Below are some of the most popular posts and the best reads in 2020, starting with 11 interviews with theater makers and news makers about the theater-related issues and events in this most unusual year. Although I’ve put together 460 posts this year (so far), some of the best-read articles in 2020 were from previous years: once again, The 50 Best Plays of the Last 100 Years (from 2013), Broadway’s Most Entertaining Shows About Serious Social Issues (from 2017), What The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Gets Wrong About Broadway and Blackface on Stage: The Complicated History of Minstrel Shows (both from 2019). And, as always (since 2015), anything about “Hamilton.”
Posts about COVID-19, especially in March and April, got tremendous traffic, but I’m omitting most of these here, because they are now largely out of date.
Interviews
Bobby Steggert, actor turned therapist, on advice for suffering theater artists
Public Theater artistic director Oskar Eustis: We have to prove theater is a necessity
Michael R Jackson, 2020 Pulitzer winning playwright, on “A Strange Loop” and the strange times
Broadway League’s Charlotte St. Martin: We don’t yet know what it’s going to take to get open
Disney’s Thomas Schumacher: Broadway will have to rebuild again
Playwright Lynn Nottage on Theatre for One, and keeping busy during COVID
Director Danya Taymor on turning Heroes of the Fourth Turning into online theater
Japanese actor Gen Parton-Shin on translating and performing Hamilton
Paul Rudnick on Coastal Elites, trash-Tweeting Ivanka, and how Bette Midler gives him hope
Playwright Adrienne Pender on Charles Gilpin and The Black Emperor of Broadway
Bill Berloni on turning dogs into stars
I put together the 26 profiles (with relevant videos and photographs) one by one over the months of lockdown,. The most popular have been S is for Stephen Sondheim, Y is for Yul Brynner and D is for Darren Criss
5 Best-Read Reviews in 2020
Hamilton on Broadway in 2019: New Cast, New Clarity.
One Night Only: The Best of Broadway. But was it the best?
The Copper Children: “Trial of the Century” Dramatized at OSF
Love Letters Live with Bryan Cranston and Sally Field
Tina The Tina Turner Musical Review
The most-read review in 2020 by far — the most popular post, period — was my review of “Hamilton” from 2019. It surged in traffic after viewers watched Hamilton on Disney+ with the original cast, I assume because they were curious what the latest Broadway cast had been like.
5 Popular Posts from 2020
Top 10 Coronavirus Song Parody Videos (the most popular post put together in 2020)
Hamilton 2020 Quiz
In Memoriam: NYC Healthcare Workers Who Have Died From COVID-19
Where To Get Your Theater Fix Online, Old Favorites and New Experiments
and the post with the following video
