All sorts of physical businesses are suffering during this global pandemic and I know many people, dependent on in-person gigs for their livelihood who now have no income stream (to say nothing of creative freelancers, as one Nation article notes). So this video posted last week by Joseph Haj, artistic director of the Guthrie Theater resonated: I was lucky enough to grow up going to the theater and live performances frequently, something I’ve tried to…
I haven’t been in a stage production for an age, but I was both on stage and backstage enough times to lose count — and I was a theatergoer long before that. So I greatly appreciated Mark Evanier sharing actor, director, and all-around theatrical Larry Blyden‘s theatrical laws. Laws, do you hear? Okay, to be honest, I haven’t always followed Law #5 or Law #10, but I definitely do my best with Law #17. Law…
While I don’t currently work in the non-profit realm, I spent many years working at theaters that were, almost invariably, non-profits. The anthropology of theaters is worth another post (or really, a book), but suffice it to say that pretty much all the theaters I’ve ever worked at started based on the zeal and passion of a handful of people. They were artistic start-ups, if you will. Time and again, I saw theaters that hit…
I’ve enjoyed more interactive theater for a long time, whether it’s traditional audience response (applause/boos/hisses) or more modern breaking of the fourth wall or simply the immediacy of staging a show “in the round.” I’ve often thought about staging a play for our local Fringe festival whose outcome is decided by the audience… perhaps after they’ve weighed in on several decision points. I thought about those ideas again when I read a piece by Alysia…
There will be a general lack of toast in the neighborhood this morning. And by “toast” I mean theater-related joy. And by “the neighborhood,” I mean “American theater.” And by “this morning,” I mean… well, I don’t know how long, but it’ll be longer than a morning. Actor, playwright, and director Sam Shepard has died at the age of 73. I first learned about it in a piece in Broadway World, which is worth checking…