Two quick bits of good news to share: My play ABSTRACT NUDE, I have just learned, will be read in Chicago as part of Circle Theatre’s New Works Festival, August 9-11. I really wish I could be there myself — I’m not going to be back in Chicago till the end of that month — [...]
I live in the United States of Me, a nation populated almost entirely by people I’ve friended, people I follow, and people who follow me. I live in the United States of Me, and you (most of you) live in the United States of You. We belong to and participate in social networks running on algorithms [...]
Last year, when Ryan Rilette was named the new artistic director of Round House Theatre, he inherited a season that was—I’m understating here—a touch heavy on the testosterone. To his great credit, Ryan didn’t just throw up his hands and say “Well, that’s the season that’s been programmed. What are you gonna do?” Instead, he [...]
For some time now, without realizing it, I’ve been relying on what seems to be a very effective method for organizing, rabble-rousing, and raising awareness that I feel like I really ought to share with the wider world. I’ve been—hold onto your hats—making lists. World-shaking, I know. But listen: it really has been making a [...]
I don’t know if I know a single artist who doesn’t believe, deep-down, that that the work we do has the potential to transform lives. The way we usually interpret that platitude, though, is that we expect our work to transform the lives of the people who engage with it. But we sometimes forget how WE [...]
This is the third entry in a continuing series of guest posts. Our contributor is Heather Morrow, a Canadian playwright I’ve become acquainted with via Twitter. Heather has some fierce personal insights about gender and opportunity that I’m very happy to share. You can follow her on Twitter @theatrejunkiehm. ———————————————– I’m a playwright, but I have [...]
So much has been written about the intersection between Twitter and theater from a big picture perspective (see Theater, Twitter, and Revolution at HowlRound for my own personal take), but I’ve yet to find a simple list of tips to help playwrights who are new to Twitter get accommodated to the medium. So I thought… why [...]
As I write this blog post, it’s a mere seven days since the Boston Marathon bombings became the singular focus of American attention. Narratives about freedom and Caucasians and manhunts and first responders and video surveillance and religion and politics and Miranda rights and Watertown and brotherhood have begun spinning, revising themselves wildly, it seems, with every [...]
With the permission of the Dramatists Guild, I am re-publishing my regional reports here on my blog after they’ve been published in print and released to members. My thinking is that (in some cases, at least) the columns I write will interest other theater practitioners and non-Guild members as well. I’ve been wondering about something lately. How [...]
In the early 1930s, as anti-Semitism was clenching its fingers around Germany’s throat, the Nazi party issued an edict to the effect that Jewish artists were no longer allowed to perform in any of the country’s theaters, orchestras, concert halls, and opera. As you might imagine, artists (especially Jewish artists) were already living a somewhat [...]
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