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...
new plays
Ask not what your country can do for the arts, ask what the arts can do for the country. — Kevin Spacey The 24th Annual Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy April 4, 2011, 6:30 p.m. John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts At exactly the same...
So you’re at the Humana Festival of New American Plays and you’ve got a few minutes. You’ve seen the art, you’ve looked at the gifts, you’ve had a beer. Maybe you’re in the mood to play a game. Maybe you’re looking for something to engage audiences at your own theatre...
Last weekend, I saw approximately half of the shows at the Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville. I’m heading back this weekend for the rest, but I wanted to write about the themes and connections between those first three shows. I saw this combination by...
Week 3. Is it just me, or are destruction stories a lot less interesting—or at least less fantastical—than creation stories? And there are a lot fewer variations on how things end than on how things begin. Maybe because with creation you have to work for it. We can’t imagine how...
Ed Schmidt lied to me. At least, I think he did. To be perfectly honest, I can’t really say what was fact and what was fiction in his subversive little performance, My Last Play, which I saw last Friday. A little background, for those who may not have heard of...
So I have to start out by saying I am not used to blogging and the rules for it confound me. Along with that I have an education where I never learned Grammar or Syntax so if there are glaring errors, I blame Dasher Green Elementary School as well as...
You get lured in with a promise of queso and get stuck with a podcast… New York One Minute Play Festival Artistic Director Dominic D’Andrea thought he was taking a quiet trip to Austin and got caught got caught in my web. I sat down with the Johnny Appleseed of...
So, here we are. Week two and hip-deep in the initial group dramaturgy of Bright Alchemy’s devising process, which started with the question “Why do we as a species feel compelled to tell stories of our own destruction?” It’s very early, but I’m already beginning to get that familiar feeling...
Beth Burns is the sort of person who is better than you at everything but doesn’t get all showy about it, and that allows you to retain your dignity. Altogether a nice sort of person to be around. She doesn’t lord her award nominations over you, or her wins, or...