Alumni of the Shakespeare and Performance graduate program at the American Shakespeare Center have founded or taken on the leadership of, a number of classical theater companies, drawing on the ASC’s scholarship and aesthetic, but with their own unique twist. Just off the top of my head: Flagstaff Shakespeare Festival (Arizona), Pigeon Creek Shakespeare (Michigan), […]
Time for a story about how I became the director I am. In 2002, I was interning at the American Shakespeare Center. This was before they had any kind of formal internship program, so the deal basically was that I worked with their summer camp during the day, and in the evening, I could go […]
I went to see an actual play, in person, with humans. The last play-ish thing I saw was Bread and Puppets on March 10. I don’t know if I have gone five months without seeing or doing a play since I was in middle school. Probably not. I went mostly because I was curious about […]
Paula Vogel has started a play reading series, called Bard at the Gate that is focused on highlighting works that, for whatever reason, aren’t getting programmed at major theaters, despite being excellent. This past week, the selection was Meg Miroshnik‘s The Droll. The play was originally written in 2009, but some of the lines landed […]
I feel extremely lucky that I happened to see an unusually large number of shows in the couple weeks before everything shut down. I’m slowly getting around to writing about them. Side Show, at JMU Theater, was a lovely show. I don’t love this score or this script particularly much, but I was curious about […]
I luckily saw a fair amount of theater right before everything shut down. As usual, posting my reflections late, but it’s nice to have those memories of live performances to sustain me through the current drought. Like many Gen X/Millennials, my first experience of Mummenschanz was through the delightfully weird Sesame Street of the 1980s, […]
I’ve been hearing about Molly Smith Metzler’s Cry It Out for ages. It’s the story of two dissimilar neighbors who have babies at the same time and navigate the challenges of new motherhood together, becoming unlikely friends in the process. I hadn’t been able to get to a performance, but I was curious about the […]
For once, I didn’t see a show on closing night. You can still check this out! It runs through April 19. As we move into this strange human experiment in containment, all of my performing arts colleagues are struggling. Shows are, of course, being canceled. Lots of people’s day jobs, if they have them, are […]
When my local high school announced it was slating Hairspray as its spring musical, I was terribly skeptical. Although the school, like the city, is extremely diverse, I had only rarely seen a non-white kid in their productions. At that school, as at many schools, theater is for white kids. Ken Gibson, the theater teacher […]
So, I wasn’t supposed to even be at KCACTF this year. But I got a call from a friend who needed a favor, and I went to help out for a few days. I’m so glad that I did. I love the festival—all the students fluttering with nervous excitement in line for Irene Ryans at […]