As someone in the process of starting my own theater company, I was predisposed to take issue with Rebecca Novick’s post. It ended up upsetting me less than I predicted, but I maintain what I predicted my position would be: I’m starting my theater company, damn it. Not that I...
theatrical ecosystem
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...
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...
So apparently the following is too “abusive” or “off topic” for the NY TIMES to post on its Arts Beat page. One thing you can’t do in posts, I guess, is criticize the critics. But because this conversation means a lot to me, and because I’ve been in it for...
Some days the internet seems like nothing more than a jargon factory. It pops out new words, phrases and memes that we are somehow supposed to instinctively know moments after coinage and knowledge of the day’s watchword becomes a hard demarcation of inclusion or exclusion. It is imperative for those...
Indulge me in a little rhetorical drama, I have, on occasion, so indulged many of you. The USA needs theatre. We are a potentially free and democratic people, but when the citizens become disenchanted and politically disengaged, we disenfranchise ourselves and cede leadership to those who can tolerate swimming in...
And there are those times that we treat it, the theatre, the thing that we all love so much that we sacrifice sleep and money and relationships with other human beings for it; there are times we treat it like a patient with an illness we cannot identify but we...
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...