I’ve been thinking more and more about my responsibility as an artist. And just typing that feels a little weird—the idea that artists have responsibilities other than to their art. But our work does more than just sit there in our heads. It wanders out of our skulls and into...
new play development
Biodiversity is the practice of cultivating and sustaining a broad array of species in a given ecosystem. The opposite is monoculture. Monoculture is the practice of limiting species in a given ecosystem. Agriculturalists and eco-warriors promote biodiversity because they have found (and history has proven, see: Potato famine) the prevalence...
A Series of Questions and Thoughts about Some Real Issues We and Theater Journalists Could Ponder as to Why Theaters Aren’t More Daring Most of the regional theaters I’ve worked at or freelanced for create their budgets by projecting tickets sales. This creates a need for artistic programming that will...
The Denver Center Theatre Company solidified its growing place as a major player in the development of new works for the American theater with last weekend’s well-received 7th annual Colorado New Play Summit, which featured works by Lisa Loomer, Samuel D. Hunter, Richard Dresser, Michael Mitnick and Lauren Feldman. It’s...
On my own blog some time ago I wrote about smaller and regional theatres being considered “minor league” in the pejorative sense and the broken ideas around that vocabulary in a post called “Is this Heaven, No It’s Iowa”. The happy upbeat ending for those of you too good to...
As the founder and now social media manager for Portland’s Fertile Ground Festival, I have recently had the delightful and curious experience of being able to dip my finger daily into the stream of material our 100 plus world premiere projects have created to promote their shows. I asked myself,...
Soon after I wrote this Forum Theatre post on the Bechdel Test, the question arose: what might be a similar test for LGBT characters? Being both gay and up for the challenge, I gave it a try. Here it is: The Test – Does the movie have? 1. An identifiable...
…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...
Over the weekend, @NewPlayTV streamed three interesting, presumably unrelated talks. The first was from Steppenwolf’s First Look Festival, titled How to engage 21st Century Audiences for New Plays, followed an hour later by one from the PlayFest at Orlando Shakespeare Theater on How to Make a Living as a Playwright?...
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...