Tag Archive | New Plays
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 […]
Casting and Fear
As a playwright, I have to make it my goal to know the scope and mission of various theatre companies. Trying to find the right companies for my work–and tailoring submissions appropriately so that their relevance to the company is obvious–involves serious study of theatre companies’ websites, and sometimes (with a little bit of good […]
Home Sweet Home
Last week, a fellow collaborator of mine gifted my hubs and I tickets to see HOME by Geoff Sobelle at ArtsEmerson’s Paramount Center’s Robert J. Orchard Stage. The production begins with a single ghost light on a mostly bare stage, upon which Sobelle and a group of actors acsend upon to build a home. The home […]
American Theatre’s Most Produced of 2017-2018
Last week, American Theatre magazine released its list of the most produced playwrights this season. Even if you’re not really into commercial theatre, the lists may still prove themselves relevant to understand the theatre of the now… the produced theatre of the now. It’s also important to note that plays by Shakespeare are discounted from […]
The Potential of the Staged Reading: Are we Fulfilling it?
What does a play need from a staged reading? A response that might immediately come to mind is something along the lines of ‘to hear the play out loud’ ‘so I can hear the words come out of actors mouths” So I can get a fresh set of eyes and ears on the play’. These are […]
Hard Work and a Touch of Luck
Ayad Akhtar is a Pulitzer Prize winner with a play on Broadway. He has been called the “voice of the American Muslim in theater” by the Wall Street Journal. He has gone from having his play put on in front of an audience of 130 people to a house of 900 over the period of […]
Becoming Cuba Response
Let me start by saying, I really wanted to like this play. I know Melinda Lopez, I like her writing, and I like her as an artist and a human being. Melinda even gave my wife a children’s book when my daughter was born, and it is one of her favorites. I also find fictionalized […]
50 Years of bringing new work to life
Thank goodness for TCG and their journal, American Theatre. I began my subscription to American Theatre because I realized that I was very focused on what was happening in the Boston Theatre scene, but was not aware of what was happening in my art form in the rest of the country. This was a problem. […]
A Response to Over There by Mark Ravenhill
I recently came across a Facebook story that documents how a young woman, Anais, who was adopted from South Korea and grew up in France, ended up finding and reaching out to her twin sister, Samantha, from whom she was separated at birth. A friend alerted Anais to a movie trailer which featured a young […]
Being the Playwright in the Room
I’ve been wanting to post for a little while now about the experience of writing and producing a new play for my senior thesis. It’s probably one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do. I wrote the first draft of the play in the first semester of my junior year, took a […]
A Response to the XX PlayLab at Company One
I had the pleasure of attending one of the events in Company One’s XX PlayLab series last week. For those of you who are unfamiliar, Company One describes the XX PlayLab as “a collaborative program of the Boston Center for the Arts and Company One Theatre, designed to propel the work of female playwrights from […]
A Response to Fresh Ink’s Production of Handicapping
I walked into Fresh Ink Theatre Company’s production of Handicapping by James McLindon with an entirely different idea of what it would be than what it was. Since it was called “Handicapping” and I knew it featured a disabled character, I assumed it would be a drama about the experience of being disabled. Before the play […]
Where Is Our Theatre Going?
For our first Contemporary Drama class, we were assigned to read the Kentucky Cycle by Robert Schenkkan – an epic, seven-hour play with many parts. I felt drawn into the piece and would love to go and see it performed one day, but couldn’t help but think while I was reading it, “Man, I’m glad […]
Out with the old and in with the new… plays, that is
New plays. Everyone seems to have their opinion on new plays. For some reason, I find that the largest issue at hand is this idea that new plays and the classics cannot live together in one world. Granted this is not the view of most theatre artists or their audiences, but I find that most […]
Phil Berman on Three Blessed Brothers
Great theatre inspires great conversation. In my previous blog post, I wrote a response to Phil Berman’s new play Three Blessed Brothers. I sent the review to Phil, and opened up a conversation with the playwright about his work, his process, and what it means for him to be telling this story. Here’s what he […]
Phil Berman’s Three Blessed Brother’s Offers Rich Ground for Storytelling
Thunderbirds, trickster gods, firestones, puppetry and banjo make for a rollicking night of hootin’ and a hollerin’ in Phil Berman’s new play Three Blessed Brothers. Hewn from the great fables of the Lakota tribe, these are joyous stories for all ages . Aesthetically the show is satisfying and delightful. The strong designs of the Lakota […]
Drama Lit Blog 2.0: BU School of Theatre 