I came across this thing I wrote for Mother’s Day last year. I had largely forgotten about it, but on rereading it, I realized that my production of Richard III is completely based on these ideas. Most notably this quotation from “The Mother’s Day Proclamation,” by Julia Ward Howe: “Let [mothers] meet first, as women, […]
Now that Richard III is rolling around Michigan and I’m home, I’m finding myself explaining to people more or less daily that the show goes on without me. Most people who haven’t done much theater don’t realize that a director is very different from an orchestra conductor. I set the show up and then it […]
This summer, everyone was posting their headshots from 10 years ago, as a funny. Haha, I thought. I’ll find mine and post it, too! Here it is: It’s a good picture! But…I was still using it. I just didn’t realize how old it was. This is pre-kids. It’s pre-gray-hairs, pre-eye-crinkles. This is definitely still how […]
One of my favorite things that happened on my recent Shakespeare Roadtrip ™ was that I stayed with Bridget, an actor who was in Duchess (2016), as well as this summer’s Much Ado remount. Bridget has done well for herself, working consistently at ever more prominent theaters and in better and better roles. She’s been auditioning and touring regularly. […]
Kaeleb asked me an interesting question as I was giving him a ride home from rehearsal last night: “Are there any shows that you have done before, that you wish you could go back and do again, knowing what you know now?” I surprised myself–and I think also him–by realizing that no, there aren’t. I […]
Silas is taking an *awesome* theater class at JMU. It’s taught by theater ed majors, for homeschool kids, ages 7-13 or so. Nearly all of the kids are at least 2 years older than he is, and he is so impressed with them. They are playing some theater games and also devising a play based […]
Seeing people’s #threefictionalcharacters posts this week (which has been super fun, by the way), I’ve been thinking of other ways to sum up a person in just a few items. Here’s one: What are your top five creations? Ground rules: Listing your children is cheating. It should be stuff you’re proud of and that helped […]
I’ve been meaning to write about Liesl Tommy since I saw her speak at the KCACTF Region 2 Festival in the winter. She was the keynote speaker at the festival. And she was amazing. She’s from South Africa, and she talked about what it was like to come to the US, how she found theater, the […]
Recently, on a road trip, Heidi and I wound up talking about what kinds of plays speak to us. Both of us will direct practically anything, and will find our way into it, but every director is drawn to certain types of plays. The fact that I get hired for plays outside of my wheelhouse […]
2016 was, at a macro level, a total disaster. But, as Rachel Held Evans writes, in a moving post on becoming a mother, it also was some people’s best year. It was my best one in a long time. Hard and complicated, yes, but also amazing. This is the year I was 33. In Mennonite circles […]