PLASA:
By Design Day, the annual fundraising day for Light Relief in the UK
and Behind the Scenes in the US and Canada, takes place this year on
Tuesday April 24 on both sides of the Atlantic.
2AMt:
In the rush to parse statements and assign blame this weekend, it seems
like we’re missing the point. This isn’t–or shouldn’t be–an attack on
Mike Daisey’s art or his ability. What’s on the stage–and on the page,
in this case–is a dynamic, compelling, electric piece of theatre.
Download it and read it, or go see it if you’re near a production of it.
If you want to produce it, use that Creative Commons license as
creatively as Cody Daigle did and open your audience up to a larger
conversation.
HowlRound:
When I had just left college and moved back to New York, I had the
great fortune of meeting Mac Wellman. He was something of an idol of
mine, having read his plays as an undergraduate. I couldn’t believe that
he was willing to meet me and talk about theater. We met at Lupe’s, a
small Mexican restaurant, one that he still frequents, and talked for a
couple of hours. From that day forward, he turned from idol to mentor,
as he spurred me in the pursuit of my own work as a director. Over the
years I’ve had the chance to direct several of Mac’s plays including Fnu
Lnu, The Fez, Description Beggared; or the Allegory of Whiteness, and
Bellagio. Each play presents a distinct theatrical world, strange and
familiar, odd and funny. His roots in poetry shine through in his
carefully selected words that are evocative and playful.
guardian.co.uk:
In her 1970 book review of Eva Figes' Patriarchal Attitudes: Women in
Society, Rebecca West poked fun at male repression of women in the
workplace: "Once Freud and his disciples got a female on the analytic
couch and found traces of intellectual activity, they attempted to
persuade her that she … was seeking in work a substitute for the male
sexual organ." West – who briefly trained as an actor – had personal
experience of discrimination in the performing arts. In the 1920s,
having already made her name as a novelist, essayist and journalist, she
wrote a play and sent it to theatre managers. After 14 copies were
"lost" (three of them by the then manager of the Birmingham Rep), she
gave up. How, I wonder, would she have responded to the statistics
compiled by Sphinx Theatre Company showing that women – 52% of the
population – make up just 35% of actors, 17% of theatre writers, 23% of
theatre directors and 9% of film directors?
Stage Directions:
There is a very ugly, smelly disease among many, many people in our
industry right now, and it’s called OMG WHAT IF I DON’T GET INTO YALE
Syndrome. The symptoms of this disease are basically sweats and bad
attitude about not getting into one of the “top” places to study
Entertainment in some form or another.
I have three friends right now
who whine about their degrees, and how they’ll never “make it big”
because they didn’t get their degree from Yale. Or Northwestern. Or
they didn’t study with Ming Cho Lee, so how on EARTH will they ever get
their genius recognized? The perception seems to be that there is just a
small cadre of schools who really matter, and if you study there, you
are guaranteed a spot on America’s Next Top Designer (which I just
invented and you may buy rights from me directly) or you get to star in
your own sitcom, called Another Actor Makes It Big. This is a
particularly pernicious fantasy. (Who wouldn’t want to take the chance
at actually succeeding in the fashion that it seems people who go to
Yale succeed?) But it is a fantasy all the same.
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