Subtext to Text

Subtext to Text

I have noticed that I am beginning to develop a new relationship to blogging. I am finding my comment writing in others’ blogs just as challenging, if not more so, than the writing of my own posts. I have taken partial lead on this from Mac Rogers. The SlowLearner is also slow on blog postings but he is often present in comment sections of the theatrosphere with his pointed questions. I have been thinking of the comment sections of the…

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Chicago Judge Issues Gag Order on Theatre Bloggers

Chicago Judge Issues Gag Order on Theatre Bloggers

Numerous verbal fisticuffs have erupted recently in the theatrosphere. The discussion surrounding Don Hall’s review of Greyzelda Theatre’s production has been particularly volatile. It is unclear how this gag order from a Cook County judge in Chicago will be enforceable on bloggers as far away as Australia but just its existence adds a chilling effect on future discourse in the theatrosphere. Chicago bloggers directly under the jurisdiction of the court order include Devilvet, GreyZelda, Paul Rekk, Don Hall, Trailing Spouse…

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The Coming PR Clique Wars and the New Censorship

The Coming PR Clique Wars and the New Censorship

Dramatists Guild War poster circa May 2008. 40 x 29. A drowning playwright points accusingly. This is one of a large group of posters, warning against vicious and personal reviews of regional theatre productions, many of which are being sunk by critics before achieving their Broadway runs. These types of posters are also being displayed in regional theatre lobbies, theatre audience bars and restaurants-wherever there is danger of critics, reviewers, or other saboteurs attempting to initiate dramaturgical discussions before a…

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Latest Preview Review for Justice Jacobs to Review

Latest Preview Review for Justice Jacobs to Review

I appreciate Leonard Jacobs’ scrutiny of ethics among his peers, but in threatening my and other bloggers’ independence in writing, he offends. He alienated himself from me when he predicated a lunch date on whether I would or would not tell him what I was going to write after attending a certain Bloggers Night. San Francisco Bay Area-based theatre critic Chloe Veltman has published a “preview review” of Beckett’s Endgame currently running at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. She does…

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On the Lex-Train to Gómez-Peña

On the Lex-Train to Gómez-Peña

By angel I mean shaman I mean crazy fuck. But these human souls who speak in tongues with an ancient voice go mostly unheard today. That’s because most flesh has transformed in recent years into its new function as portable media player. On the subway trains the riders all believe their iPods are unique to their identity. But mass communication is becoming mass transportation is becoming mass media. And the mass no longer hears its flesh, its tongue. Their identities…

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On the A-Train to Gómez-Peña

On the A-Train to Gómez-Peña

On the subway to see the lecture yesterday I was part of the captive audience in the train car. The goofy looking homeless guy was pulling a small kid’s wagon. He seemed to be speaking in tongues, but then a moment later, he started singing in tongues. Sweetly, insanely. He was an angel after all. I knew that only later. I knew that only after he had left the train. If only I could find his performance again. I would…

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Shift Happens

Shift Happens

Visit the Wicked Wiki of the West behind this YouTube video and find more resources including history of presentation, suggestions for usage, and links to downloadable versions. From text of Did You Know? 2.0 Did you know? In the next 8 seconds . . . 34 babies will be born. Name this country . . . Richest in the world Largest military Center of world business and finance Strongest education system Currency the world standard of value Highest standard of…

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Guillermo Gómez-Peña in New York

Guillermo Gómez-Peña in New York

Somewhat under the radar, internationally acclaimed brujo-poeta, theorist, and performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña returns to New York for two evenings. The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics and el Museo del Barrio present two evenings featuring Guillermo Gómez-Peña. After more than four years away from New York, Gómez-Peña brings back his unique style of performance-activism and “theatricalizations of postcolonial theory.” In his books, as in his solo shows, he pushes the boundaries still further, exploring what’s left for artists to…

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Launch Party for New York Theater Review 2008

Launch Party for New York Theater Review 2008

New York Theater Review 2008 Officially Greets the World Tonight Friday, April 11 at Drama Book Shop 250 W. 40th St. Manhattan 6-8pm Editor Brook Stowe will be reading from the bloggers interview section of the journal in-between performance excerpts from the plays. The NYC bloggers interviewed are Blindsquirrel Bloggings (aka Johnna Adams), Obscene Jester, sharkskin girl and Tweed (aka T. Nikki Cesare & Steve Luber), The Playgoer (aka Garrett Eisler), Jason Grote (aka Jason Grote), and your friend Rat…

