Artsjournal has linked to a great article at Bloomberg about the Roundabout's continuing expansion and the ire it draws from some folks in the Broadway producing industry. Though not long on analysis or commentary, it does have some choice facts and quotations that describe the strange life of a gargantuan non-profit operating on Broadway.

Producers such as Rocco Landesman, who owns Jujamcyn Theaters' five Broadway houses, has accused Haimes of running a wolfish commercial operation in the sheepskin of a publicly funded institution.

Marisa Wegrzyn has a show in NYC that was strongly recommended to me. This Itamar Moses show in Philly was also strongly recommended to me. As was this Raymond Carver show in Seattle. Rocco of WG/WB liveblogged the "Blogging the Show" panel. Here's the best improvisational theatre troupe in Malaysia. "Washington Ensemble Theatre Presents a Greek Fragment From the Female Perspective". Here's how to get your musical produced. The chemist responsible for the birth-control pill has written a play.

You may recall that Sean Lewis recently exhorted us all to read more plays in translation. "But," you may have asked, "where can get all these damned plays?" Indeed, I asked the same question, and with some help from Sean and Google, I've done the legwork and tracked them all down for you. So, get reading.

Firstly, though, let me point out that these are all links to buy the plays. You'll probably have an easier time of it finding them at your local university library. They're great for that kind of thing.

List and links if you click-through.

It's be cool if a good theatre tried something like this. The League of Independent Theater has laid out an impassioned agenda. Check out some small theaters in DC. The Eaten Heart is flawless. Off-Off-Blogway has photos from the new Wooster Group show. Joshua James has a horror story that'll make you go "AAAARRRGGGHHH!!!" A $300,000 reason Broadway theatre is broken. Another reason institutional theatre is broken.

And ... the blogosphere has recently said goodbye to two prominent writers: Matt Johnson of Theatre Conversation and Political Frustration and Washington DC's TheaterBoy. They will be sorely missed.

There are so many goodies on the theatre/bitcho-net/sphere already this week. Alas, I'm opening a show, so I doubt I'll get as involved as I would like.

At any rate, here's something fun.

Matthew Freeman of On Theatre and Politics has a post up that asks us to consider the syntax we use to describe our work.

As one of the mediums that embraces word play, we can do far more to create new genres or more accurately explain the many types of theater that are present in today's world.

We can stop describing theater by region or size of house or general outcome ... and describe the actual feel. Think about words like Crunk, or Funk, or Smooth Jazz. They are Onomatopoeia. They make us immediately imagine what it is that we are going to hear.

I dare you to read Scott Walter's post on his Theatre Ideas blog without taking sides.

No, seriously, I dare you. He's talking about an increasingly important issue that will have a great impact on the future of the theatre.

As long as the so-called regional theatres insist on casting out of New York, and bringing actors, directors, and designers in from NYC for one-shot, drive-by performances, instead of developing and maintaining their own company of artists who live in the community where they perform; as long as regional theatres continue to use their home base as tryouts for productions that are then transferred to NYC, and then use those productions as a way of "proving" their value to local funders; in short, as long as the theatre outside of NYC is created by NYC-oriented theatre artists, the theatre will be centralized.

My own viewpoint is that NYC is not to blame for these problems. As Cote points out, there are reasons that the industry is focused on NYC. I blame the regionals, big and small, who continually fail to promote the validity of art created locally. And clearly, there aren't nearly as many good playwrights in Columbus, Minneapolis, or whatever mid-size metro ("Rural enclave", David? Chicago? What? I assume you meant that colloquially.) you're talking about as there are in the Apple, but could we at least hire more local actors?

The Movement Research Spring Festival is under way! The Jocker: good play, bad title. DC's Rorschach Theatre opens Birds by Jennifer Maisel in June. LA's Edgefest is June 30. Alan Ayckbourn's complete epic plays in America for the first time. Ten Thousand Things, an amazing troupe in the Twin Cities, will be performing Little Shop of Horrors for prison inmates, the homeless, and the disabled. I have no idea who "paul_monster" is, but he has some thoughts on Dramaturgy in Portland. In Nigeria, stand-up comedy may replace theatre.

Thanks to Kyle at Frank's Wild Lunch, I've been up late (Happy Memorial Day!) thinking about Steven Leigh Morris's great article for LA Weekly, American Theater's Failure of Nerve. Kyle says it touches "on everything from the safe choices of the Pulitzer drama committee to 'development hell' to a suggestion that regional theater is turning into a miniature Hollywood studio mediocrity mill. "

Kyle has highlighted a few of his own favorite moments, and they are tasty. So here's mine.

