HowlRound
Vomit Writing Magic Muse
Being a playwright- finding your muse is very important- having your space, having your music, having your spells, chants, and charms around you as you write is very important. But sometimes it just doesn’t come. My first mentor/friend in playwriting was Stephen Adly Guirgis. Outside of my mother, he was the first person who told […]
Theatre of the Oppressed: Eastern Europe and the United States
After reading and discussing Family Stories: Belgrade in the context of our course, two other political theatre pieces came to my mind: Vaclav Havel’s The Memorandum, and the production of Counting Sheep that my mom and family attended at Stanford University earlier this spring. Both of these pieces also tackle the political climates of their […]
An Analysis of Playwriting Residencies
Ever since taking Dramaturgy, I’ve thought a lot about the importance of financially supporting artists who make their livings doing creative work. Grants, fellowships, and residencies are invaluable for supporting the future generations of artists, especially for playwrights. Recently, HowlRound posted an assessment of the National Playwright Residency Program. My interest was sparked not only because […]
Model Ensemble: The TEAM
Starting next week, our school will go back into the rehearsal mode, and I and fellow Contemporary Drama student and director Sara Katzoff will go into the process of Rachel Chavkin and The TEAM’s Particularly in the Heartland. The TEAM (Theatre of the Emerging American Moment, originally) is a devising ensemble striving to challenge, question, […]
A Call to Action
In 2016, Caridad Svich wrote a moving essay on Howlround about the paralyzing conflict artists face when creating art with the goal to effect immediate change for a movement of social justice, but when actual legislative change seems worlds away. I happened upon this essay reading Tiffany Antone’s essay, “Amplifying Civic Engagement Through #TheatreActionGunControl,” which outlines […]
Unpacking POC in Theatre… Part 2!
Unpacking my thoughts… that’s what this blog is about, right? I recently just came across an article called “Why ‘Diversity is Encouraged’ Is Not Enough” on HowlRound that echoes a lot of the points that I was making in my previous blog post, “Let’s Get Specific,” that I would like to revisit and be in […]
Thesis Part II: Start where you are
Two weeks ago, I decided to re-evaluate the frame of my thesis. I have since found a co-collaborator who is part of the Deaf community and am thrilled to have his creative mind and spirit in the room. We decided to meet after thanksgiving break and I honestly, realized too late that I should have […]
Playwrights Play with Playlists
I am loving the trend happening these days where playwrights are making public Spotify playlists that accompany their new plays. I’m sure the act of playwrights creating playlist for their plays has been happening for years in various forms; burned CD’s, iPod playlists, etc, but what is special about the current form is how publicly […]
That World Premiere Thing
Last Monday I attended a fascinating presentation by Theatre Development Fund and Theatre Bay Area on their new play study, Triple Play. Click here to watch the livestream of the discussion. The study centered on the motivations and reactions of single-ticket buyers with regard to their new play ticket purchases, and there was a lot […]
It Takes a Village
It takes a village. I recently rediscovered this phrase in an meeting discussing a project I am working on for the Spring that incorporates both Hearing and Deaf actors. My advisor told me that the one of the key pieces of Dramaturgy is when to relinquish your power. Yes, I had an idea. Yes, I […]
Who is This For?
When we approach a new project, one of the questions we need to be asking ourselves is who is this for? Who is the intended audience we want to hear, see, experience this story on stage? And in today’s world where the necessity of the art is being challenged, knowing who this is for and […]
Funding
Kristin Nordevel believes that the U.S. would benefit hugely from taking a European approach to arts funding. She talks about it in this article called “The Art of Listening is Political”. This reminded me of a small comment that our professor, Ilana Brownstein made in class. I believe we were talking about a struggle that a […]
Let’s Discuss “Women+ In Theatre”
In case you missed it, last week, five female identifying theatre artists created a closed Facebook group called Women in Theatre, now titled something different, but we’ll get to that. And yo, sh** got real, real quick. Before I dive any further, I feel its super important to note that I myself identify as a white […]
Workshop Ahead
Every playwright I know is excited by the idea of a workshop, and I’m no different. Getting a script off of the page and into actors’ mouths is crucial for a play’s development. I’m currently lucky enough to be anticipating a week-long workshop at the University of Tulsa as the 2017 winner of WomenWorks. As […]
Taylor Mac and the Whole World
In this article, the director of HowlRound interviews Taylor Mac, starting with judy’s current project: Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus (working title). The play is about “cycles of mess, cycles of revenge … from the perspective of people who are responsible for the cleanup, but who don’t get any of the benefits of the mess […]
Why heightened text is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea.
THE PLACE OF HEIGHTENED TEXT IN TODAY’S WORLD Heightened text is present in a lot of the world’s best-known stories, from the ancient Greeks to Shakespeare to…who was the guy who wrote something that was kind of like Shakespeare, but with more blood?* Source: Greenstage.org, Feb 2016 Heightened text is pretty omnipresent whenever we […]
Dramaturgy: Chicken Soup for the Soul
This afternoon, in our New Play Development class, we video chatted with dramaturg, theatre-maker, and all-around lady boss Catherine María Rodríguez. Hearing her speak passionately about how she defines dramaturgy, how her work intersects with activism, and her all-around joy to be doing what she does illuminated something within me. Ideas simmering below the surface began […]
Help Me Help You Help Me
I recently came across a HowlRound article that I can’t seem to get out of my head. It’s titled What are We Watching? What are We Teaching? Preparing Acting Students for the New Golden Age, and was written by actor-director-teacher Welker White. Here is one of my favorite passages: Right now, students at hundreds of MFA […]
It’s Happening Here: Berkeley Rep’s Production of IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE Still Relevant
I thought I’d check out what leading theatres in my home state of California have been up to, and I came across Berkeley Rep’s late 2016 project “It Can’t Happen Here,” a timely play co-adapted by Berkeley Rep’s Artistic Director Tony Taccone and Bennett S. Cohen. The piece is based on Sinclair Lewis’s novel “It […]
Color Conscious: 50 Shades of Yellow
It’s 2017 in America, and the cultural representation of Asian Americans is dominated by the white imagination. This isn’t news. It’s been actively fought for decades, and lately has entered the mainstream with more frequency thanks to the efforts of a horde of bloggers and Aziz Ansari. If you’re reading this blog, you probably have […]
Drama Lit Blog 2.0: BU School of Theatre 