Monthly Archives: November 2011

When New Plays Get Old

Posted on November 30, 2011 by hsherman

Are you familiar with any of these plays? Stand-Up Tragedy. Daytrips. Romance Language. A Place With The Pigs. From The Mississippi Delta. Rebel Armies Deep Into Chad. Pill Hill. Messiah. In Perpetuity Throughout The Universe. A few? None? Don’t feel bad, because to my knowledge, none of them have received
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Civic Theater: Part 2

Posted on November 27, 2011 by Michael Rohd

Through acts of imagination and expressive action, civic theater builds bridges. It synthesizes complex issues and ideas, it builds relationships, and it leverages the specific people in a room as assets in shared, creative problem-solving.
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A HowlRound Thanksgiving Retrospective Roundup

Posted on November 23, 2011 by Polly Carl

I hear more and more stories focused on ways of partnering, of aligning resources and competencies. I think we are going to hear more stories about community connections and ways in which new work is relating to the world. I think we’re going to start hearing more stories about how old barriers are falling—things like the changes taking place in the way we can use technology to connect and promote our work, or collaborations that right now seem impossible between different organizations and aesthetics. I think we’re actually going to start seeing stories about successes…—David Dower
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A Lover’s Guide to American Playwrights

Posted on November 20, 2011 by tlondon

Mid-career is that moment most playwrights find themselves at the edge of an abyss. The moment can last years, during which the excitable support our field bestows on emerging and early-career writers dries up and playwrights who have finally developed the chops to write their mature works often leave the theater for the rewards and empowerment of TV or the stability of teaching.
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Interview with Erika Chong Shuch

Posted on November 16, 2011 by dcullinan

I feel like we have to just bust down some serious walls. For so many grant applications there is a box—a dance box, a theater box—for so many conversations those boxes totally exist. Rather than saying I’m not doing dance and I’m not doing theater, I kind of feel like yes, I’m doing theater and dance and yes, I’m doing installation art and yes yes yes!
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Address to the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society in Celebration of the Third Annual Zelda Fichandler Award

Posted on November 13, 2011 by Zelda Fichandler

Theatre should stop serving the function of making money, for which it has never been and never will be suited, and start serving the revelation and shaping of the process of living, for which it is uniquely suited, for which it, indeed, exists.
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Confessions of a Creative Producer Stephanie Ybarra

Posted on November 9, 2011 by sybarra

Seven playwrights, five directors, and four producers walk into a room… It’s not so much the set-up for a joke as it is the beginning of a fifteen-month collaboration that will ultimately manifest itself through an Off-Broadway production featuring the creative machinations of sixteen New York artists (including yours truly),
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WE Are the National Aesthetic

Posted on November 6, 2011 by calick

If the spirit moves add rhythm, add music, add your piece This speech is a collaboration with the future of American theater.
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Specialization and Its Discontents

Posted on November 2, 2011 by dchapman

I am constantly inviting folks to come see work I’ve directed by other playwrights, but I found myself being secretive about my own creations. I realized that I was worried that if the word really got out in New York that I was interested in roles besides directing, it would somehow diminish my momentum as a director.
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