Worth a Look

Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...

Behind Every Film Production Is a Mess of Environmental Wreckage

VICE: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom didn't make much of an impression with critics, but the $300 million blockbuster represented an immense undertaking. Preproduction started in 2015 and included the film’s writer taking a cross-country road trip to hash out story details and a four-week working trip in Barcelona, where director J.A. Bayona and production designer Andy Nicholson figured out visuals like set design and framing shots.

Posted by David at 10/21/2019 10:49:00 AM

A Fresh Cup of Tea: How to Make Nutcracker More Inclusive

Dance Magazine: It's Nutcracker time again: the season of sweet delights and a sparkling good time—if we're able to ignore the sour taste left behind by the outdated racial stereotypes so often portrayed in the second act.

In 2017, as a result of a growing list of letters from audience members, to New York City Ballet's ballet master in chief Peter Martins reached out to us asking for assistance on how to modify the elements of Chinese caricature in George Balanchine's The Nutcracker.

Posted by David at 10/23/2019 10:40:00 AM

#PayUpHollywood: How Unionizing Has Impacted Assistants’ Salary Fight

Variety: Writers’ assistant Olga Lexell used to rack up around $10,000 a year in medical bills to manage a chronic condition, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, that requires her to sit through thyroid X-rays and frequent blood tests. While her show was on hiatus, she would pay $500 a month to extend the insurance that the studio offered, even though it was “never that good.” It wasn’t until writers’ assistants and script coordinators banded together in early 2018 to unionize under the banner of IATSE Local 871 that her healthcare costs shrunk dramatically.

Posted by David at 10/22/2019 02:33:00 PM

Setting the Story Straight on Trigger Warnings

Exeunt Magazine: This month, CPT is hosting our all-new ‘Handle with Care’ festival, three weeks of performance exploring the hotly contested concept of the so-called ‘snowflake generation’ and all that comes with it – trigger warnings and safe spaces, microaggressions and no-platforming. You would imagine that, embarking on this season of programming, we must have our own story straight – on how, when and to whom trigger warnings should be administered in a theatre context?

Posted by David at 10/22/2019 03:10:00 PM

What Our New Plays Really Look Like

HowlRound Theatre Commons: The goal of this study is to use data to capture trends in new play production at the seventy-five LORT (League of Resident Theatres) member theatres and the thirty-two NNPN (National New Play Network) core member theatres. In working, I set out to answer three questions: Who is being produced on our stages? What kinds of characters are appearing on our stages? And what do these plays look like in terms of form and thematic content? By measuring where new play production is currently at, I hope to create an awareness of not only what is happening on our stages but also what is missing from them.

Posted by David at 10/23/2019 10:41:00 AM

Worth A Look

Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...

Barcelona Dance Company Speaks Out On Being Barred From Performing At The Los Angeles Theatre Center By Immigration Officers

www.broadwayworld.com: A year ago, José Luis Valenzuela put his plans in motion to bring the award-winning performance artist, Marta Carrasco and her acclaimed political dance-theatre production Perra de Nadie (Nobody's Bitch) to Los Angeles. The trip, Carrasco's third as an artist produced by Valenzuela, was meant to be her farewell performance.

Posted by David at 10/17/2019 11:01:00 AM

Behind the Scenes begins development of a Mental Health and Suicide Prevention initiative

Protocol: BEHIND THE SCENES was created so industry members could look after each other in times of crisis. The charity originally defined crisis as entertainment technology professionals, or their immediate dependent family members, who are seriously ill or injured.

In 2016, Behind the Scenes was approached by a concerned individual, Karen Sherman, who was seeing too many of her colleagues dealing with depression and substance misuse. She wanted to find a way to encourage individuals to seek counseling at the start of problems, before they became a crisis and, in an expansion of its mission, the BTS Counseling Fund was created to help ease the financial burdens associated with seeking treatment.

Posted by David at 10/17/2019 11:00:00 AM

Shakesqueer - A Queer, Feminist Reading

At This Stage: For hundreds of years Shakespeare’s plays have dominated the theater industry. Scholars, conspiracy theorists, and flat out fanatics have speculated on the playwrights identity for quite some time now. But was Shakespeare really queer? And does it even matter? It is nearly impossible to say for sure. Given how little historians have been able to document on the life of William Shakespeare, we are not even sure of his exact date of birth. But what we have for sure are countless dirty jokes, a fury of queer desire, and gender-fluid romance strung between 37 plays and 154 sonnets, half of which are explicitly addressed to men (Arden Shakespeare Complete Works). It’s all things lude, crude, and lascivious. This article will provide a queer reading of Shakespeare’s most popular plays and fan favorite characters. Who is the gayest in the canon? And what does this say about the man himself?

Posted by David at 10/16/2019 10:38:00 AM

Tales from a Scenic Artist and Scholar. Part 820 – Fire, 1912

Drypigment.net: From 1905 until Al Ringling’s passing in in 1916, Thomas G. Moses completed several designs for the Ringling Bros. grand circus spectacles. In 1912, Thomas G. Moses wrote, “Went to Sterling to catch Ringling to collect $1,200.00. As I went to the tent to find Al Ringling, I discovered everyone watching a fire – a stable at least four blocks away. A spark was blown towards the tent, the top of which is prepared with paraffin to make it waterproof. It soon ignited from the sparks and in less than thirty minutes the big tent was destroyed.

Posted by David at 10/15/2019 03:02:00 PM

Solving the "Lulu" Problem

The Theatre Times: Frank Wedekind’s Lulu is the archetypal modern classic about a sexy woman. Precisely for that reason, it’s a very tough nut to crack today, no less for adaptors than for directors of the original texts.