I can’t imagine an unorthodox, once-befuddling little play like Waiting for Godot — with its capacities both to turn the theater on its head and to confound half the audience — standing a chance at a festival like this. Here, the playwrights are in consultation with too many intermediaries, even at the formative stages of their plays, just like in the movies. With no marketing strategy in place, Waiting for Godot was eventually produced in every corner of the globe, on the strength of its conviction and literary merit, stemming from the uncompromising vision of an author who wrote in a kind of solitary confinement. Samuel Beckett certainly didn’t collaborate with directors, dramaturges or anybody else while he was in the formative process of writing, yet this is now the protocol in American new-play development.

The current problems with play development have been discussed at length lately and Mr. Morris's writing is certainly worth tossing on top of the pile.

San Jose Stage and the Magic Theatre announce their seasons. One of the greatest Czechs of all-time is an incredibly popular creation of the theatre. Meet Working Man's Clothes and Maggie Hamilton. Colin Graham worked for almost 40 years, to turn "Anna Karenina" into an opera libretto and was still working on the staging shortly before he died at age 75. The show opens in St. Louis June 3. The 10th Annual Perry-Mansfield New Works Festival collaborates with Actors Theatre of Louisville, Denver Center Theatre Company, Off-Broadway's Primary Stages. Keswick's Theatre By The Lake, England's only theatre in a village, is a one-of-a-kind success. Steve on Broadway hits the Carol Shields Festival of New Works.

I'd like to enter the following documents into the records of our ongoing discussion about revising our non-commercial theatre entities.

Jaan Whitehead
To Have and Have Not
and Art Will Out

Writing Life x3
My Fantasy World: A Living Wage Theatre

Parabasis
Some Interesting Reading to Chew Over
and Some Thoughts From the Lab
and Dana Gioia Earns His Salary

The Playgoer
NEA's Gioia: How's he Doin?
and Speaking Congress' Language

Theatre is Territory
10 Questions: Scott Walters

I'm working on a longer post and I'm trying to incorporate this stuff, especially Jaan Whitehead's pieces. They're old, but they still have a lot of fire and wisdom.

Admittedly, this has very little to do with theatre, per se. But I rather enjoyed this review of David Mamet's newest book, Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business. I stumbled upon it in an unexpected place, and wanted to cross reference it here.

The Hollywood System exists today for the purpose of continuing the Hollywood System. Those in power want to keep that power so they maintain that system, even though it won't help movies or the industry, in the long run. Those trying to work their way up are willing to be exploited and paid a trifle for the chance of breaking in. This way, they can rise up and exploit the next generation.

Debbie Minter Jackson recorded a really fantastic interview with Karen Kandel from Mabou Mines' Peter & Wendy. The Debate Society's new show, The Eaten Heart opens this weekend at Ontological. Utah Shakes presents 3 new plays this August. Farmers' Theatre - Brilliant or silly? You decide. Is Chicago without a theatre bookstore? Joseph Stein writes that he originally thought that Fiddler had little chance of success. Houston's Frenticore adapts an under-appreciated David Bowie album.

The Living Theatre, who have returned to New York in a big way, have been all over the theatrenet lately.

In the NY TImes:

For two decades they performed avant-garde and activist classics and naturalistic quasi-happenings. Audience interaction was the point, and confrontations, nudity, onstage and offstage sex and frequent police intervention were as much the marks of a good show as an ovation.

The Brig is a play of consequence, both aesthetically and politically. Its 1963 production by the LT not only set off reverberations that rippled through the whole Off-Off movement, it led to questions in Congress, the theater's seizure by the IRS, jail terms for its founders, and the company's departure to Europe for a five-year exile.

Americans for the Arts (“the nation's leading nonprofit organization for advancing the arts in America” for 45 years) released its 2007 study, Arts & Economic Prosperity III: The Economic Impact of Nonprofit Arts and Culture Organizations and Their Audiences. Personally, I think it’s a slippery slope trying to justify the validity/importance of art in capitalist terms, but I may be a little leftist for you. And, speaking more realistically, since arts programs and funding are being slashed across the country in schools and communities at large, any weapon in the artistic arsenal is helpful, yes? So I’ll quit quibbling.

Andy, James, Patrick, and Adam point us to the petition to revise the Actors' Equity Association's Showcase Code. Boston's Elliot Norton Awards recognized great work by large, midsize, and small companies. As usual, Storefront Rebellion links to the latest theatre news in Chicago. Rocco at WG/WB ponders the ethics of the Equity Shoe Fund. Gary Garrison has some big plans for the Dramatists Guild. The Wicked Stage points us to The Straight Guy's Guide to Musicals. The Umbrella Theatre project kicks-off in Maine. What was it like to go to the Obies? (Click 7 times and you'll know.)

