From the Chicago Theatre (anti) Conference held at the Theater Wit complex in Chicago, here’s the 2amt session, featuring Nick Keenan and myself as recorded by Kyle Hamman… 2amtheatre Talk at Chicago Theatre (anti) Conference from KBH Media on Vimeo. It’s a fun talk (as I recall) and should whet...
What are we looking at this week at 2amt? The upcoming Chicago Fringe Festival, the question of how to survive in theatre, a great new way to give and receive feedback online, the $600 question, letting it all hang out at the amusement park, hunting down the secret to SCVNGR,...
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,...
This past weekend at the Chicago Theatre anti-Conference (#ctac, if you feel like swimming up the Twitter stream), erstwhile arts-administrators-turned-funders Christy Uchida, Boeing Chicago’s Community Investor, and Paul Botts, from the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelly Foundation, gave conference attendees the gift of some hard-won insights through a discussion entitled, “If...
Collation line. Apparatus. Strip of terror. Whatever you call it, it’s that somewhat inscrutable line or two of apparently Enigma code between the text and the annotations, particularly in a modern edition of, say, Shakespeare. It might seem irrelevant or irretrievably geeky, but there are all kinds of important, dramatically...
David J. Loehr’s recent post about warming up an audience with a trailer has put me in mind of another way to extend the theatrical experience that I’ve been thinking about for some time. A few years ago, the Intentional Theatre Group commissioned me to write a short play for...
The Minnesota Fringe Festival wrapped up this past weekend, so it’s a bit too soon to offer a really comprehensive postmortem. Instead, I’d like to offer some notes on the event. Firstly, the Minnesota Fringe Festival is big — really big, and it’s growing. It’s been about for 16 years,...
Before we get to the post, a joke. The joke. Man goes on vacation, leaves his cat with his parents. A week later, he comes home, goes to pick up the cat. And his dad says, “Sorry, son, the cat’s dead.” “Jesus, Dad, you couldn’t have broken it to me...
Speak softly and carry a big stick. — Theodore Roosevelt Before we begin, if you haven’t already, read a cautionary tale about comments by the artistic director of Edmonton’s Teatro La Quindicina and then his explanation of those comments. I can wait. Are you back? Okay. There’s a difference between...
