Here in San Francisco we are one week away from the kick off of the 2011 Bay Area Playwrights Festival (BAPF). I’m a big fan of this festival because it’s how I started down the playwriting path. Back in 2005 my first play was selected for the festival and since...
Tonight, more than 70 theatre companies across Canada are presenting staged readings of the play Homegrown by Catharine Frid. Why? Read J. Kelly Nestruck’s piece about the SummerWorks Festival and how the Department of Cultural Heritage has seriously–and at the last minute–cut funding to the festival. Then read playwright Michael...
Here’s this week’s installment of the director-to-director interview series. To date, the directors I have interviewed have been either freelance directors or directors affiliated with a particular company; this week’s spotlight marks a departure and an avenue I’d like to explore more in this series. Suzanne Westfall is a professor...
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...
It’s a great word. “Embargo.” It seems to come from a different age, or a world in which brinksmanship over major issues comes into play. Oil embargo. Trade embargo. But it’s alive, if not exactly well, in the relationship between the media and those that they cover. In the past...
I’ve been thinking lately about why, how, and by whom new plays are commissioned. I’ve been fortunate enough to have earned a few commissions myself, and it won’t surprise anyone to learn that in all of those instances, the commissions have come from theater companies. The companies in question needed...
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...
Here’s this week’s installment of the 2amt director-to-director interview series. Meet Leigh Hile 1. What attracted you to directing? All throughout my childhood and about half of college I thought I wanted to be an actor, but the more I pushed myself as a performer, the more frustrated I became....
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...
