Let’s see if I have this straight. Women write about bias–unconscious or not–in an industry, they set up a group to support fellow women in said industry, men immediately comment on social media about how this isn’t really a problem, maybe these women are biased, because it damn well isn’t...
playwrights
Peter Marks (Washington Post) hosted a conversation with DC area artistic directors about representation of women and people of color on our stages. Participants: Paul Tetreault, Molly Smith, Eric Schaeffer, @ryanrilette, and Patta Tsikurishvili. (Details: http://goo.gl/d)
…Then ish got real.
[View the story “#TheSummit” on Storify]
There’s been a lot of talk online recently about the need for women playwrights to be better represented, have more opportunities, and be, if you’ll excuse the vagary, more equal. That’s lovely. As a woman playwright, I am all for that kind of talk, and the more there is of...
Heroes. They’re not just for comic books anymore. With the rise of more serious, “realistic” portrayals of comic book heroes has come a trend of real people making themselves into superheroes. This is not a joke, and it’s not the movie Kick-Ass, based on the comic book of the same...
Every time someone asks me to explain what I do I get flummoxed. Though I could probably avoid the word, I feel obligated to inform them that I am a dramaturg. The desire for avoidance and obligation are somewhat related. I know that mentioning the word “dramaturg” will lead to...
What Fringe Means for Local Playwrights The Kansas City Fringe recently held its 8th festival, and if there’s one thing the festival has become known for (besides burlesque) it’s as a breeding ground for new plays by local writers. There are several theatre companies in Kansas City that will occasionally...
Each time my theatre company has taken a show to a fringe festival, it’s been one of my own scripts–the playwright works cheap, which helps. But there’s a difference between self-producing at home and self-producing for fringe, especially if you plan to take the show to more than one festival....
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...
This afternoon, the New York Times ran a story by Patrick Healy about the producers of Three’s Company & their reaction to 3C, a play by David Adjmi. At issue is the question of copyright and intellectual property, fair use vs. parody and/or transformative, derivative work. Healy cites productions such...