Last weekend, I saw approximately half of the shows at the Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville. I’m heading back this weekend for the rest, but I wanted to write about the themes and connections between those first three shows. I saw this combination by...
On the Sunday morning of opening weekend (yesterday as I post this), Oregon Shakespeare Festival Executive Director Paul Nicholson and Artistic Director Bill Rauch sat down for a press conference with the critics and reporters who were in town for the 2011 opening weekend. I hear the event used to...
Tom Robinson (Peter Macon), Atticus Finch (Mark Murphey) and Heck Tate (Peter Frechette) in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Photo: David Cooper. Ashland’s a snowy, somewhat icy town this weekend for the opening weekend of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. First up last night was the Bill Rauch-directed...
I was a fan of children’s theatre starting as a little kid in a music/drama toddler class (seriously). The Wolf in Little Red Riding Hood scared me silly at age 4; I took part in many a play at school and in special drama programs (Camellot Academy in Kansas City)...
Introducing … Bobby Bermea, who serves as the artistic director of BaseRoots Theatre, a newish theatre company in Portland, Oregon. BaseRoots was founded on Juneteenth, 2009, and its mission statement says that it’s “a group of professional theater artists organized to build bridges between communities by presenting classical and contemporary...
In Portland, or so they say, you can put a bird on it, and call it art. The Fertile Ground new works festival isn’t exactly as the creators of Portlandia posit — I saw no clowns or artistic birds last weekend — but the 11-day explosion of playwriting, acting, dancing and...
Want to see us live and direct from the first annual Chicago Fringe Festival? Streaming via the #newplay channel from Arena Stage, we go live at 10:30 am CT, 11:30 am ET, Saturday, September 4th, 2010. Kris Vire, theatre editor at Time Out Chicago, is the moderator. The panel includes...
The Minnesota Fringe Festival wrapped up this past weekend, so it’s a bit too soon to offer a really comprehensive postmortem. Instead, I’d like to offer some notes on the event. Firstly, the Minnesota Fringe Festival is big — really big, and it’s growing. It’s been about for 16 years,...
Summertime means festivals, fringe and otherwise. In today’s podcast, we’ll hear from some of the playwrights who attended the JAW Festival at Portland Center Stage, including Rob Handel, managing director of 13P, and Jason Wells. Then we visit the Toronto Fringe Festival with playwright Alison Broverman. Finally, Rebecca Coleman talks...