…and what it means for our future. I was a lucky audience member for the Oct 26th SDC Zelda Fichandler Award presentation at Arena Stage (which was given, this year, to Blanka Zizka of Wilma Theater). I wanted to attend, in part, because I had just joined the stage directors and choreographers union a few [...]
Orion as a cop on the mean streets of 1970s San Francisco. Hera as the lady of a country estate in Victorian England. Chronus as an Arizona Republican politician debating whether to align himself with the Tea Party. These are some of the dozens of creative reinterpretations of Greek mythology that, Athena-like, have sprung from [...]
Previously in this column: The members of Bright Alchemy Theatre, a very young devised theatre company based in Washington, DC, have spent the last nine months working on its new project which began with the question: Why do we as a species feel the need to tell stories about our own destruction? This weekend, for [...]
Here in Vancouver, as a theatre producer, one of your greatest challenges is simply finding space. We have two major theatre companies, The Vancouver Playhouse and the Arts Club, that own their own theatres, but other than that, the 100-or-so independent theatre companies in the city all are fighting for a piece of the half-dozen [...]
Roll On, Strange Little Plays. Roll On. I will start off saying this: rolling world premieres should be the ONLY way plays premiere. With consecutive and distinct productions a new play gets the essential time and community to mature rapidly, thoroughly, and cradled by friendly forces. Awww. A play becomes itself in production, less so [...]
In case you’ve been in a coma for the last year, there’s this Broadway musical, it’s called Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, and it’s made some headlines. There were accidents and script problems and fights with critics and the official opening kept being pushed further back and back and back and…etc. Basically, it redefined the [...]
Join us this weekend at City Theatre in Miami for the CityWrights Conference 2011. We’ll be livestreaming several sessions via NewPlayTV. We’ll also be tweeing throughout the conference using both the #2amt and #cwc11 tags over on Twitter. Send questions, comments and conversation our way. Below is a schedule of the weekend’s livestreamed sessions. Friday [...]
John Lahr, New Yorker theater critic, wrote a piece on Julie Taymor’s frustration with the process of creating a new theatrical work in the era of instant feedback, Twitter, and focus groups. It’s a great piece, full of historical perspective on the role of audience (that is to say, amateur) criticisms of theater. He rubbed [...]
or The Woman Behind the Desk is Not Your Enemy The other day, a tweet came across my screen linking to this post about theatre economy. The thrust of the post is that we need to help playwrights be able to make a living writing plays (an important piece of a larger theatre econ conversation [...]
Previously in this column: Bright Alchemy Theatre, a very young company devoted to the creation of devised work, decides to begin work on a narrative and thematic sequel to A Cre@tion Story for Naomi, which explored the world’s creation myths. We began this new process with a question: Why do we feel the need to [...]
Last weekend, I saw approximately half of the shows at the Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville. I’m heading back this weekend for the rest, but I wanted to write about the themes and connections between those first three shows. I saw this combination by chance, but all three have [...]
So I have to start out by saying I am not used to blogging and the rules for it confound me. Along with that I have an education where I never learned Grammar or Syntax so if there are glaring errors, I blame Dasher Green Elementary School as well as Oakland Mills High School. So [...]