Today’s Spotlight shines on Jaz Dorsey, a Southern gentleman whose presence and charm I first noticed on the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA) listserv. Jaz always promotes and encourages his local writers, no matter which medium they favor. Jaz is the Director of Education for The Southern...
Introducing the dedicated and creative dramaturg Walter Byongsok Chon! Hometown: I was born in Bonn, Germany, lived there until I was eight, and then moved to Korea. I came to America to enter graduate school in 2005. Current town: New Haven, CT How do you explain dramaturgy? Dramaturgy is a...
Today we continue our second week of dramaturgical conversations with an interview with the accomplished Maren Robinson of Chicago. I think it is safe to say that Maren is eventually going to work with every member of the Chicago arts community! Maren teaches for two institutes of higher learning, works with dance companies,...
Today I am happy to present an interview with my colleague and friend Hannah Hessel. Since dramaturgs typically collaborate with artists in other disciplines, we do not always have a chance to work together, but I am blessed to work with Hannah often. Whether we work together on something large...
What IS a dramaturg? As a professional dramaturg and literary manager, this is the question I’m asked most often. Today, my answer is far different from what it was when I first started practicing, and I assume that it will continue to evolve and transform as the nature of theatre...
[Ed Note: This post originally ran on Tales of a Squishy Morph] We have two Equity theatre companies in the Boston area in devoted primarily to Shakespeare. Commonwealth Shakespeare Company does a splashy outdoor free production on Boston Common every summer, while Actors Shakespeare Project does full seasons of edgy productions in a variety...
One of my favorite things about summer in an arts organization is that you get a couple of precious weeks where, in between the planning and the subscription mailings, there’s a little fallow time where you can sometimes rise above the fray and say, HEY. What are other people doing...
Somewhat by accident, I stumbled into a weekly twitter conversation about new play development (hashtag #newplay) despite the fact that I am not a playwright. What I am is a university professor who for six of the ten years I spent in academic administration led a large theatre/film school whose...
There is a lot of conversation within the #2amt community about new models for making art, never being dark, and working collaboratively. Progress Lab in Vancouver is a prime example of all of these things done well. Progress Lab 1422 is home to four of Vancouver’s most interesting companies –...
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...