Over the weekend, @NewPlayTV streamed three interesting, presumably unrelated talks. The first was from Steppenwolf’s First Look Festival, titled How to engage 21st Century Audiences for New Plays, followed an hour later by one from the PlayFest at Orlando Shakespeare Theater on How to Make a Living as a Playwright?...
Orion as a cop on the mean streets of 1970s San Francisco. Hera as the lady of a country estate in Victorian England. Chronus as an Arizona Republican politician debating whether to align himself with the Tea Party. These are some of the dozens of creative reinterpretations of Greek mythology...
Other people’s money is not just the name of a play by Jerry Sterner. It is the temptation put before an “agent” when working on behalf of a “principal” that gives rise to “moral hazard.” Other people’s money is also what nonprofit organizations – like theatre companies – use to...
THEATER IN BUFFALO IS NOT A CONTRADICTION. On Allen Street in Buffalo, New York, there is an establishment called Rust Belt Books. While the name certainly pays ironic tribute to an outsider’s image of the city, the back room of this iconic haunt imparts a truer, and more progressive, vision....
They come, with startling regularity, on Monday and Tuesday each week. “The Grosses.” The Broadway League aggregates and releases the gross sales and attendance for every Broadway show on Monday afternoons (Tuesdays when there’s been a holiday), and a wide range of outlets dutifully report on the biggest hits, the...
It’s always nice to be on the same page as Polly Carl. If you haven’t read her latest HowlRound post, A Theater of YES!, go check it out. One reason I appreciate her train of thought is because it dovetails with my TEDxMichiganAve talk from this past May: [youtube width=”560″...
Roll On, Strange Little Plays. Roll On. I will start off saying this: rolling world premieres should be the ONLY way plays premiere. With consecutive and distinct productions a new play gets the essential time and community to mature rapidly, thoroughly, and cradled by friendly forces. Awww. A play becomes...
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...