Village Voice Obies. Jason Robert Brown accompanies his own show at the Signature Theatre. Swings/understudies win in a dispute with Equity in London. Lighting designers are human beings, too, claims Vadim Ledvin. "Dancing Henry Five is just eight people, a minimal set and an hour of dance in place of Shakespeare's four hours of dialogue." Pamela Z creates an "electroacoustic meditation on the human voice." The great Mark Bruce re-emerges with Sea of Bones. Cincinnati's Acclaim Awards.

In Seth Godin's new book The Dip he describes eight types of dip curves. I believe our non-profit theatre model (or the ages-long project of perfecting it) is stuck in type #6 - a Conceptual Dip.

You got this far operating under one set of assumptions. Abandoning those assumptions and embracing a new, bigger set may be exactly what you need to do to get to the next level. The heroes who have reinvented institutions and industries (everyone from Martin Luther King, Jr., to Richard Branson, from Zelma Watson George, to Jacqueline Novogratz) all did it in exactly the same way - by working through a conceptual dip all the way to the other side.

All 9 provinces of South Africa are respresented at the 2007 National Arts Festival Fringe. St. Louis's New Line is the bad boy of musical theatre. PTC has once again extended Les Miz in Utah. What did Atlanta's Alliance Theatre do to win a Tony? Get a tiny taste of "the difference between sound as an art form, and the technology and engineering required to pull it off". Witness Against Torture staged a bit of street theatre in Times Sqaure (pictures here). London Theatre Blog returns with a nice post about "one of the oldest performance traditions in the world". Drama Desk awards.

I found this recent post particularly interesting, from Light Que 23. With all due respect to Mr. Gore, can we really save the world one environmentally-friendly light bulb at a time?

What has also not been said is that people hate fluorescent lighting, that LEDs represent an immature technology which may never yield great energy savings, or become a general illumination light source, and that no one will be using metal halide in their boudoir. Attacking the incandescent light bulb is easy, but misguided, as it is an inextricable part of modern living.

Want more? Go here.

So I'm catching up on some non-required reading this weekend, taking a break from the grad school grind, when I came across this old post on ArtsJournal. A week-old story on the internet is downright ancient, and I almost chose not to blog about this. But I get off on this kinda stuff, when the arts and urban development mash together in a gory spectacle of bombastic ideas and lukewarm execution.

Such is the case in Minneapolis, where the brand-spankin' new Guthrie Theater is not quite turning out to be the hub of activity everyone thought it was going to be in the revitalized Mill District. Not that this is the Guthrie's fault. Rather, Star-Tribune columnist Linda Mack places the blame on bureaucratic conflict between the Public Works Dept and the Planning Dept, resulting in a conspicuous lack of trees, inadequate pedestrian street lighting, inconsistent building setbacks, and other little things that are supposed to tie a neighborhood together. This is probably a fair assessment, as building a swanky theatre can only do so much to turn a neighborhood around.

Here's something you may have missed, from NYtheatre Mike.

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending an advance screening of Dori Bernstein’s new documentary, ShowBusiness: The Road to Broadway, and enjoyed it a lot. Bernstein takes an inside look at the making of four different Broadway musicals from the 2003-2004 season - Avenue Q, Caroline or Change, Taboo, and Wicked - and follows their paths from rehearsals to opening night to the Tony Awards.

More from Mike and the ShowBusiness trailer if you click through.

Anna Deavere Smith has a new solo show. Everyone should take a look at NY Theatre Workshop's next season. Moving Dock Theatre will be teaching the Michael Chekhov Acting Technique in Chicago August 25 & 26. SITI's Radio Macbeth plays at the 12th International Festival of Arts and Ideas, June 20-23 at the Yale Repertory Theatre. Southern Rep presents Relativity in co-operation with EST. Obscene Jester reviews the Living Theatre's new production on The Brig. May 19 was Lorraine Hasberry's birthday, to celebrate, read James Baldwin's words about going to see Raisin in the Sun. Steve on Broadway lists five great musical revivals of the past year - they're probably not what you expect. Cheek by Jowl does a somewhat radical Three Sisters. Side Show scores in Grand Rapids.

