AS OF MAY 2012: This site now serves as the archive of the BU DramaLit Blog. For current activity and new posts, please visit our new site: http://dramalit.wordpress.com/
April 27, 2012 at 7:38 am
A round up from MPR on the scandale of the Guthrie Theatre’s coming season: Guthrie Announces 2012-13 Season Guthrie Theatre’s Debt to Women & Diversity Joe Dowling Responds to Criticism of Guthrie’s Season And here’s a few from other sources: Polly Carl in HowlRound: A Boy in a Man’s Theatre Tad Simons on The Guthrie’s […]
April 20, 2012 at 7:46 am
Talking about Blasted today reminded me that a really great and disturbing short film of her play Skin is available on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z35muSllISg [Bonus: here’s a link to the NYT interview with Marin Ireland and Sarah Benson about the challenges of playing in Blasted.]
My Humana Festival panel… And here’s some context from my blog for Playwrights’ Commons. . Watch live streaming video from newplay at livestream.com
March 26, 2012 at 10:31 am
I really never re-post wholesale blog entries from other sites, but this is important. You should read what Mike has had to say yesterday after a week which, I can only imagine, was fairly hellish. I post it here because I think what it shows is that earnestness, honesty, and heartfelt apology are such powerful […]
March 24, 2012 at 11:04 am
This week, Time Out New York & the Public Theater sponsored a panel on the post-Mike-Daisey question of Truth in Theatre, moderated by Adam Feldman. Panelists inlcluded: writer-director Steven Cosson of the Civilians (This Beautiful City), playwright-performers Jessica Blank (The Exonerated) and Taylor Mac (The Young Ladies of…), and critic-reporters Peter Marks (Washington Post) and […]
March 23, 2012 at 3:52 pm
We figured it out. You’re welcome.
March 20, 2012 at 10:19 pm
Over the past week, Mike Daisey’s critically heralded monologe, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs (TATESJ), has had a change of fortune, and has prompted a backlash in both the theatre and journalism worlds. (Full disclosure, Mike is a friend, and watching this unfold has been rough.) The barest attempt at a backstory […]
February 23, 2012 at 1:56 pm
I just got a fascinating email from a colleague at The Civilians (where our own Steve Ginsburg is also in residence this spring). Here’s the message, which I think will be of interest to you: I work for The Civilians (The Center for Investigative Theater) in Brooklyn, New York (www.thecivilians.org) and we have a semi-theatrical, […]
January 24, 2012 at 8:43 am
Students often ask me what shows I’d recommend out in the wilds of Boston, beyond the inertia of the university. Here’s my list for Spring 2012. It’s not exhaustive, and focuses on contemporary & new work rather than classics. ArtsEmerson – Sugar by Robbie McCauley: Jan 20-29 – 69 South (The Shakelton Project) by Phantom […]
December 28, 2011 at 3:19 pm
The fall semester is over, and that means that the blog authors of the last few months are moving on as well. The majority of them are even now winging their ways to various semester-abroad programs. (We hope they don’t forget us.) However, before making this blog’s between-semester hiatus official, I wanted to share links […]
December 3, 2011 at 1:17 pm
We talked about the problem of de-virginized plays in class the other day, and I mentioned one of the most important essays on this topic, Theresa Rebeck’s “Is Your Play a Virgin,” from American Theatre (January 2005). See the text after the jump.
December 3, 2011 at 1:00 pm
I thought this might be a good place to do a round-up of the controversy surrounding the TheaterWorks casting of Stephen Adly Guirgis’s The Motherfucker with the Hat, which we talked about in class. After the (lengthy) laying out of facts here in part I, I’ll try to get into the meat of the matter […]
November 24, 2011 at 9:10 am
Stuart wrote about the Marina Abramovic Mass MOCA scandale a week or so ago, in this post here. There’s been some interesting development since then. The performance artist who first wrote to Yvonne Rainer to alert her to Abromovic’s demands on auditioners has outed herself, and posted about her experience. Read Sara Wookey’s thought-provoking description […]
November 22, 2011 at 8:16 pm
This past weekend, I attended an opera at the Met for the first time. Let me get this out of the way: I am not an opera person. I have seen a few I’ve enjoyed (Jeune Lune’s Carmen, for instance), and many more that have bored me to death. Some have enraged me with the […]
November 9, 2011 at 11:58 am
Excerpts from a recent piece in the Village Voice asking playwrights who the greatest living playwright is. Go read the whole thing! Quiara Alegria Hudes Wole Soyinka. His plays have their own cosmology—an entire universe within one piece of writing. And they’re urgent and primal and sophisticated while turning traditional notions of sophistication on their […]
November 8, 2011 at 4:36 pm
Here’s an announcement about an exciting sounding panel of all-star playwrights and directors who are in the trenches, making work. My colleague Randy Gener notes that ANY STUDENT with an ID can get the $5 ticket. Well worth it! FYI, Dan Knechtges & Douglas Carter Beane from Lysistrata Jones (featuring SOT alum Alex Wyse on […]
November 7, 2011 at 8:38 pm
To my mind, it’s always the work of dramaturgs to help theatres articulate the importance of the work to the public — potential audiences, members/subscribers, community, etc. Lately, I’ve been deeply interested in how video can be used in this effort (with a shout-out to Raphael Martin at SoHo Rep, whose dramaturgical FEED video blog […]
November 1, 2011 at 7:57 am
You must read this. The novelist & essayist Jeanette Winterson has written a heart-wrenching and illuminating piece for the Guardian about her terrible childhood, and how literature became her lifeboat. For those of you who’ve engaged in autobiography via playwriting, or hope to find ways to tell the difficult parts of your own stories through […]
