Monthly Archives: October 2011

Artists, Institutions, and the Decline of Public Discourse

Posted on October 30, 2011 by Polly Carl

And in what feels like an unbridgeable divide, all Haves seem smug and all Have Nots seem whiny. But the question we have to ask ourselves is are we planning to fight each other to the death? Or perhaps because we are living inside of a democracy, (albeit barely functioning) the Egypt analogy isn’t quite apt, and we need to consider a solution other than a complete overthrow of existing institutions. We need a solution that acknowledges the interdependent nature of artists and institutions.
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Hybrid

Posted on October 26, 2011 by rohara

I am a director. I am a playwright. It has taken me many years of hard work to come to appreciate what each of those professions require and to experience them both independently and combined.
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Interview with Richard Nelson

Posted on October 23, 2011 by amalkin

Aaron: I saw Sad and Sweet and I was really taken by its urgency. It often seems like something happens and four years later there’s a play about it. I thought it would be really interesting to talk to you about how you write the Apple family plays. So, I
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What a “Renegade” New Play Fanatic Can Bring to the Leadership of the TCG Board

Posted on October 19, 2011 by phimberg

The men and women who feel compelled to write for our form, do not aspire to have their words reach millions of people, or make tons of money, as their film and television cohorts do. For some reason what is vital to them is a tactile and quite treacherous experience that happens in real time, and it is genuinely from their valor that I garner my energy and hope.
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Eat, Drink, and Talk Seriously about the Theater

Posted on October 16, 2011 by mjackson

Who cares what people like or don’t like? What do they understand and feel? That’s the question worth grappling with.
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Interview with Jonathan Moscone

Posted on October 12, 2011 by dcullinan

Jon: That’s interesting. Yeah, I think you’re right. I think I do have that in common with him and it’s a little harder to do that now. If we’re not changing things while we’re here, I do not need to be on this planet. If we’re not here to get things done, they’re going to be done for us or to us. I would rather be one of the people who can act, than is acted upon.
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Out Now! Confessions of a Reluctant Writer

Posted on October 9, 2011 by ttaccone

Sometime during the throes of mid-life I started feeling the need to scare myself into doing something different. Not to simply feel something new, but to feel something deeper. A handful of artistic questions and a smaller handful of personal traumas forced me to seek some solitude: not in a monastery but in my everyday life. I wasn’t looking for a religious practice but a new imaginative exercise. I was tired of myself, tired of my voice, and I wanted to see if I could unearth a different mode of expression. I wanted to be with myself in a new way.
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Theater as a Collective Experience

Posted on October 5, 2011 by dorlando

So, to start: what exactly is a collective? In the course of nurturing and producing over a dozen plays, Workhaus has become a true community of artists, but somehow just focusing on that seemed incomplete. Part and parcel of Workhaus’ mission is bringing new work to our audiences straight from the playwright—no administrative infrastructure chooses the plays or plans the seasons. The idea is to create a more direct and immediate conversation between the writer and audience. So any discussion of Workhaus is actually a discussion of two communities: the playwrights who make up the collective, and the audience that actually comes to see our plays.
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A Theater of YES!

Posted on October 2, 2011 by Polly Carl

What I have realized, working with so many expansive thinkers over the years, is that my own sense of no is often a failure of imagination. In a dark theater or nose in a book, no one can get in the way of my imagination. When reentering the real world so much feels in the way of what I hope to become. What I hope the world will become.
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