To get the ball rolling on his challenge below, Sean has put fingertips to keyboard and provided a list of ten international plays that we should all read right now

Presnykov Brothers - Terrorism
Charles Mulekwa - A Time of Fire
Wole Soyinka - Madmen and Specialists
Bernard Marie Koltes - Return to the Desert
Djanet Sears - The Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of God
Colleen Wagner - The Monument
Marius Von Mayenburg - Fireface
Amelie Nothomb - Human Rites
Jon Fosse - Sleep My Baby Sleep
Reza Abdoh - The Law of Remains

Happy End, the classic Brecht/Weill musical comedy, runs this weekend at Theater 1010 @ 1010 Park Ave. I had no idea there was a Caribbean American Repertory Theatre. Playback NYC presents "a workshop through the lens of our unique blend of Playback, Hip-hop, Music and Dance", May 19th 6pm, at the Henry St. Settlement Abrons Center, 466 Grand St. Room G-05. Ewan McGregor will play Iago at Donmar Warehouse. In Frida Kahlo's 100th birthday year, a new play about the artist opens in Albquerque. Scottish critics are more "12 Monkeys rather than 12 Angry Men".

Today we bring you something very special - a guest post from playwright, performer, and blogger Sean Christopher Lewis of the Working Group. He's writing mainly in response to the reading list post. Let's give him our undivided attention, please.

So, it's taken some time and an invite from Matt to get me up and typing. I'm looking over the reading list that was recommended to the mighty Slaybaugh who runs this site and it bothers me. It definitely bothers me.

This is not about Sarah Kane. The drumming up of Sarah Kane I think is easily summed up by most of our personal introductions to her writing (I like someone else has mentioned, read her in college). This blew my mind. Before Blasted my acting classes were comprised of Crimes of the Heart and Key Exchange so a play about a baby being eaten amidst genocidal rapists in a war torn city was, at the very least, exciting.

Vampire Cowboys brings back Living Dead in Denmark in June. Robert Patrick has created an online archive dedicated to the legendary Caffe Cino. The First National Asian American Theatre Festival kicks-off June 11, listen to the relevant podcast here. Zakiyyah Alexander, Annie Baker, Christopher Chen, Samuel D. Hunter, Julie Hebert, and Kevin Oakes will all be part of the 2007 Bay Area Playwright Festival. The Receipt at 59E59 is an international hit. Just Add Water/West is a playwrights fetival running July 13-22 in Portland. Four worthy shows get extensions in Chicago.

Isaac at Parabasis titled a recent post "Some Thoughts From the Lab." That's how I feel about these project posts, like I've got a machine in the basement, and every few days I shut-out the world while I go down there and hack away at it, knowing it's probably not going to work for a long time, if ever, but the effort is satisfying, and if it ever does work, I'll be a proud man.

There have been one, two, three posts already in this "series".

I was about to get the point of Gifts of the Muse when we left off. Having re-evaluated Art's actual, practical, and abstract value to the world, and closely examined how one develops a healthy art-going habit, Gifts moves on to make some concrete recommendations. And they don't beat around the bush.

The study's key implication is that policy should be geared towards spreading the benefits of the art by introducing greater numbers of Americans to engaging arts experiences. This focus requires that attention and resources be shifted away from supply side of the arts and toward cultivation of demand.

The NY Times had a fairly comprehensive article the other day about summertime offerings from 30 theatres and festivals from all over the country (plus the 2 big fests in Canada).

Here are some highlights:

LA JOLLA PLAYHOUSE - “After the Quake” (July 24-Aug. 26), an adaptation by the director Frank Galati of two short stories by the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, written after a 1995 earthquake

MARK TAPER FORUM - David Henry Hwang’s “Yellow Face” (through July 1), his first new full-length play in more than a decade. This drama revolves around an artist with a familiar name — David Henry Hwang — who mistakenly casts a white actor in the role of an Asian.

WESTPORT COUNTRY PLAYHOUSE - In “Being Alive!”, Stephen Sondheim’s songs are mixed with Shakespeare’s poetry and then performed as jazz, soul, R&B and other African-American musical idioms. That’s right: hip-hop Sondheim.

Anne Bogart's new book, And then, you act: Making Art in an Unpredictable World, is now available new and used on Amazon (they claim mine will arrive today). Chicago's Uma will soon be no more. Howard Barker brings us The 40 this fall. (Hat-tip - Hunka.) Peter Brook retuns. Black Watch - Gregory Burke’s a regiment’s recent tours to Iraq, leads this year’s Critics Awards for Theatre in Scotland. "New funding from Chicago foundations makes all the difference for local theaters." Playwright David Leddy's new show takes place in his home, literally. Cont Mhlanga's controversial, politically-charged satire about the struggle for independence in Zimbabwe, will tour the region.

I couldn't possibly care less about who wins the Tony awards. No offense.

If you do, the man of the hour writes a blog called The Playgoer, where he's covering the Tonys comprehensively. He's got all the lowdown.

- Who got nominated?"

