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 [...]
The other week, Theatre Communications Group held their annual conference. I always wanted to attend, but due to various restrictions, I’ve not had the opportunity. Happily, I discovered TCG live streaming many of their speakers, and two of the keynotes thus far heavily and unsurprisingly focused on social media, audience engagement and community dialogue. It’s [...]
This Saturday, we’re hosting a convening on artistic excellence at FoolsFURY. This convening arises from a belief that, as a field, we have serious difficulty having useful (and sometimes hard) conversations about the quality/excellence of each other’s work. We do this fine, at the bar, without the artists present. But how can we have more [...]
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 [...]
Week 6: This is the first week where there was homework. For the last two months, we’ve been talking about Apocalypse on the grand scale. Lots of great thoughts circling vast concepts of evolution and society. I thought it might be useful to start thinking on the micro scale. Throughout the process, we have briefly [...]
On the last day of the new play convening held at Arena Stage this past January, participants (and livestream satellite observers) were asked to come up with goals for the coming year. What could we do to further the state of new play development in our town/city/shire? One of my resolutions for the coming year [...]
What the F@#k is Devised Theatre (Or How I Accidently Helped Start a Theatre Company) One of the great conversations that has arisen from Arena Stage’s New Play Convening is this discussion about devised theatre: what is it; who does it; why do they bother? As people started trying to answer these questions, there were [...]
On January 21st of this year, my producing partners and I began previews of the first of its kind, interactive live streamed play. This was a full length production of Joey Brenneman’s Better Left Unsaid, cast with professional New York actors, staged in a small off-off broadway house in front of a live audience for [...]
I don’t think anything that’s really creative can be done without danger or risk. — Julie Taymor I’m not here to judge the merits of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. I haven’t seen the play, I’ve only heard one less-than-thrilling song. But I do know the people involved are capable of excellent work. Bono and [...]
Earlier this month, I spent three days indulging in an activity which is a rare luxury for a technician who works in small theatres: a complete cleaning and inspection of our lighting inventory. We went top to bottom–every single lens barrel was taken apart, every lens cleaned, every reflector checked, every bolt tightened, every C-clamp [...]
After the first sustained pause in the conversation between (sober) theatremakers the party question of choice is “what is your dream project?” It’s a fun topic and generally it means you don’t have to talk for a minute which limits your probability of saying something stupid. It works best for actors and directors and pretty [...]
We don’t normally pay attention to 2pm around here–or time at all, really, since it’s always 2am here–but this afternoon, you’d have been able to join in a chat at TheatreFace with our own 2am summit guru, Nick Keenan. Quite simply, if it weren’t for the ongoing conversations with Nick among others, there would be [...]