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The Rant, the Whine, and the Pitch

The Rant, the Whine, and the Pitch

What the rant and the whine have in common is their self-righteous attitude. Exhibit A: Rat Sass. This attitude allows the speaker to pose as victim to something supposedly out of his/her control. Sometimes this mind-set is attained through self-deceit, other times through deliberate hypocrisy or bravura, but usually elements of all are necessary to achieve such a judgmental stance. Of course in order for the rant or whine to find popular acclaim, the content of the message also has…

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The Heart of Failure and Promise

The Heart of Failure and Promise

OUR FAILURE Theatre has become as stale as our language, our lives. We use the word “seasons” in theater in the same fashion we use the word holiday as replacement for Holy Day. Christmas is now the Xmas season. We acquiesce unknowingly. X-ing out the abstinent Christ with the Santa bag of toys. That merry, merry tidings-of-comfort-and-joy time that produces more suicides than any other. Once was the earlier pagan ritual celebrating the winter solstice. Theatre was born within such…

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Awake From Your Slumber!

Awake From Your Slumber!

Our current project with Theater Rampe Stuttgart in Germany commissioned a new script from Austrian author Andreas Jungwirth. Outside Inn examines how capitalism has infiltrated into the most personal parts of our lives. In the passage below the character Paul, inheritor of the “family’s” business, relates a conversation in which his father-in-law, the legendary corporate CEO known as “the German,” explains where “we” are going next. “Kalowski has been silent the entire time. Suddenly he asks me to listen. Kalowski…

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Theatre Kultur

Theatre Kultur

In the early ’80’s we were living in the alternative theatre and punk scene in Toronto. Headquarters was at the Cameron. Paul Sannella was both bartender and owner. He managed and ran the place (not) exactly as the tribe model Scott at Theatre Ideas has been proposing. Michael Hollingsworth and his theatre Video Cabaret lived upstairs. Odd duck waiter at the Cameron was artist Andy Paterson. Something Andy said still haunts and hunts me now some 25 years later. Our…

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Contextualizing, Editing, Censoring

Contextualizing, Editing, Censoring

The Playgoer is worried that “Rachel Corrie” Buffered in Beantown may be pointing to a troublesome trend developing in theatre. He his talking about the “contextualization” of the play My Name Is Rachel Corrie by the New Repertory Theatre in a preview report on the production in the Boston Globe. [New Rep] had originally planned to pair “My Name Is Rachel Corrie” with the one-act “To Pay the Price,” about the late Israeli Army hero Jonathan “Yoni” Netanyahu. But after…

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Chicago Storefront Theatre Model

Chicago Storefront Theatre Model

If even Slay is not up to the task of summarizing the proposals and calls for change that has had the theatrosphere vibrating over the last few weeks, you know that the conversation is as complex he claims it is. A couple of times in the past few days I’ve started to write a big summary post of the drama that is currently engulfing most of the theatrenet. For those who don’t know, here are some relevant bits and pieces….

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Père DayZ Preempts Discussion

Père DayZ Preempts Discussion

After seeing the premiere performance of How Theater Failed America in New York, I had said that Mike Daisey’s monologue should be used as the foundation for our discussion seeking new models for regional theatre. But almost simultaneous to this, and in tandem with the monologue’s opening in Seattle, Mike published his essay on regional theatre. This probably would have had little import except that he subtitled his essay the same as his performance. His essay is a harsh rant,…

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Nylachi…You’re Fired!

Nylachi…You’re Fired!

The Mike Daisey essay matches well with the longer line of similar rants against regional theatre system Scott Walters has been publishing over at Theatre Ideas. This is Rat Sass, so understand I often use the term rant not as a derogative but as an accolade. I said that I thought How Theatre Failed America should be the foundation of the discussion about building a new model for theatre. I was talking about Mike’s performance not his rant of an…

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How Theatre Will Save America

How Theatre Will Save America

If you browse through our history at International Culture Lab you will understand why we are excited that Scott at Theatre Ideas has decided to put the rubber to the road in building an alternative national theatre model. For the last month or so he has been describing in some detail what is wrong with regional theatre in the United States but he is now ready to jump to the next phase. It is fairly easy to describe what one…

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