community

Another Giving Tuesday, another day spent deleting emails unread and maybe unsubscribing from the places that send more than two in a day. And I work in the arts. But every year, it’s the same thing. An avalanche of emails, often from theatres and organizations I haven’t heard from most...

More
  • November 28, 2017

There is good conversation and bad conversation. We’ve all been party to both. We’ve all had those talks that go late into the night and feel like you’re solving the world. Additive conversations where active listening provides the fuel for synthesis of new ideas better than the preconceived notions of...

More
  • February 13, 2017
  • 1

This past weekend on NPR’s Weekend Edition, Scott Simon talked with David Marcus, a senior contributor to The Federalist and the artistic director of a theater company in New York City, about defunding the National Endowment for the Arts. Go ahead and listen. I’ll wait. And if you’re angry by...

More
  • February 12, 2017

Effort. Webster’s defines effort as “work done by the mind or body: energy used to do something.” I spend more time than you can imagine thinking about, analyzing, and trying to minimize effort required by a body to achieve anything – including the effort required to do nothing. My senses...

More
  • March 1, 2016

I have long had an interest in arts groups using transitioning commercial and retail spaces to alleviate space crunch. On hearing that Matt Cosper and his Charlotte-based ensemble XOXO are taking part in such a venture I asked him to write a little about the process and after it was...

More
  • August 18, 2015

There is a mental habit formed early in the development of the modern American psyche: the immediate and perpetual recentering of yourself as the underdog. Our prevailing American narrative is one of rising above great (or more usually impossible) odds to achieve our heart’s one true desire. In the narrative the underdog...

More
  • August 6, 2015
  • 4