn,” an appreciation of the great actor and activist for Tablet on her role in The World of Sholom Aleichem in 1953.
“Mere Opinion and Considered Judgment: Amateur and Professional Criticism Today,” interviewed by Andrea Tompa for Critical Stages, January 24, 2014.
“Purging the Legacy of Dictatorship from Chile’s Constitution,” a report on the “Marca Tu Voto AC” campaign in Chile, thenation.com, January 21, 2014.
“On Jewishness as the Fiddle Played,” some excerpts from Wonder of Wonders in the New York Times Sunday Arts section, October 17, 2013.
“Hey, Kids, Let’s Put on a Show: Michael Sokolove’s ‘Drama High’,” a review of Michael Sokolove’s stirring account of an inspiring drama teacher, New York Times Book Review, September 27, 2013.
“The Not-So-Bountiful Trip to Broadway,” on ethics, intellectual property, and The Trip to Bountiful, Howlround.com, April 24, 2013.
“The Feminine Mystique at 50”: A conversation among Jessica Bennett, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, and Alisa Solomon, The Daily Beast, February 11, 2013. Part 1 and Part 2.
“Mike Check,” on the scandal over fabrications in Mike Daisey’s The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, The Nation, print edition of April 16, 2012; posted on-line at thenation.com on March 28, 2012.
“Balancing Act: Fiddler’s Bottle Dance and the Transformation of ‘Tradition’,” TDR: The Drama Review 55:3 (T211) Fall 2011.
“Clampdown in Hungary,” report on the nationalist government’s free-speech restrictions, beginning with the local theaters, The Nation, print edition of January 24, 2011; posted on-line at thenation.com on December 30, 2010.
“An Unsettling Protest,” co-written with Tony Kushner, on the refusal of Israeli theater artists to perform in Jewish settlements in the West Bank, TheNation.com, September 1, 2010.
“The Artist’s Present: Waiting in Line at the MoMA for Marina Abramovic,” essay, killingthebuddha.com, June 3, 2010.
“Tell Her the Truth: On Caryl Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children, A Play for Gaza,” co-written with Tony Kushner, The Nation, March 26, 2009. Cover story.
“Hammerheads: David Mamet’s Money Plays,” essay on Mamet on the occasion of Broadway revivals of American Buffalo and Speed the Plow, The Nation, January 22, 2009.
“Rehearsing for Freedom: In West Bank refugee camps and in Gaza, theatre helps children channel their chronic fears and traumas,” American Theater, May/June, 2008.
“Staged Reading,” review of Judith Thompson’s Palace of the End, and discussion of plays about the Iraq war, TheNation.com, August 4, 2008.
“Innocents Abroad: Jerry Herman’s musical Milk and Honey opens a window on the cheery Zionism of the 1960s,” nextbook.com (Tablet Magazine), December 17, 2007.
“This family affair has a familiar ring,” on Tracy Letts’s August: Osage County, theguardian.com December 19, 2007
“God rest your merry credit cards,” on Reverend Billy and the film, “What Would Jesus Buy?”, theguardian.com, November 28, 2007
“Doing (or undoing?) the most iconic play of all,” on the Wooster Group’s Hamlet, theguardian.com, November 15, 2007
“Whose eyes am I looking with?” on two Dutch plays about Muslims, theguardian.com, November 13, 2007
“Out of Africa,” a report on the 2007 World Social Forum, The Nation, March 5, 2007.
“Family Fortune: After Fiddler and The Apple Tree, Harnick and Bock took on a different challenge—a musical about the Rothschilds,” nextbook.org (Tablet Magazine), December 27, 2006.