Utopian" Russians rule the supporting categories: Billy vs Ethan and Ehle vs Plimpton

The Vertical Hour
yes, for those keeping score, Vertical Hour by Sir David Hare, directed by Sam Mendes, starring Julianne Moore was a big zero today. (Nothing even for Bill Nighy)

So, I'm glad folks like Todd London, Lynn Nottage, and John Dias (former Publc dramaturg) are there...But who the hell is this "Retired Judge of the New York State Court of Claims"???

Laura Axelrod does well to point us to the cover story of Jet Magazine - Black Theater Grows Up. Laura has actually read the article, and I haven't, so please go to her site for the lowdown and commentary.

Jet's website offers the following:

Award-winning playwright David Talbert and actor Morris Chestnut have teamed up in Talbert’s new play, Love in the Nick of Tyme. Despite the fact that some critics may want to dismiss the legitimacy of Black theater, Talbert is one of the leading playwrights who are creating stage plays that are selling out across the nation. “I would stand up for its financial viability and artistic value,” Talbert told JET. “Now the same people still don’t respect the art of it, but they all want to get involved to make money.”

Chestnut, who makes his stage debut in the production, said, “I wanted to elevate the image and profile of African-American theater. A lot of times people would associate doing a touring production with a decline in your career. My career is thriving, and the plays are profitable. People would be very surprised of the salary of those in movies,” he said.

Actually, the title of this post is a little misleading. In Don R. Hall's recent Angry White Guy rant his point was not to take-on Chicago's House Theatre, rather to question the wisdom and generosity of the organizations behind the Emerging Theater Award - namely Broadway in Chicago and the League of Chicago Theatres.

Now, I don't know enough about the situation to comment specifically, but Don did pull me in with erudite and stinging prose like this:

And in our readiness to declare that the House has or has not earned this award, we are blinded to the facts that A) this award has been presented by an organization dedicated to bring outside shows to Chicago, effectively displacing homegrown theater and B) that $5,000.00 from Broadway in Chicago is like getting a check for $5.00 from your rich uncle on your birthday.

Not only is the staff of the League advocating and working for the community everyday and seeing hundreds of shows every year, but several, including myself, are working professionals in the community as actors, directors and theater managers. To say that this group of people is out of touch with the local theater community is ridiculous. You won't find a group of people more committed to Chicago theater.

UPDATE:
Storefront Rebellion asks of the League, What Have You Done For Me Lately?

Tonys. Outer Critics Circle Awards. Drama League Awards. San Diego Musical Theatre pops its cherry with The Full Monty. New one-acts from Neil Labute, Julia Cho, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Amy Fox and more at EST from May 31. Tickets go on sale May 21 for the 45th season of Tent Theatre at Missouri State University. After playing 5 different roles on her latest album, Tori Amos is writing a musical. After more than 50 years, Michael Craig's Australian theatre career comes to a close. New York Musical Theatre Festival announces 18 new musicals.

Nicholas Hytner, the 50-year old artistic director of The National Theatre, has tongues wagging and keyboards clicking in the UK today, thanks to comments he made recently in The Times that look an awful lot like this:

They would be horrified by the accusation, but I’m afraid I’m making it. I think it’s fair enough to say that too many of the theatre critics are dead white men. They don’t know it’s happened to them but it has.
...
The theatre establishment changes regularly and representatively because the audience changes. We have to change or the audience would stop coming.
...
I won’t stay in my job for as long as they stay in theirs. When I become a dead white male I will only be hired to do dead white male theatre.
...
In private the female critics are voluble about this. I know that Katie Mitchell gets misogynistic reviews, where everything they say is predicated on her sex. Gay males have never had a problem in the theatre . . . The ones who have it worst are the gay women. They really get it in the neck and there’s a lot of sniggering.

"Charlotte isn't ready for locally produced, regional-level, professional theatre". NY Theatre i presents the first "Indie Theater Roundup". And yes, in case you hadn't heard, the guy who made those Ford commercials is gonna have a play on old Broadway. Go behind the scenes of Kneehigh Theatre's A Matter of Life and Death in the UK. The Core Ensemble of Florida and Akin Babatunde of Texas will collect stories and create A Harvest of Glades Voices. The Miller Theatre in Augusta, GA was vandalized. The American Place Theatre celebrates its 45th anniversary and the 85th birthday of Wynn Handman. Beowulf ATC brings Steinbeck to Tuscon. St. Paul's Penumbra Theatre Company and the Guthrie team-up for Gem of the Ocean.

