kemsapp18
Conservatory Education…
For the past week or so, I’ve been pondering this idea of what actually is conservatory education. What am I missing from my overall intellectual pursuits in my higher education? I can certainly tell you my technical writing skills suck. Being able to write concisely has been my greatest struggle. Especially around having to write […]
Collaboration
I’ve been thinking a lot about collaboration within the theatre and who gets to participate in it. I feel like this is stemming from the vein that my whole accessibility post was about. But, I’ve genuinely been wondering why sure individuals gets to participate in collaborations within theatre more easily than others. My running […]
Stepping into the Boy’s Club
So, I’ve been wrestling with this notion, silly question really, why is Sound Design for theatre such a Boy’s Club? I honestly don’t get it. In that, I mean I totally get it. Like most technical fields in the theatre industry, it’s male dominated. Of the whole field, approximately 8-10% is made up of […]
Nonverbal Theatre….What?
As I mentioned previously, I’m in an ASL/Deaf Lit course and yesterday we talked about personification – how when signing a story the author can personify inanimate objects and express from its perspective. We studied a troupe named Mummenschanz. They started in 1971 withe counter culture movement. They used a lot of junk and made […]
Love at First Sight…
Y’all… It’s confession time… I’ve fallen in love… with magical realism!! I don’t know if it’s the plays we read last week or my initial delve into playwright José Rivera’s history, interaction and inclusion of magical realism in his works, but currently I’m enthralled by this particular -ism. As I understand, the definition of magical […]
SpeakEasy’s “Grand Concourse” Response
SpeakEasy Stage Company recently opened Heidi Schreck’s Grand Concourse. I saw it on its opening night, March 3rd. It was really refreshing and rewarding to watch a different production team and cast produce and perform their rendition of a script you, yourself worked on. Albeit on the tail end of rehearsals and tech, I was the […]
Watch the Blessed Performance Woman!!
Currently, I’m back home in Chicago, enjoying the city. Tonight, I went to an amazing ensemble play in a local mom and pop storefront theatre. The one thing I kept having to remind myself, was watch the blessed performance, woman!! Being so assimilated and immersed in the world of theatre everyday, I more often […]
Sound Design….What’s that again?
With break nearly upon us, I reflect on this repetitive question I recieve a lot from family friends back home who still don’t get what my major is and why I’ve spent my collegiate years studying it. General Dialogue: Family Friend: “Oh, how’s college? What do you study again? Lighting something for theatre, right? Me: […]
Accessibility…
This week’s plays have each been in conversation with this theme of accessibility. Who get to have access to the content of the play? Who gets to physically have access to the performances? Who gets to have access to multifaceted, very human characters that represent them? Hell, everyone deserves access to plays and storylines that […]
Emotionality First…..real stuff later
As I’ve been on this journey as an artist and designer, I’ve found that I could never really pinpoint my aesthetic. It’s has always eluded me how to describe in what manner I come up with a sound scape other than I wiped it out of thin air. I’ve always struggled to convey my reponses […]
Motivation….
As I write this post in the enth hour, I struggle with what to write about – what is going on around me that I can respond to, engage with, wrestle with? Truth is, there’s oodles of performances: instillations, slam poetry, dance, even performances of civil justice like protests happening all around me. It comes […]
Did You See That? Performance as a Means of Communication
I’m four semesters deep into my Deaf Studies Minor. As a theatre artist, specifically Sound Designer, many collaborators have asked me why I want to minor in Deaf Studies. Answer is: why not? It’s completely the opposite of what my chosen career entails. I’m a listener, a sonic manipulator, of the hearing world. However, have […]
Drama Lit Blog 2.0: BU School of Theatre 