Something Unpredictable With “American Idiot” In High School Theatre
“Welcome to a new kind of tension. All across the alienation. Where everything isn’t meant to be okay.” The details are very sketchy. The drama director hasn’t yet responded to a call or e-mail. The...
View ArticleTestifying For And Against “Testament of Mary” Near Boston
It’s a reflex action for those in the arts to recoil and get angry when creative work is described as “intolerable blasphemies.” But it’s probably worth giving a small shout out to the America Needs...
View ArticlePeeking Inside The Wooster Group’s Off-Limits “Room”
Let’s start with the basics: no one can possibly prevent critics from reviewing shows if they want to do. Whether it’s requested or even imposed by theatre company, a venue, a rights holder, or an...
View ArticleIs a Play Of Plays Making Fair Use Of Other Playwrights’ Words?
There’s nothing quite like getting a cease and desist letter. It may be commonplace if you’re an attorney and you’re receiving a cease and desist claim on behalf of clients, but for artists and arts...
View ArticleSilencing Theatrical Debate Over Israelis & Palestinians In North Miami
If you’re not familiar with Julia Pascal’s 2003 play Crossing Jerusalem, that’s because the play has only had two productions in the U.S. Or perhaps it is more correct to say that it has had one and a...
View ArticleQuestionable Effort To Roll Back Time On “Vagina Monologues” in Florida
Hearing the word ‘vagina’ aloud before 1996, outside of a medical setting, was a bit startling. Encountering it in an article was likely to cause many readers more than a bit of surprise. Seeing it in...
View ArticleDancing Towards Censorship in OSU’s Theatre
When a student-devised piece of theatre begins as The Politics of Dancing, an examination of relationships springing from Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, and is ultimately produced as This Title Has Been...
View ArticleWhy A White Christmas (Eve) Is Nothing To Celebrate On “Avenue Q”
“In America, where we have diverse populations, even if you’re in a community theatre, I think it’s better to not do the show rather than do it in yellowface or blackface.” “The show” in question is...
View ArticleAre Any Voices Being Silenced in the Chat Room Wars of 2016?
The recent flurry of conversations surrounding theatre chat rooms, prompted in large part by a blog post from Patti Murin in the wake of the premature shutdown of the musical Nerds, have been fierce....
View ArticleSpringtime For Swastikas In High School Musicals?
Let’s get the story straight. When Tappan Zee High School’s production of Mel Brooks’s The Producers was performed this weekend, there were swastikas on stage. This shouldn’t be any surprise to those...
View ArticleIn Florida, A Voice For Censorship Holds Undeserved Prominence
When we last looked in on Ocala, Florida on March 2, the City Council had declined to take any action on the claim by local businessman Brad Dinkins that upcoming performances in city owned sites...
View ArticleNon-Equity Summer Stock Shouldn’t Foster Poor Employment Practices
“We really pride ourselves on putting so much out for actors,” said the artistic director, who founded and has run the small non-Equity theatre company for more than a decade. “I’ve had my own...
View ArticleControversy Over Equity, Diversity & Inclusion in Arts Education at an NEA...
The statements, on their face, are utterly startling. “Blacks and Latinos lack the keyboard skills needed for this field.” “I don’t have to take this. Yes, my board is all white, and they are one of...
View ArticleLondon’s Sunday Times Manipulates RSC Leader’s Comments On Diversity
The headline in London Sunday Times was certain to make anyone who advocates for diversity in the arts sit up, take notice and get quite upset. It read, “Lack of diversity not a problem, says RSC...
View ArticleIn Wake of Profiles Theatre Expose, A Few Points To Know
The bombshell article in the Chicago Reader by Aimee Levitt and Christopher Piatt, about serially abusive practices at Chicago’s Profiles Theatre, rightly zoomed around the theatre world from the...
View ArticleCanadian High School Tries Too Hard To Get Rights To “Hamilton”
On the one hand, it’s hard not to admire the efforts of Wexford Collegiate School for the Arts in Scarborough, Canada, near Toronto. A teacher and her students made as thorough a pitch as possible to...
View ArticleFollowing Up On The Canadian High School “Hamilton” Videos
As a result of their quixotic effort to secure the first high school performance rights to Hamilton, Wexford Collegiate School of the Arts’s Hamilton videos drew a great deal attention earlier this...
View ArticleAtlanta Lyric Commits To Ethnic Authenticity In Wake of ‘West Side Story’
Several sentences in the letter posted to the Facebook page of the Atlanta Lyric Theatre could easily serve as a model for statements by theatres nationally. They read: Moving forward, it is the policy...
View ArticleIn A Maryland County, Taxing Student Actors In Pay To Play Plan
In an era of constrained school budgets, it is not all that unusual – albeit quite problematic in terms of diversity and equity – to find schools charging students and their parents “activity fees” to...
View ArticleRace, Spoken And Unspoken, In A Chicago Cast Announcement
Late last month, a headline writer for McClatchy DC was not alone in getting caught in a linguistic, oxymoronic knot when they announced, “Minority babies outnumber whites among US infants.” While the...
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