Bang! For Your Buck is a one-night only benefit featuring the work of a host of Off-Off pioneers, including Robert Patrick, Paul Foster, William M. Hoffman, John Fleck, Judith Malina, and Hanon Resnikov. The Wilma in Philly has extended their run of The Life of Galileo another week - and they have a clip on YouTube. The NY Times has an article on the current state of theatre in post-Apartheid South Africa. Listings for the Toronto Fringe Festival are now on their website. Chicago's Stage Left begins LeapFest 4 on May 31. The Playgoer has some inside poop on Tony politics. The Bristol Old Vic, the oldest continuously running theatre in Britain, may be closing for good. The Orlando International Fringe begins May 17.

Photo: Jim Baldassare

New Theater Corps (Aaron Riccio)

The actors aren't the only ones giving a flawless performance in Jenny Schwartz's God's Ear. English itself is taking a bow in this beautifully stylized postmodern tragedy, a poignant, obfuscating look at the language we use when we cannot say what is in our heart, and the blinding power of honesty when at last our heartstrings find the strength to sing.

Lots more if you read on.

Isaac at Parabasis linked to this great article from Firedoglake about successful blogging and I was reminded that I wanted to repost a few older things about blogging that I put up before this site started getting a larger audience. So, my apologies to anyone who's already seen this, but to those who are newer here, hopefully this will be of some use.

First of all, let me say that WE NEED MORE BLOGS.

The Cincinnati Fringe Festival begins May 30. The Prague Quadrennial, the world's largest scenographic exhibition, begins June 14. Steppenwolf's First Look Rep presents new plays in rotating repertory in August. Philly Theatre co's next season includes a world premiere from Bill Irwin and a new Terrence McNally play. Jonzi D's UK Hip-Hop Dance Theatre Breakin Convention was last weekend and you can watch the whole thing online. Dandelion Dancetheater will dance naked in New York on May 16. Kansas City Repertory Theatre presents the world premiere of Under Midwestern Stars. The Color Purple opens in Oprah's hometown. One Trick Pony puts up two new plays in Brooklyn.

Great idea, yeah? Can't wait to see how this works (the combination of this as well as the beefing up of their usual support programs). Note that the application process begins at the end of May...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
THE PUBLIC THEATER CREATES ‘THE PUBLIC WRITERS INITIATIVE’ TO DEVELOP NEW PLAYS AND CULTIVATE NEW VOICES FOR THE AMERICAN THEATER

‘THE EMERGING WRITERS GROUP’ WILL PROVIDE KEY SUPPORT FOR PROMISING WRITERS (TIME WARNER TO BE FOUNDING SPONSOR)

If you like posts with lots of miscellaneous links, this one's for you.

What could make Erin Dugan, a 15-year-old sophomore at Summit High School, say,
"I have learned that theater can be amazing even if it's not Broadway" ... ? Shakespeare, taught well.

If you haven't listened to the NYtheatrecast interview with the League of Independent Theater, go do so now. I just did so and it's fantastic.

Are we Off-Off, are we Independent, or are we Indie? We're a sector, we're the sector that works in 99-seat theaters, and we don't have anyone directly advocating for us ... we're so small, or we thought we were. We can actaually talk to the big players ... with a clear voice ... rather than all of us sitting around in a million beer-conversations downtown complaining about our lot.

The Prague Fringe starts May 27. Working Group has not one but two new videos. Raymond Bobgan looks back on his first year at the Cleveland Public. Chicago's A Red Orchid runs The Meek through June 3. And now ... "the first true Edinburgh musical of the postmodern age." The work to restore Austria's Nestroyhof continues. In Austin, The Vortex presents The Rubber Repertory Theatre's U.S. Premiere of A Thought In Three Parts by Wallace Shawn. Bruce Dern teaches and writes a blog for DC's Theatre Lab.

In our last episode, I mentioned Gifts of the Muse, which is a 120-page document created to "improve the current understanding of the arts' full range of effects in order to inform public debate and policy." (It's available for purchase or free here.)

They come to some really important conclusions that could have very real, but not necessarily comforting, consequences for those of us making art now.

The study begins by focusing on the two types of value the arts can offer, dividing them into instrumental values and intrinsic values.

Simply put, instrumental values are those offered when art is used to accomplish other goals, which usually have nothing to do with art per se. These are the values we're promoting when we mention that listening to classical music improves your math skills and that building theatres and galleries will help the downtown area grow economically. It's why we care about every single redundant study that proves that art improves elementary education. It's the reason arts organizations are so thrilled with Richard Florida's "creative class" work. "See," they cry, "See?!? You need us!" The larger the institution, it seems, the more pressed they are to focus on instrumental values when they sell their programs to public and corporate funders. It's a product of our current culture.

How did this happen?

Okay, Terry Teachout started it.

