Ewing Reviewing 2020

(February 21, 2021) Today we published our annual Ewing Reviewing 2020 with reviews, associate listings, art, and performance information on 59 live and zoom works offered during 2020. In addition, the book features a full spread of pandemic era photographs by DLW Photography NYC of theaters devoid of people. You can check out some sample pages of the photography at this link. It's a wonderful piece of photojournalism by Dan Lane Williams (click for prints), We're excited to offer this document of theater, and informative and entertaining look back on 2020 in New York.

As I write this, the Pandemic is the single most discussed issue in the world and I simply can’t discuss it again. It’s already clear how (and how much) it impacted the performing arts. Our hyperactive culture screeched to a halt, leaving creatives of all sorts stuck at home in front of their computers, brain cells twitching, inexorably coaxing a substantial new art form into existence. That did happen, in spite of the misery, pain, chaos and death that marked 2020 as a year few of us want to remember.

Until the beginning of March, it looked like an ordinary year. The Prototype, Exponential, Insight.Alt, and Frigid Festivals were already festive. Broadway bound Romeo & Bernadette had thrilled us with an incredible score based on 18th-Century Italian art song. The great Len Cariou, and Tony Award winner Judy McLane reminded us that age has no meaning where a great artist is concerned, then everything just stopped.

But, not for long. Zoom came out of the closet almost immediately. Basically, software for business meetings, it was cheap and easy to use and it gave New York artists a reach extending far beyond the confines of their city. The first few works were somewhat awkward; entertaining but clumsy. Then, the remarkable Kamala Sankaram, a composer of enormous potential, in cooperation with the HERE Arts Center and its superb technical team, created The Zoom Opera, and the medium has been improving ever since.

Reviews on thirty-five Zoom works can be found inside, along with twenty-four new plays seen onstage in January and February. They provide a clear picture of artists adapting to the demands of almost universal isolation. If you love the theater and it’s development, this book is for you.

The book is published in TWO versions, B/W and full color. The photography fully pops in the full color edition.