Bloggers Nightâ„¢ Blow-out
Bloggers Nightâ„¢
The Preview Review & Reviewing the Reviewers: A Review
Playwright Adam Szymkowicz was a blogger guest of Primary Stages’ preview of Hunting and Gathering and he seems to have written a preview review. Anyway it walks somewhat like a review and quacks somewhat like a review but I think we will all need to await the Back Stage National Theatre Editor’s ruling on the exact nature of this duck. Leonard Jacobs promised to bring the issue before the Supreme Court when George Hunka transgressed on 100 Saints in his…
Field of Dreams
Scott Walters at Theatre Ideas has recently published a flurry of posts on the subject of decentralization of theatre funding. Many bloggers have been commending Scott’s passionate research and arguing for the more equal distribution of theater funds. This is encouraging because, “it takes a village,” as the African proverb and Hillary say. If decentralization is to actually find traction, the notion will need as many cheerleaders as can be found. More importantly, the actual players up for this game…
New Website
I have not posted recently because I have been busy helping artistic directors Gabriele Schafer and Melanie Dreyer prepare our theatre’s new website. Thieves Theatre exists now only as historical archive and as practicing aesthetic under its new identity as International Culture Lab. Nothing sad in the retirement of the name; we had long ago evolved out its confines. Also the cultural and political climate in this country is no longer conducive to our earlier explorations disrupting the status quo….
100 Movies 100 Quotes 100 Numbers
‘Tis the season to be compiling “the list.” Here’s the best I’ve seen.
Mantra for the New Year
Local Girl’s Tumultuous Rise and Fall from Fame
Dear Local Girl, We are all deeply saddened here in Brooklyn by your recent tragic fall from fame. Upon receipt of this momentous news the Rat Sass executive committee convened in special session over the holidays. In a decisive and unanimous action the committee has awarded you the coveted Walk of Fame Star. Rat Sass Walk of Fame Stars are real duplicates of the replicas made by the same artist who creates the Hollywood plaques given to the celebrities when they…
I Trusted You
I am presently writing for the next issue of New York Theater Review. More like, I am trying to write. The medium feels totally alien to me. How do you write about the theatrosphere for a journal that won’t be published until this spring? I already need to ammend partially what I said three weeks ago in my State of the Union. But instead of blogging on this subject as I normally would, I will be writing on it for…
Food for Thought
I often visit the Tree Untangling from fiber as living flesh Serpent tongue Eve’s inner ear wishes Whispering sweet nothings Washing away memory of earlier gods She tastes Adam’s apple Flesh so like yet so unlike her own This is not transgression this Is life seeking its own godhead Swallowing its own tail Elmer and Bugs, Sylvester and Tweety, Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote Looney Toon Socratic Method Hunt and pursuit but never any capture Also Strindberg’s eternal war…
State of the Union
Blogger’s Block is much different than Writer’s Block. It’s more like “biting your tongue.” I have been working as dramaturg on a project and traveling a great deal with it in recent months. I have been writing non-stop during my sabbatical from Rat Sass, sometimes posting in the comment section of other domains, but I have refrained from “publishing†proper because I have been overwhelmed of late by the enormity of the act. After this two-month absence from blogging, I…
Blinky
Even in Kyoto Hearing the cuckoo’s cry I long for Kyoto -Basho via Sheila’s We’ve been renovating the house for 11 years. I’m sleeping tonight, one floor upstairs from our apartment, in the raw empty place. My laptop is on one of those little TV-dinner tables, lifted up to the correct desktop level by the thickest hardcover from our bookshelves, The Complete Illustrated Shakespeare. I came back from Pittsburgh last night so that I could clean our apartment for the…
Actor’s Dramaturgy
The developed actor’s dramaturgy is different in nature from that of the script. Words are meant to be spoke, spat, sung, and danced in theatre, not written and read. Yet the written/read text, the play, has evolved into the author(ity), the alpha and omega, of most theatre produced in this country. Ice Cream for Breakfast Whenever I dwell for any length of time exclusively in the physical study of performance, a strange third eye opens. The body returns to its…
Theatre Without Borders
I’m off to butoh study for the next couple weeks in the boondocks of Germany northeast of Berlin. Gaby will be guest blogging at Rat Sass. Gaby is producer of the New York Butoh Festival. She is also in the process of forming a NYC based international theatre company stemming from her current project with an ensemble of German and American theatre artists. Interesting to note that 36% of the city’s population is foreign-born. Couple this with the city’s other…
The New York Aesthetic?
Scott, with assistance from Mac, has successfully beaten the dead horse to death again. Six weeks ago in a post I characterized the meme that animates the hoary horse’s life-like twitching at its ritualistic floggings. “In historical retrospect we know that many of the urban v. rural and North v. South tensions of the American Civil War were still erupting during the Tombstone era in 1880. Interesting how this is only slightly different in species from the New York v….
The New Testaments Toward Theatre
A recent post by Mac Rogers started me thinking about the reason and nature of blogging itself. As Isaac would say, read some Hunka, then read some Walters. Both, I fear, showcase two of the leading lights of the theatrosphere with their powers a bit under a cloud, but it’s interesting to think about why. If there is a literary form that certain blog posts in the theatrosphere have come to resemble, it is the epistle. In a similar way…
Theatre Tribe
Scott Walters opened an interesting discussion awhile back about new tribalism and theatre centering his reading of a section from Daniel Quinn’s book Beyond Civilization: Humanity’s Next Great Adventure. The discussion became the subject of numerous posts in the theatrosphere. Don Hall picked up on it as did Slay. Isaac asking about the sense of community amongst artists in a particular area is a parallel question. In Scott’s follow-up post he seems to have come to a conclusion on the…
Butoh Fu for The Ghost of Hamlet’s Flesh
Something is rotten in Denmark. Old Hamlet’s putrid flesh decomposes but will not surrender its ghost. Manifold earth would take the decomposing flesh as its own, but the flesh cannot surrender its elemental nature until the usurped monarchy is brought back into the natural order of the universe. waguri Old Hamlet rises as a frightful Frankenstein of disparate elements out of the bowels of the putrefied kingdom. As sovereign king on earth he summons all of nature to the place…
My Pretentious Bio
Nick has been choreographing Gabriele Schafer in her role as artistic director of Thieves Theatre for 26 years. In preparation for the Pretentious Festival, for the past six years he has been traveling and researching the most important physical theatre methods on earth, especially butoh. Through his study with such masters as Atsushi Takenouchi, Yukio Waguri, Akira Kasai, Diego Pinon, SU-EN, and Minako Seki, he has now realized his masterwork. Gabriele Schafer performs Gertred/Ghost in The Ghost of Hamlet’s Flesh….