Regardless of what we decide, it strikes me that somebody out there in the 'sphere ought to consider starting a similar group of Web-based drama critics and commentators that would give its own theater awards each year, just like the NYDCC and the Outer Critics Circle.

Big party for NYTR07 at the Drama Book Shop. (Will anyone be blogging live from the party?) Details are right here about the new BAM Cultural Center. Neil LaBute wrote a semi-provocative/semi-silly piece on color blind casting for the LA Times. Tracy Letts' new play will debut June 28 at Steppenwolf Downstairs. Son of Semele hosts Mad Scene for 365 Plays this weekend. John Doyle AKA "gold dust". "When a play like this comes along you just have to do it."

Please contribute to the Contemporary American Theatre Festival and help them excercise our freedom of expression.

Let's start by quoting The Playgoer:

Remember Howard Dean and his online $25 clicks adding up? And now Barak Obama has almost outpaced Hillary Clinton with small donations from a wider list of supporters?

Is there some applicable model here, say, for the nonprofit theatre company?

The House Theatre won the 2007 Broadway In Chicago Emerging Theater Award. Now you can learn to act on-line. A theatre producer from Kent, Ohio has been plagiarizing Canadian plays for years. (We don't know the guy, sorry.) The NY Drama Critics Circle awards were announced. The smoking on-stage debate has moved on to Chicago. Portland's Third Rail Rep present Athol Fugard's rarely produced A Lesson from Aloes. Mabou Mines' Peter & Wendy are off and running in DC. The Goodman has a 2007-8 season. (Sorry if that's a repeat.)

I recently sent out some emails, begging fellow bloggers to suggest plays I should read in my current avalanche of free-time. I read plays rather regularly, but I thought they might have better information and some unusual choices. They did not disappoint. For the record, the questions I asked look like this:

Name the 10 plays I must read in order to understand the "state of the theatre" at this moment in history. (Assuming I have a solid background on most everything that's already happened in the theatre.)

Now name 5-10 plays you're pretty sure I haven't read and really should (because you think they're so great). (And don't be afraid of offending me.)

You better believe there are some lists after the so-called jump.

UPDATE: I've attempted to make commenting easier. Please let me know if it's not.

Take a tour of one of the country's best regional theatre facilities. "Fallujah is a devastating new piece of documentary theatre about the Iraqi city that was "pacified" to the point of annihilation by coalition forces in 2004" The Dell'Arte Company will perform at San Francisco's Magic Theatre starting May 18. Smoke on the Mountain gets a sequel. The WaterTower Theatre of Texas announces its season, featuring The Great American Trailer Park Musical. Urban Research Theatre seeks actors, singers, and dancers. The Conflux 2007 application deadline (May 10) is fast approaching.

Does Anyone Know Sarah Paisner? is a drama inspired by the Missed Connections page of Craigslist.com. If you're making theatre in NYC, hopefully you've heard about NYC Theatre Spaces dot org. The Lord of the Rings musical gets ready for the U.K. I didn't know that The Children's Hour (now running at The OSU) had been so controversial. The North Shore Sunday gives stage managers some overdue press. LAByrinth Theatre will perform Pretty Chin Up at The Public starting May 15. ACT stages a controversial play about pedophilia. Nextbook has a brief but good article on Yiddish Theatre history.

Please fill out the Americans for the Arts survey. This seems to go well with some of our recent themes.

From the website.

Americans for the Arts is conducting a nationwide scan of the arts environment to help us determine the best ways to advance the arts in America. As someone who knows just how essential the arts are, your voice and input are vital. We hope you will help us by dedicating some of your time to complete our online survey no later than Friday, May 11. We also encourage you to pass this survey along to your colleagues, networks, and friends. The more stakeholders we hear from, the better educated will we be in working together to build an environment in which the arts can thrive.

Yeah, I know that anyone who subscribes to ArtsJournal has probably already seen this, but given our recent discussions about the "value" of the arts, I thought it'd be relevant to highlight this article here at Theatreforte. Arne Zaslove over at the impressive Crosscut Seattle outlines the sad history of his city's theatre scene.

The first round of Ford Foundation money, which had created the regional boom, faded away, and corporations shifted money from arts to social services. Costs kept escalating as the scramble for funders and subscribers got more intense. A city such as Seattle, which had practiced little birth control about artistic groups during the boom years after the World's Fair, had a lot of mouths to feed.

The whole article is definitely worth reading, if for nothing else than it might make you feel a little less lonely when you look around your city and wonder whatever happened to all the cool little theatres that used to be around. While theatre in some cities may fare marginally better than others, it's important to remember that this crisis is on a national scale, and it's impacting theatre artists no matter where they live.

