Tag Archive | HowlRound
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 […]
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 […]
Why We Have Yet to Pop Our CFA Bubble
I’m sure it will come as no surprise to any other CFA student reading this post that we as artists and members of the BU community are extremely insular. Throughout my four years here, this conversation has been brought up in a multitude of ways, by many if not most of us. Who comes to see our […]
Theatre Criticism Part 1: What’s a Critic?
In the summer of 2014, I must have read upwards of 200 reviews. Maybe more. I was interning in the Marketing department of a major non-profit theatre in the DC area and I was tasked with finding, reading, highlighting, printing, and delivering each review of each show we did that summer to the desks of all major staff […]
Empathy… even for conservatives.
Recently I came across this article on American Theatre Magazine’s website that touches upon the responsibility of artists, particularly in this time of political turmoil. It is an issue that has been plaguing me for weeks. In the university I attend I am surrounded by extremely liberal artists, and the more I look into this, the more […]
The Right to a Story
Two summers ago, one of my closest friends came out as transmale. Now for our conservative, right-wing, heavily Christian community, this was quite the upset. The summer became a battle. Everyone had a opinion. There was a split between those who supported him through this transition, and those who did not. Parents were the loudest […]
Science and the Arts: A Love Story
Where is the intersection of science and the arts? I believe if you asked me this question when I was in 5th grade I would have said “none”. I would have said that you are either a math/science person or an arts/humanity and I am the latter so please leave me alone. (5th grade was […]
A Well-Made Play for Today
Sam Weisberg and Rob Onorato recently published a review on HowlRound entitled “Bored with the Well-Made Play: Jordan Tannahill’s Theatre of the Unimpressed,” in which they advocate for the importance of Jordan Tannahill’s demands for an updated theatrical form. Weisberg and Onorato highlight some of Tannahill’s most concentrated and poignant claims: 1. “Film has once and […]
Writing About Reading About Writing
This week I have read a slew of articles on Howlround about being a playwright. To spare long winded analysis I will now provide a long winded linkfest Dramatis Personae, or One White Playwright’s Appeal For Confronting Privilege Onstage by MJ Halberstadt. Too Young to Take Over, Too Old to Ignore by Alexa Derman “Theatre Is […]
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 […]
Keyword: Collaboration
I’m currently in the throes of devising a new play. It’s really hard. I’m doing this with three other classmates of mine at Boston University, all just a few weeks away from receiving our long awaited BFA’s. With three weeks left until we open, we’ve established and (finally) finalized a concept, a basic structure of […]
In Response to Emma Weisberg
I was perusing Howlround.com earlier today and came across Emma Weisberg’s piece “The Language of ‘Gender Parity’: 19 Women Playwrights and Their Voices.” Something that comes up in the piece is the idea of “women playwrights” and the narratives they tell. Weisberg spent some time interviewing women playwrights and their perspectives on the gender parity […]
Stories Worth Telling
I recently read a blog post by my classmate, Ally, in response to Scott Slavin’s post about solo performance on HowlRound. In Ally’s post, she concludes that the main purpose of solo performance is telling a story worth knowing. I agree, and further ask, what constitutes a story worth knowing? Both Scott and Ally remark […]
Survival and Money
I was recently watching a conversation between Anne Bogart and Leon Ingulsrud of the SITI Company, and Stacy Klein, Carlos Uriona, and Matthew Glassman of Double Edge Theatre on the HowlRound TV archives. Towards the end of the conversation, an audience member asked a question about how to excite and engage others to create a […]
Transgender Series
This week on Howlround there is going to be a transgender series which will include discussion and pieces from multiple trans artists. This was kicked off by an article by MJ Kaufman, a trans-identified genderqueer playwright who was brought on as a playwriting fellow at the Huntington Theatre in 2010. His article points out the difficulties […]
In Residence: A Dream to Strive For
Today I was reading Howlround’s Article about Robert O’Hara, playwright in residence at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington DC. While discussing the pros and cons of his new job… well it honestly sounded primarily like pros. He gets to continue working on his writing, with salary, and at the same time be part of a wonderful […]
The “Other-ed” Theatre
After reading Victor Maog’s post on HowlRound elaborating on his own Asian American experiences and the “2014 National Asian American Theater Conference and Festival”, I couldn’t help but think about my own experience with Latino theater and our movements to organize together. Specifically I was comparing what I’ve seen and witness so far in the […]
An Intimate Theatre: How Do We Find It?
The amount of times I have heard a production is “intimate” is now innumerable. I feel like whatever show I go to see I am prepared to see an intimate display, whether that be between and actor and an audience, two actors, or an actor and themselves. This may be because in a college setting […]
Drama Lit Blog 2.0: BU School of Theatre 