I know class is done but just in case anyone comes to this blog like you might wander into your old classroom just to see if there are any ghosts around, here’s something that was on a BU grad student’s Facebook page (Alicia Hunt’s) that just sparked me. The play I’m working on is called […]
June 23, 2011 at 10:19 am
Not sure if this is exactly what we’re talking about, especially about the shilling at the end (I love George Carlin’s take on the Crucification: Hey, get your Jesus t-shirts here…there’s always someone ready to make a buck.) But she’s using the right buzzwords, isn’t she? Online reading experience like no other. The reading experience […]
June 23, 2011 at 10:09 am
I missed the photo exhibit at the MFA that Ilana suggested seeing, the one called Stories made up of evocative images that caused your imagination to conjure up stories (at least I think that was the gist of it.) Instead I opted to see The Mountain Song, which I highly recommend. TMS is steeped in […]
June 18, 2011 at 12:08 pm
Shannon Reed is one of those working playwrights who isn’t famous but keeps plying her trade in New York City because that’s what we all do. She and I have never met, though. Our relationship stems from me playing the character of Doc in her play, Sure Not, here in Boston at a SlamBoston about […]
Does theater have to take place in a theater? Absolutely not. As a matter of fact, I’m very intrigued by site-specific productions. I just wrote a play set on a hog farm in Indiana, and more than once I dreamt about it set on a real porch on a real farm house with real chickens […]
It’s all part and parcel to working in the theater, and for a playwright, it’s a great opportunity in so many ways. I’m talking about the acting gig, or in this case, reading a staged reading. A friend emailed me and asked me if I’d read a part in a staged reading tomorrow night at […]
Did I stumble on a goldmine of videos on the theater or what? Yesterday when I found and posted the video of Annie Baker, Rinne Groff, Karen Hartman and Alfred Uhry talking about playwriting at the America Theatre Wing site called The Characters Start Talking I was a bit mystified by the title, but now realize the […]
The Characters Start Talking: Playwrights 2011 Taken from the site: The panel of playwrights – Annie Baker, Rinne Groff, Karen Hartman and Alfred Uhry – talk about their writing process; the role of the dramaturg; writing adaptations; collaborating with directors; whether they have a specific actor in mind when they’re writing; and how they see the role of the […]
The focus of this blog has shifted. Or maybe the better word is expanded, now that summer semester has started and a new class–the dramaturg/playwright relationship has started. I’m not sure I’ll ever call myself a dramaturg, but no doubt I’m a playwright. And right now I am in probably the worst places any writer […]
First, thanks and a hat tip to local playwright, Patrick Gabridge, for turning me on to this. Second, “deep dive”? Wait, is that like “hooking up”? I’m always a bit leery about using words and phrases that I suspect require a visit to the urban dictionary. David Dower is the Associate Artistic Director at the […]
Great insight into the playwriting process… Playwright Margaret Baldwin explains how an idea for a play began, and then the twists and turns it took during the telling of the story. Taking an idea, then adding dramatic action and conflict.
April 29, 2011 at 4:17 pm
Ok, you can file this under Shameless Acts of Self-Promotion… Starting Sunday at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, plays from BU’s playwriting program will be given staged readings by some of Boston’s finest actors and actresses. Also, on Monday, South Bridge, by Ohio University MFA Candidate Reginald Edmund, will be read. I attended Ohio U. as an […]
April 22, 2011 at 11:43 am
Another You Written and Performed by Allen Johnson November 16, 2005 On the Boards Seattle, Washington mp4 file from OnTheBoards.tv I’ve always wanted pause and back buttons in the theater so when really important things were happening on stage I could make sure I didn’t miss anything. That’s the first thing I loved about the […]
April 17, 2011 at 11:24 am
Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre are two photographers who are obsessed by ruins. Through some exceedingly stunning images, they have shown the decline of Detroit, as well as the decline of theaters in America. From their Web site: In the early 20th century, following the development of the entertainment industry, hundreds of auditoriums were built everywhere […]
April 15, 2011 at 11:17 am
Texts by Samuel Beckett Produced by Theatre des Bouffes du Nord Directed by Peter Brooke and Marie Helene Estienne Cast: Hayley Carmichael Bruce Myers Yoshi Oida Paramount Mainstage Theater Boston, Massachusetts I arrived early enough to be the first to enter the Paramount Theater’s house for Samuel Beckett’s Fragments, a series of five short plays. […]
April 8, 2011 at 12:20 pm
The Boston theater companies that make up the Small Theater Alliance of Boston are all busy. This weekend, you can see: Flat Earth Theatre is doing The Underpants! Book of Days, produced by Bad Habit Productions is in its final week. 11:11 is doing The Great Heathersby Heist, and original script written by BPT alumnus […]
March 30, 2011 at 11:26 am
What is it about puppets that make us feel the way they make us feel? Is it because they so genuinely harken us back to being a child? Like riding a bike makes us feel? Watch this and enjoy and laugh and just feel like a kid again.
March 28, 2011 at 5:22 pm
The lede to the story says it all: “In the American theater, one quest is eternal: the pursuit of the hot young playwright of the moment, the sort with a freshly minted MFA from Yale or Brown or NYU, living in Brooklyn or on the Lower East Side.” But next season, the Huntington will produce […]
March 23, 2011 at 8:45 am
According to certain studies, of all employed individuals in theater, 20% are women. Of all the leaders in the theater industry, 7% are women. Yet women typically make up 65% of audience members. On Monday, April 4 at the Calderwood Pavilion there will be a panel discussion addressing the state of employment parity in the […]
March 23, 2011 at 8:27 am
It’s hard to believe that Hair was such a lightning rod for protest when it first was produced in the late 1960s. Now it seems so tame with its antiwar message of peace and letting the sun shine in. Hair is now playing at the Colonial, and for all you theater history majors, first here […]