Wedekind’s first version, a 5-act “monster tragedy” written in 1894—about a sensuous young woman exploited, objectified and loved by a series of husbands and other men before being murdered by Jack the Ripper—couldn’t get past the German censor. So Wedekind fiddled with it for years, eventually expanding it into two plays (Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box) that amplified the story’s lurid details and added background information that, in a teasingly neutral way, provided social commentary.

Posted by David at 10/17/2019 10:13:00 PM

Worth a Look

Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...

Old Vic's Gender Neutral Toilets: A Dialogue

Exeunt Magazine: We are spilling out of the Northern line on our way to rehearsals when The Stage publishes Sarah Ditum’s article criticizing the Old Vic’s decision to implement gender neutral toilets. Rehearsals for a play in which we hire cis body doubles to take over our lives as trans people, to see if we ever get to author our own stories.

Posted by David at 10/10/2019 10:40:00 AM

Inside the Living, Breathing World of the Washington National Opera's Costume Design

On Tap Magazine: “They think of the costumes as living, breathing things. They develop intense relationships with the costumes themselves as they’re literally forming them with their hands.”

Timothy O’Leary is describing the love story between the Washington National Opera (WNO)’s costume team and the works of art they fit to singers not like a glove, but like a second layer of skin, an extension of their very being. And it’s an easy romance to get swept up in.

Posted by David at 10/09/2019 11:12:00 AM

Geena Davis Unveils Partnership With Disney to "Spellcheck" Scripts for Gender Bias

Hollywood Reporter: During a closing keynote speech at the New Zealand Power of Inclusion Summit, the actress explained how a new digital tool will prevent film and television works from perpetuating underrepresentation and stereotypes — and their pernicious real-world effects.

Posted by David at 10/07/2019 12:23:00 PM

We need to talk about money…

ProSoundNetwork.com: Us freelancers are all entrepreneurs—whether we like it or not—so let’s embrace that and not be afraid of more business-focused dialogue. We can also be more honest about downtime (we all get it) and what constructive activities can be used to fill that time.

So, I’m going to get the ball rolling by discussing some things that I have found useful in negotiating more than a decade of freelancing.

Posted by David at 10/08/2019 10:51:00 AM

The Second-Order Problem: A Participant-Centered Approach to Immersive Design

noproscenium.com: In proscenium theatre, an invisible, imaginary wall separates the performers from the audience: the fourth wall. In an immersive experience, this fourth wall is pierced or broken (or perhaps does not even exist in the first place).

But why do we break down the fourth wall? What is the rationale for doing so?

Posted by David at 10/09/2019 11:09:00 AM

Worth a Look

Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...

Intiman's Board Clashes with Staff, Leaving the Theater's Future in the Air

Slog - The Stranger: Senior members of Intiman's board are in crisis mode. They're saying the theater is out of cash and needs to drastically reduce staff by the end of the month or else close soon in order to gracefully exit the scene. The staff is saying the theater is not in crisis mode. In fact, they've got a plan that would solve the immediate financial need and start the new year with a surplus. They just need the board to approve that plan. But the board isn't buying the plan and won't budge. Now nobody knows what will happen to the embattled, nearly 50-year-old institution, which this year finally dug itself out from under $2.7 million in debt and earned an arts award from the Mayor.

Posted by David at 9/30/2019 11:28:00 AM

Peek Inside Three Major Costume Shops of Ballet, Broadway and Ballroom

Dance Magazine: In much the same way that choreography and performance create a storyline, costumes can transport an audience into a certain mood or time period with fabrics alone. Three costume departments gave us an inside look at how they prep for ballets, Broadway shows and performances on the road.

Posted by David at 10/01/2019 01:08:00 PM

How Object Puppetry Confronts Climate Change

HowlRound Theatre Commons: I’m the artistic director of Glass Half Full Theatre in Austin, Texas. Our company creates new works of theatre using the precise physical language of both humans and puppets—through clowning and object puppetry, in which existing objects are manipulated as characters—to confront global issues of environmental and social justice and explore imaginative solutions. In 2018, we presented an original stage production called Polly Mermaid, Apocalypse Wow!, based on a “walk about” persona that Indigo Rael, a company member, had created. Polly, whose purpose is to help people rethink their interactions with “disposable” plastic, has been an in-demand persona at live events such as Earth Day ATX and the San Marcos Mermaid Festival, and even has a short film detailing her origin story.

Posted by David at 10/04/2019 10:51:00 AM

Montgomery is 60% black, but local theater doesn't reflect this. ASF is changing that.

www.montgomeryadvertiser.com: When the Alabama Shakespeare Festival board asked Rick Dildine to join as artistic director in 2017 he researched every playwright the festival had hired in the past 45 years.

He was the director of a festival in St. Louis then, where he garnered praise for taking Shakespeare out of the theater and onto the city’s public streets; casting neighborhood residents alongside professional actors.

In Dildine’s words, a theater’s programming “is its destiny.” To him, theater is local. It builds community. And the stories projected from its stage matter.

Posted by David at 10/04/2019 10:51:00 AM

Online Survey, from Behind the Scenes, to Help Develop a Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Initiative

Stage Directions: Behind the Scenes, in response to concerns about the rising number of suicides and the prevalence of alcohol/substance misuse within the entertainment industry, is beginning work on a Mental Health and Suicide Prevention initiative and wants to get a sense of how many people in the industry are experiencing anxiety, depression, thoughts of suicide, problems with alcohol/substance misuse, or reactions to traumatic events.

Posted by David at 9/30/2019 11:30:00 AM