I woke up early this morning, and while idly thinking about season planning and scene selection for acting classes, I wondered if there were any plays that passed the Bechdel Test. A quick google led me to realize that there wasn’t a database of passing plays, like there are for movies. And so I set …
Continue reading “Theater, Musicals, Opera and The Bechdel Test”
I’ve been leading and developing a new project at the EMERGE residency in Plainsfield Massachusetts, and I’d like to share some images of the work-in-progress. I’ve always been fascinated by the process of development that a devised project goes through on it’s way to full production. I’ve collected some images of the rehearsal process that …
Last week, Will Davis and I got together again to run a week-long workshop for directors at the Strand Theater in Baltimore, Maryland. We were invited by Elissa Goetschius, the incoming Artistic Director of The Strand, who not only organized all the logistics of the week, she also participated in the workshop, AND faithfully tweeted our many …
I have been thinking about the recent NEA audience figures and declining attendance. I think it is time for us to take a step back and examine ways in which theater institutions can change or create new programs that could address these declines. Most theater institutions see that their primary job is to be a …
On a recent visit to the Met, I was thinking about super-titles and their back-of-seat titling system. And I idly wondered if the same technology would be possible on our smartphones. As part of a “Make a Thing A Day Project,” I decided to create a mockup for an iphone (or ipad) app for opera …
Last week, I had the excellent good fortune to run a directing intensive with Will Davis during the NNPN Conference, at the Kennedy Center, in Washington DC. I had a marvelous time and I wanted share some thoughts about the experience. Where did it come from? The impetus for the Kennedy Center Directing Intensive came out …
Directors Intensive #1 This week, Will Davis and I are running a “Directing Intensive” at the Kennedy Center, as part of the National New Play Network’s MFA Playwrights Workshop. We have been blessed with a marvelous group of people and I am having so much fun talking about craft, theory and practice of directing. Over …
I just spent a week workshopping Michael Yates Crowley’s play Evanston: A Rare Comedy, at the National Playwrights Conference in the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in New London Connecticut. It was a such a pleasure to spend an entire week in a room working with a playwright, actors, designers and a crack team of dramaturges …
I think that the most interesting aspect of this article is that it’s a celebration of “creative teams” and the work that they to create together. It gives me hope that we’re moving beyond the solo romantic genius idea and further towards the acceptance that excellent theater is the result of collaborative teams. ‘Einstein’ and ‘Dog …
“The theatre is one of the most expressive and useful instruments for building up a country, it is the barometer of its greatest or decline. An intelligent theatre, well orientated in all its branches … can change the sensibility of people within a few years; a disintegrated theatre, with clumsy hooves instead of wings, can …
So based on this comment: “in the future we won’t watch scripted passive entertainment, we will watch people interacting with complex simulated environments.” from Metafilter and this comment Part of the magic of games is that they can give us experience with difficult social problems through this direct interaction. They are thought experiments, actualized. In …