The Hip Hop Theater Festival has begun announcing dates and details are avaiable for this weekend in Chicago. The Amnesty Human Rights Centre in London hosts a new Ariel Dorfman play. There's a new Mahabharata? The File on Ryan Carter opens May 25 in L.A., there is some nudity involved. Naked in America - The Musical will play in North Hollywood in May. The Malaysian KL Ensemble tackles Sam Beckett. Jerry Springer - The Opera, runs in Chicago until July 8. The Public presents Passing Strange, a musical about a young bohemian in search of a home, co-produced with Berkeley Rep and featuring the band Stew.

You should probably read Part 1 first.

So, while the bloggers are re-mapping reality, what are we to do with the brick/flesh/mortar/blood theatres to help shift the paradigm? Let's get back to that manifesto.

To justify artist's professional, parasitic and elite status in society, he must demonstrate artist's indispensability and exclusiveness, he must demonstrate the dependability of audience upon him, he must demonstrate that no one but the artist can do art.

Cameron couches his arguments in an exploration of "value", taken to mean our standards as well as our worth.

Yes, the meaning evanesces and shifts according to context but ultimately each of these value-facets inform one another — and, I think, must inform us in our attempt to raise the profile of arts in America. Let me suggest we approach this through four key questions How do we individually clarify and identify our values? How do we individually convey our values? How do we gather people around our values? And how do we collectively establish our value?

The Jeff Citation Nominations (in Chicago) have been announced and The House did rather well. Texas's Infernal Bridegroom premieres 20 Love Songs starting May 3rd. The Young Frankenstein musical will try-out in Seattle. Dying for It in Islington freely adapts a work banned by Stalin. If you're making art in L.A., you should go to this. A good overview of the work of Curt Dempster and EST. Details on La Jolla's 07/08 season.

This is the first part of a long post I've been mulling over for a week. Isaac Butler's post today spurred me on to start putting words together for real.

Maybe the answer to "What's a theatre Blog For?" is self-evident. Or, maybe it's this-

Blogging is part of a larger project. The project is the complete overhaul of the theatre industry And the blogs are a BIG part of that project too, or at least they have a huge potential for it

Mr. Excitement pulled this great quotation from Chris Bowers at MyDD. [Which you should read everyday if you don't already.]

The Blogosphere is a counter-institutional formation that seeks to relocate the primary purpose of political and opinion journalism in agitation toward action rather than in profit-based consumption.

What are you doing here? Go here!

Pretty much every single problem in American theatre that we think of as artistic can be traced back to financial factors, almost (and I only say "almost" to cover my ass, I can't actually think of one right now) every single issue we bloggers have been trying to shed some light on can be traced back to money. Lack of risk-taking amongst artistic directors? Check. New Plays being constantly developed instead of produced? Check. Lack of arts education leading to lack of interested audiences leading to shitty coverage for the art in the Times? Check. Losing an enormous amount of talent to film and TV? Check.

Now, go here!

The Appalachian Regional Theatre Society presents The Apple Tree this weekend. Seattle's On the Boards, which brings in performance art from around the country, announces it's 07/08 plans. George Hunka points at some current NYC events. Hand 2 Mouth in Portland have extended Repeat After Me (One part karaoke sing-a-long gone wrong, one part dance theatre, one part nightmare) another weekend. The Los Angeles Theatre Ensemble has a trailer up for The War Cycle Part One. A Malaysian ensemble production explores the sayings and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. Some photos and coverage from the 13P benefit. Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati presents a musicial about Florence Foster Jenkins, who famously could not sing.

I know for a fact that a lot of us who started theatre companies did so in part because we really wanted to be in a great band. So we're to be forgiven if shows like Hedwig and Cynthia Hopkin's Must Don't Whip 'Um make us weak in the knees.

We're also to be forgiven if we curse a little bit at the realization that Banana Bag & Bodice may have beaten us to the logical conclusion of this way of thinking.

From George Hunka:

The eight-year-old troupe this time around identifies itself as an ersatz punk-rock group, The Rising Fallen, hired to perform on an oil-drilling rig off the coast of the Faroe Islands, where they end up trapped for six months ...

The History Theatre examines the history of professional wrestling. York Theatre Royal created The Hare & the Tortoise for the Kijo Picture Book Village in Japan. The English Theatre of Rome is a tiny, English-language theatre in Rome. TV and film stars head to Texas for A Few Good Men. TheaterMania summarizes current offerings in Seattle and Philadelphia. The Pioneer Theatre of Utah, who are currently producing Les Mis will also be one of the first to tackle The Producers. Vox Feminista in Colorado have a show about food.