Mr. Landesman has responded personally on the NEA blog (did you know the NEA had a blog? I did not.) to the conversation/controversy regarding his statements about the supply and demand of the American theater. Its a great read, I highly recommend it, with much to agree with actually. After...
by Heather Bishop Gathered today at the Vortex Theater in Austin, Texas, members of Austin’s theater community watched final discussions from both ideological and practical perspectives. From Kristoffer Diaz’ points regarding the documentation of diversity efforts in theater and the definition of an American play regardless of accent or region...
FROM SOUTHERN REP, New Orleans, LA A CONVERSATION IN RESPONSE TO NEW PLAY PANEL When you talk about diversity – what does that really mean? If your audience doesn’t reflect that – what is diverse? If you want a diverse audience, are you doing work that would reflect that? Only...
You’re in the profession, but are you a ‘professional’? I like to read mission statements. In particular, I find it interesting to compare how a company self-identifies against what kind of work it programs. Just recently, however, while reading the mission, vision, and plans of Fusion Theatre in New Mexico,...
It’s easy to get swamped during the Arena Stage Convenings.There is a lot going on and a lot of theoretical conversation. The hardest workin’ folks in show business are trying to fix some part of show business and let me tell you: it’s invigorating. I’ve been on the ground at...
In Portland, or so they say, you can put a bird on it, and call it art. The Fertile Ground new works festival isn’t exactly as the creators of Portlandia posit — I saw no clowns or artistic birds last weekend — but the 11-day explosion of playwriting, acting, dancing and...
As part of our efforts to solidify the beginnings made last year in the dawn of 2amTheatre.com, we will be rolling out some programmatic additions. Let’s start with: award winning arts maven Suzi Steffen. Suzi will be joining 2amTheatre.com as a contributor, kicking off her stay with us with wall-to-wall...
This week marks the third year of the city-wide new works festival I founded in Portland: The Fertile Ground Festival. It’s happening as I type this: 70 world premiere works of theater, dance, comedy and multimedia all over the Portland area for the next 10 days. And I will not...
Passed around Twitter feeds, posted on Facebook walls: last week’s Onion joke article. Funny, but with a twinge of ouch—not because I have ever wanted to tell the story of my life onstage, but because at different times I have written, directed, and produced non-confessional one-actor plays. Doing so, if anyone is...
Tomorrow night, two different things are going to be done to one of my plays that have never been done before, and I’m really excited about both of them. Thing one is this: my play is going to be bootlegged. No, that doesn’t mean it’s going to be secretly recorded...
