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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
