The theatre niche of the social media stream operates much like any other Animal Farm and in this particular backwater Animal Farm I am a donkey who has lived a long time. Hang around long enough and one sees the patterns of people entering and leaving or the ebbs and flows of the...
Sometime in the 1970s, the once ubiquitous gossip columnist Rona Barrett began reporting box office grosses during her regular appearances on Good Morning America. Prior to that, such statistics were available only to readers of Variety, long the entertainment bible (and perhaps to Hollywood Reporter readers as well, though as...
It’s been a month since the first Dramatists Guild National Conference. In that month, three things have stayed with me: Mame Hunt’s declaration to playwrights to stop writing realism, Julia Jordan’s keynote speech on gender parity, and Marsha Norman’s comment that we need to hear everyone’s stories at the gender...
or, How Meta-Conversations are Taking Over Our Theatres Photo illustration featuring members of American Theater Company. (William DeShazer/Tribune / July 2, 2011) My friend Briana, a brilliant arts educator and visual artist, alerted me (via a tag on Facebook) to an article about the rising phenomenon of texting in the...
In case you’ve been in a coma for the last year, there’s this Broadway musical, it’s called Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, and it’s made some headlines. There were accidents and script problems and fights with critics and the official opening kept being pushed further back and back and back...
The other week, Theatre Communications Group held their annual conference. I always wanted to attend, but due to various restrictions, I’ve not had the opportunity. Happily, I discovered TCG live streaming many of their speakers, and two of the keynotes thus far heavily and unsurprisingly focused on social media, audience...