I was a fan of children’s theatre starting as a little kid in a music/drama toddler class (seriously). The Wolf in Little Red Riding Hood scared me silly at age 4; I took part in many a play at school and in special drama programs (Camellot Academy in Kansas City)...
February 2011
Goals are the bones of endeavor. Like bones, strong, clearly articulated goals provide structure to an endeavor and allow the various people involved in the endeavor to exert their energy at key points of leverage to move the endeavor forward. Without strong bones, a vertebrate animal is a lump of...
Please Don’t Start a Theater Company, I Say Again… In 2009, I read with interest a call from Edward Clapp, a graduate student at Harvard, for essays on the future of the arts by arts workers under 40. Thinking about what to write, I recalled a conversation I’d had just...
As Laurie Baskin says at the TCG site, “It is vitally important that you actively participate in advocacy this week regarding the NEA.” Click through to her post where you will find several links for action and advocacy. Do check them out, sign onto the lists, send messages to your...
Introducing … Bobby Bermea, who serves as the artistic director of BaseRoots Theatre, a newish theatre company in Portland, Oregon. BaseRoots was founded on Juneteenth, 2009, and its mission statement says that it’s “a group of professional theater artists organized to build bridges between communities by presenting classical and contemporary...
This is an extension of last year’s post, What’s in Your Lobby? Whether your theater company is itinerant or in a permanent space, and whether you are an arts administrator, an artistic director, or a fan, ask yourself: what is your lobby? Is it a living room? Is it a...
Talk all you want about supply and demand, at least we have a National Endowment for the Arts. For now. If you haven’t read this post by Frank Rizzo at the Hartford Courant about tomorrow’s proposal for cutting the NEA budget, go check it out. I suppose the good news...
I had the distinct pleasure of traveling to Arena Stage two weeks ago to be part of one of the most important national new play convenings in recent history. In 2011, the very act of discussing new work means you’ve got to be rabidly thorough about inviting in as many...
On the Life-cycle of the Theatre Lover Your patrons are all very old. They’re all going to die. What on earth will you do? Oh, dear. You’d better invest all your time and money into getting young people to come to the theatre, or in a few years, you’ll be...
“We cut and carve the body of a play to its peril.” – Harley Granville Barker In my philosophical approach to staging (and cutting) Shakespeare, I am very much a child of Harley Granville Barker. HGB, if you haven’t yet met him, was a director, an actor, a scholar and...
