3XPlaygoing

The Cleveland Playhouse Board invited me to speak at their board retreat last Saturday. The talk was well received, so I thought I would share the text here. Thank you all for bringing me here. It’s an honor to address the board of such an enduring and achievant company. I...

I keep writing about collaboration between theatre making organizations, but until now, I haven’t given a very clear picture of what form that collaboration should take. Here’s a stab at it. The following is a collection of events that could be held, some every year others every month, to realize...

On Saturday the 8th of June, I hosted a session of the Theatre Communications Group Conference in Dallas to prompt discussion of ideas to increase playgoing. It drew a great group of people who brought a lot of terrific ideas into the room. TCG staff member Zach Chotzen-Freund was kind...

Thesis: The American Theatre Movement has had a tendency to define itself partly by what it is not – distancing itself from community theatre and mere entertainment. This distancing should be reevaluated to determine whether its ongoing benefits outweigh its ongoing costs. Most American theatre professionals will readily explain how...

A shade more than two years ago, David Loehr and I met during a gathering at Arena Stage. He encouraged me to do some writing for this web site. Since that time, this is the 20th post I’ve written and the I’m-not-sure-how-to-count themth post I’ve read. The contributors to this...

Thesis: Skills in event creation and performance can be applied to marketing appropriately and effectively. If stunt marketing is selling out, it is selling out in a very classy way. I was in London for a few days in the late spring of 2004. I’d been doing weeks of country...

Thesis: Holding the idea that artists are different in kind from non-artists may create a barrier that discourages non-artists from attending or engaging with your work. Choosing to believe that audience members have a key role in theatrical production may reduce or remove such a barrier. I invoke the term...

Thesis: You can learn more when you innovate if you adopt a few concepts from the scientific method. In my experience, plenty of people in the American Theatre innovate frequently. Whether the subject is artistic style, theater technology, seating plan, or any of dozens of other things, our field is...

Thesis: Your available work time is completely taken up doing things the way you do them now. You have no time to try something new. All these ideas are worthless if you never have time to act on them. I can’t give you more time. I may, however, just in...