Intricacies and Intent Surrounding Race and Ethnicity in Casting
Subsequent to Arts Integrity exploring the Porchlight Music Theatre’s casting of their forthcoming production of In The Heights, as well as Hedy Weiss’s article for the Chicago Sun-Times (detailed in...
View ArticleQuiara Alegría Hudes (and Lin-Manuel Miranda) on Casting “In The Heights”
The casting of the upcoming production of In The Heights at Porchlight Music Theatre in Chicago, in particular the hiring of a non-Latinx actor for the leading role of Usnavi, has provoked a great deal...
View ArticleAre Subsidiary Rights Right for FringeNYC Authors?
Now in its 20th year, the New York International Fringe Festival, better known as FringeNYC, has presented nearly 4,000 productions for five-performance runs each summer, sustaining a beehive of...
View Article“Offend and Apologize” Doesn’t Benefit The Arts
In recent years, it’s been suggested that some companies and organizations have intentionally caused upset through a statement or product, only to quickly recant, for the express purpose of getting two...
View ArticleHow “N*W*C” Became Drama Non Grata On A California State Campus
To start at the end, or at least where we are today: Michele Roberge, executive director of the Carpenter Performing Arts Center on the campus of California State University, has resigned, effective...
View ArticleIn Brief: Race, Casting and “The Wild Party” at Yale
As theatre buffs know, there are two major musicals drawn from Joseph Moncure March’s The Wild Party, which debuted in New York within months of one another: the Michael John LaChiusa-George C. Wolfe...
View ArticleWhen A Tree Falls in Athens and Rises in Camelot, Whose Design Is It Anyway?
There’s a very large tree that has been traveling around the Dallas-Fort Worth region in Texas. There’s no need to worry, as the tree hasn’t acquired independent mobility and become sentient, but...
View ArticleConflict and Conflict of Interest Over “The Great Comet”
In reporting on the dispute between Ars Nova and Howard Kagan, a lead producer of Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, both The New York Times and the New York Post have seemingly reduced the...
View ArticleIn Oregon, Theatre and Bookstore Clash Over Free Speech & Racial Awareness
To be clear from the very start, two points. Judi Honoré, the owner of Shakespeare Books & Antiques in Ashland, Oregon, has every right to display anything she chooses in the window of, or for that...
View ArticleA Short Play By Warren Leight: “Union Square Incident”
Union Square Incident premiered on November 14, 2016 as part of The 24 Hour Plays on Broadway (Mark Armstrong, Executive Director; Tina Fallon, Founding Producer) at the American Airlines Theatre. It...
View ArticleSeeking Equity In Theatre, Fighting Wrong With Wrong Won’t Go Right
Anyone claiming that there is equity or equality – by gender, by race and ethnicity, by disability – in the American theatre would have to be willfully ignoring the evidence. The Dramatists Guild’s The...
View ArticleCherry-Picking the Words of “Ragtime” in Cherry Hill
There is no question that there are racially charged words in the musical Ragtime, just as there were in the novel upon which it is based. In telling the story of black characters, of Jewish...
View ArticleWith Curricular Context Added, “Ragtime” to Play On in Cherry Hill
On January 20, the Cherry Hill Public School system in New Jersey announced their intent to censor racially charged language for their upcoming drama group’s production of the musical Ragtime at Cherry...
View ArticleKate Fodor’s “Rubber Knife,” from Primary Stages’“Morning in America”
Beginning one week after the November presidential election, New York’s Primary Stages commissioned a collection of over 70 pieces written by a diverse array of playwrights from their artistic...
View ArticleAt University of Washington, Anonymous Hate Messages Extend To Campus Theatre
This is a revised and updated version of a prior post from earlier today, which has been withdrawn, because it suggested, based upon news accounts, that the UW theatre department had been singularly...
View ArticleWinston Churchill’s Famous Arts Quote Is, Alas, Bogus
Even if you’ve never read the quote, you’ve no doubt seen the meme, in all of its arts-affirming, damn the torpedoes glory. Just one small detail: it isn’t true. I am referring to the story that goes...
View ArticleTwo High School Shows That Couldn’t Be Saved
When incidences of high school theatre censorship arise, the point at which they occur, and when that breaks out beyond school walls, can be central to efforts to reverse the decision. At other times,...
View ArticleDisrobing “The Foreigner” at a Minnesota High School
Context is everything. If you ask the average parent whether, in the abstract, they want to hear a student, any student, saying the n-word from the stage of their local high school auditorium, the...
View ArticleAt Princeton, A New Layer for “Hairspray”
Despite its origin in a 1988 film from John Waters, the underground master of camp, shock and transgression, the story of Tracy Turnblad, as told in multiple iterations, has become wholly mainstream....
View ArticleIn Minnesota, Change Play’s Title Or Lose A Production?
If you happen to have been giving any thought to producing Langston Hughes’s 1935 play Mulatto at the Ames Center in Burnsville MN, save yourself some time and either move on to another play or another...
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