DramaLit Blog 1.0: BU School of Theatre

Well, good thing we just spent so much time on “Outrageous Fortune,” for American Theatre Magazine just recently published this article on the playwright’s voice in a theatre. The article interviews both Emily Mann and Chay Yew, two playwright/directors who happen to also act as artistic heads to their own respective theatres. There are some wonderful points that these two artists bring up that support our entire discussion so wonderfully. I won’t recap the entire article, obviously, but my favorite point brought up is that artists SHOULD be running theatres. They just make it so clear why that is the smartest option in this article, because as an artist, one knows what other artists need. As long as a theatre artist still has that administrative gene (which Mann actually says very few playwrights really have — which is ALSO very interesting), then a theatre will be getting exactly the artistic attention it deserves. Yet so many times, when a theatre is run by someone who doesn’t know what the art form needs, it becomes a great machine. Therefore, the artists that care about advancement run away to somewhere that will take them — Mann mentions Hollywood.

Anywho — it’s a great, quick read that I think is a perfect supplementary resource to our time spent with “Outrageous Fortune.”