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Category: Theatre and Culture

Production Dramaturgy and the C-Word

Production Dramaturgy and the C-Word

We’ve been having many post-performance discussions of What She Knew with peers and friends concerning the dramaturgy of the script and the production.  Also I’ve been participating in a related very interesting discussion on production dramaturgy at the listserv at LMDA The script is theory not praxis, relative to the particular elements and context of its production, most especially the ensemble.  One ensemble will realize the dynamics and nuanced relationships within a script vastly different than another.  Neither would necessarily…

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Community

Community

One’s-Self I Sing One’s-self I sing, a simple separate person, Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse. Of physiology from top to toe I sing, Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I say the Form complete is worthier far, The Female equally with the Male I sing. Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power, Cheerful, for freest action form’d under the laws divine, The Modern Man I sing. Behavior lawless as snow-flakes, words…

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How to Play the Diversity Card

How to Play the Diversity Card

The theatrosphere’s talk on diversity has gone from bad to worse. The three shills in the house, linking to each other’s blog posts to keep the thread undead, have been Isaac, 99 seats, and Scott. This comment by KL at Isaac’s correctly summarizes why everyone is jumping off this ship to nowhere. It’s not much of a conversation. It’s mostly one side arguing a principle (we need more diversity!) without really offering any facts. Instead, unsupported suppositions, misleading correlations and…

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Theatrosphere’s TalkWriting

Theatrosphere’s TalkWriting

As the saying goes, rumors are as old as God. The first rumor was one that jumped the species barrier. The snake whispered sweet nothings in Eve’s ear, telling her “rumor had it” that the forbidden fruit was ripe with hidden promise. Eve swallowed the story whole. Like all rumors, the serpent’s tale had an element of truth. Knowledge would be the godlike quality in man, but as other scripture reminds us, the flesh is weak. Facts are hard or…

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Promote-O-Meter

Promote-O-Meter

In the comment section at Playgoer’s last year, when the Critic-O-Meter blog was first launched, I argued against the denigration of theatre criticism into a report card grading system. Most artists I know struggle against the standardized behavior and herding aspect implicit in the notion of “theatre consumer,” so this wannabe Rotten Tomatoes of the theatre world fell off my radar until recently when Isaac Butler’s heavy promotion of his current show caught my attention. The goofily named Critic-O-Meter wants…

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The Last Rat Conference Comes Home Again

The Last Rat Conference Comes Home Again

The RAT Conference from 1994-2004 was the single most transforming element of our theatre ensemble’s history. Our present day aesthetic and ethic developed directly from that ten-year collaboration with other theatre companies and individuals from around the country and the world. For many years we found our strength of purpose and community in this “Regional Alternative Theatre” confederacy. Our theatre instigated and led many of the conferences including the final one in Argentina. Company members Melanie, Gabriele, Markus and I…

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How Theatre Failed/Saved America

How Theatre Failed/Saved America

UPDATE: Teresa Eyring’s From the Executive Director column is now online at the American Theatre site. Mike Daisey has responded with a rebuttal at his blog site. As one of his points, he scrutinizes Ms. Eyring’s unfortunate title, the same item that had struck me as the most egregious in her piece. Ms. Eyring’s title takes one’s breath away. If it were called HOW THEATRE WILL SAVE AMERICA it would still be defensible, if a bit sweeping—it could fantasize about…

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Staging the N-word

Staging the N-word

I received some insightful and referenced comments from the dramaturgs on the LMDA listserv concerning the use of the N-word on stage and the struggle of our current production to present it. But interesting how even within the context of a discussion of the word itself, there seems to be a taboo against typing the full six-lettered word nigger onto the digital page, as if not only any utterance, but also any “publication” of the word would easily transcend the…

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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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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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