Tag Archive | audience engagement
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 […]
Diana Oh’s {my lingerie play} Installation 9/10: THE CONCERT AND CALL TO ARMS!!!!!!!!!
Two weeks ago, I took off for a weekend workshop in NYC and seized the opportunity to see Diana Oh’s {my lingerie play} Installation 9/10: THE CONCERT CALL TO ARMS!!!!!!!!! at The Rattlestick in the West Village. I have been following Diana Oh’s work online for the past few years and was thrilled to be able […]
On Peeking at Audience Response Forms on the 9:15AM Bus Back to Boston
Just a peek. I’ll take what I can use and leave the rest. They’ll help me contextualize my own notes from the staged reading. I look at the drawings that I requested first: lots of double decker sets, scribbles of inner turmoil, a noose or two and stick figures galore. I take a breath, […]
TONYC and Audience Participation
This week with a few of my peers, I attended an Art and Social Change event. The event opened with 90 minutes of a Theatre of the Oppressed NYC Forum Play. According to the TONYC website, these Forum Plays are designed by TONYC’s troupes “all over New York City in collaboration with a range of local communities, including […]
Theatre and the End of the World
Of the numerous contemporary crises that affect our world today, climate change is amongst the most pressing issues facing the global community. We’re looking at fish-less oceans as early as 2048, atmospheric levels or carbon dioxide are at an all time high, and there is scientific consensus that the spike in planetary temperature is due to human […]
Is my meal a play?
My family is really into food. Like… really into food. Last night at the Hise-Hargis-Lindquist household my step-father served crab cakes with an arugula and white bean salad with blistered shishitos and a kimchi remoulade. Nothing particularly unusual when you’re sharing the table with a professional food blogger and a chef. Every night we eat […]
Interrogating Whiteness Part II
On February 9th, a panel comprised of Ralph Peña (Artistic Director of Ma-Yi Theatre), Summer L. Williams (Co-founder of Company One), Melinda Lopez (Playwright in Residence with Huntington Theatre Company), and Polly Carl (Co-Artistic Director of ArtsEmerson) with moderator Sylvia Spears, discussed the shifting climate towards equity of representation in the theatre on HowlRoundTV in […]
Responding to a wake up call
Arts Council England just released a statement on Monday Dec 8th about funding cuts for theatres that don’t show attempts to make their work more diverse. The week before also in Britain, Meera Syal a writer and actor interviewed with The Stage Magazine and talked about vast potential for diverse audiences, in particular Asian audiences, […]
Theatrical Experiences and Storytelling
HowlRound director, Polly Carl, came for a class workshop/discussion last week. One point that really stuck out to me was her broader outlook of theatre as storytelling; in this way, the confinements of what we think the allowed materials to make theatre performances are less ingrained. Going to see Sleep No More in New York […]
Guess Who Really Hates Theatre Audiences?
The theatre is a powerful place to change minds…to those who will listen. This past Saturday I went to see the Huntington Theatre Company’s production of “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?”, a well done production that I enjoyed. The production I enjoyed, the experience not so much. Being the end of a popular run, the […]
The Big Merge: Internet and Theatre
If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Some will reject it all together, some will half-ass-idly try to incorporate it, many will fail, but sometimes and someday we will find a way, the way to merge the internet, social media and our smartphones with the staged theatre. An article on HowlRound explored different possibilities and […]
Collective Efforts: Playwrights Unite
I dream to be a playwright one day… which is probably the most stressful dream I have ever had. While I hide in the safety of BU’s College of Fine Arts typing away I am continuously nagged at by one fact. Soon enough I will have to start submitting my works if I ever want […]
Target Demographic
How on earth is my demographic (18-34 year-old, male, (and, let’s be honest, straight and white), or possibly 18-49, etc.) still the most coveted in terms of sales, advertising, and apparently Broadway? I really want to know, because I find it a bit baffling. It can’t be because there are more of us. Data indicates […]
The Modern-Day Campfire
So a brief discussion in class on the #newplay Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play got me thinking and wondering about the origins and the future of storytelling. It all began around a fire, thousands and thousands of years ago. Someone once told me (I believe it was one of my classmates, I apologize for not […]
My Attempt to Fill the Gap
I wrote a blog post at the beginning of the semester about not being apprehensive of creating theatre for a teenage audience. I stand by my ideas and finding myself returning to these thoughts and being able to articulate why I find it so important to make theatre available for emerging adults and artists. Last […]
The Easy Choice
Previously on this blog I have advocated for the consideration of stage managers as theatre artists, citing our creative sensibilities in communicating notes from the rehearsal room, and the influence we can have on the execution of the design elements in a production. I truly believe this, and recognize in myself my own capacity for […]
New York, I Love You, But You’re Bringing Me Down
It’s been said time and time again, over and over, like a broken record. New York is over. New York is dead—you know, because Hip Hop is dead and Punk is dead and Times Square has been fully Disney-fied since a thorough clean-up effort began in 1980. New York is no longer the cultural capital […]
Internet vs Reality
I recently deleted my Facebook account. Well, “deactivated” it. In other words, I can still gain access to it if I so choose. I made this decision in an attempt to begin living a more authentic life. To me, that means interacting with the world in a genuine, and real way. I don’t hate the […]
Changing the “dramaturgy of the land”
“When you’re marching down the levee, something amazing happens: the dramaturgy of the land changes” – Nick Slie (Mondo Bizarro, New Orleans, LA) While the human race is capable of such magnificent acts of creation, we are equally as capable of devastating destruction. In making life more convenient for ourselves, we have begun to systematically […]
They need it more than we do.
Hey fellow theatre students: Why do we spend so much time and effort into making theatre that nobody will see? At least, nobody other than our classmates, fellow artists, who always see it… How do we engage with new audiences? Ones whose first impulse would not be to spend their Friday night going to the […]
Drama Lit Blog 2.0: BU School of Theatre 