American Theatre back issues from December 2008:
Simon Mcburney isn't awfully fond of naturalism.(EDITOR'S NOTE)
Dec 01, 2008; ... "It's a stylistic choice, and it's a deadly one for the theatre," the eminent British director declares flatly in Carol Rocamora's richly detailed interview with him in this issue (page 32). Why would McBurney (who has just helmed an Arthur Miller play on Broadway, for ...
Thinking about tomorrow.(effect of financial crisis in theaters)
Dec 01, 2008; ... GOODBYE, 2008. YOU WERE A 12-MONTH PERIOD that most of us will not easily forget. In your early months, TCG theatres had the great fortune of participating in a phone conversation with former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who explained what was at play in the economy. ...
Grant recipients: fox foundation resident actor fellowships.(TCG ON THE WEB)(William & Eva Fox Foundation)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... The third round of fellowships for actors, funded by the William & Eva Fox Foundation and administered by TCG, has been awarded to four actors of "extraordinary potential" and two of "distinguished achievement." In the first category, fellowships go to Bill Barclay of Shakespeare & Company ...
New from TCG books.(TCG ON THE WEB)(Christopher Shinn's Dying City )(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... Christopher Shinn's Dying City is available now from TCG Books. The drama-a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize-illuminates issues of the Irag War while intersecting the personal and political. A young therapist's husband is killed while on military duty. One year later she is confronted ...
American theatre magazine 25th anniversary celebration.(SAVE THE DATE)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... American Theatre celebrates 25 years since its inaugural issue in April of 1984, featuring playwright Sam Shepard on the cover. To mark the occasion TCG will host a benefit celebration on April 20 in New York City featuring artists from the magazine's pages ...
American theatre online.(TCG ON THE WEB)
Dec 01, 2008 ... FROM THIS ISSUE: Electronic Campfires Randy Gener on the hyper-mediated world of the Builders Association McBurney Meets Miller An interview with acclaimed British experimentalist by Carol Rocamora On ...
New TKTS Booth open for business.(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... NEW YORK CITY: Eight years in the tortuous making, a new TKTS Discount Booth has arisen, ruby-red and spanking new, on the triangular patch of Times Square where Broadway and Seventh Avenue intersect. Built at a cost of $19 million, the 27-stair structural glass-step redesign originated as ...
Uta and Herbert on paper.(Uta Hagen and Herbert Berghof paper collection)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... NEW YORK CITY: Established in 1945 by Viennese actor/director Herbert Berghof, the HB Studio was a major force in actor-training. Uta Hagen joined the studio as a teacher in 1948 and eventually married Berghof. The papers they left behind are joined in a newly public collection at the ...
Dramaturgs in the Wilderness.(NEWS IN BRIEF)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... ELY, MINN.: While the Republicans had their convention in the Twin Cities this past summer, dramaturges Liz Engelman and Michael Bigelow Dixon inaugurated their own creative sanctuary. Tofte Lake Center, nestled in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota, sits on a ...
Rescuing the Black United Fund.
Dec 01, 2008 ... NEW YORK CITY: What happened to the Black United Fund of New York? Black leaders, researchers and social advocates have been asking that question of David Paterson, urging the governor to bring back to life the Harlem-based nonprofit philanthropy organization. One of the casualties of the ...
Prague's Industrial Palace burns down.(NEWS IN BRIEF)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... PRAGUE: Although the left wing of the Industrial Palace in Prague is now a pile of ashes, plans for the 2011 Prague Quadrennial International Exhibition of Scenography and Theatre Architecture won't be halted. Sodja Lotker of Arts Institute-Theatre Institute in Prague, who serves as PQ's ...
'Frost/Nixon' gets its close-up.(NEWS IN BRIEF)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... NATIONWIDE: Peter Morgan's play Frost/Nixon draws its drama from a series of interviews that took place on the small screen. And while the script gained acclaim on the stage, to the screen it returns this month with the nationwide release of Ron Howard's film version. Morgan, who also has ...
Two theatres lower their curtains.(NEWS IN BRIEF)(Stamford Theatre Works )(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008; ... Citing lack of funding, two professional theatre companies announced in late October that they are closing shop and canceling the rest of their seasons. In Wisconsin, the nine-year-old Milwaukee Shakespeare lost its primary funder, Argosy Foundation, due to the terrible financial climate ....
Amen, brother Chris!(Chris Wells)(Interview)
Dec 01, 2008; ... NEW YORK CITY: New York-based writer/performer Chris Wells has portrayed men of the cloth before. And he's created his own performance pieces, both as a member of Los Angeles's Actors' Gang in the 1990s and with various experimental New York troupes. Now the versatile actor seems to have ...
No country for Women artists?(meeting of African American women playwrights)(Conference notes)
Dec 01, 2008; ... CHICAGO AND NEW YORK CITY: The dearth of female representation in the mainstream American theatre has been a crisis for some time, but it flared up anew in cities across the country around the time of Senator Hillary Clinton's bid for the U.S. presidency. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ...
Elizabeth Doran.(NEWS IN BRIEF)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... Elizabeth Doran is the new managing director for the Actors' Gang of Culver City, Calif., stepping into the position held for seven years by Greg Reiner. Reiner moved in August to become executive director of Tectonic Theater Project in New York. Doran vacates her post ...
Rick Dildine.(NEWS IN BRIEF)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... Producer, actor and director Rick Dildine joins Chicago's About Face Theatre as managing director. Dildine has been producer of the Brown University/Trinity Repertory Company New Plays Festival ...
Michael Ross.(NEWS IN BRIEF)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... Michael Ross will steer Kansas City Repertory Theatre as its interim managing director until the end of January as the theatre seeks to ...
Ian Tresselt.(NEWS IN BRIEF)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... Everyman Theatre of Baltimore, Md., has tapped Ian Tresselt to be its new managing director. Tresselt is both a director and theatre manager, most recently the ...
Bartlett Sher.(NEWS IN BRIEF)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... Lincoln Center Theater named Bartlett Sher its new resident director. Sher whose past Lincoln Center productions--South Pacific, Awake and Sing! and The ...
Patricia Speelman.(NEWS IN BRIEF)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... Minneapolis's Southern Theater has made several reorganization moves in the past several months. A president/CEO position, filled by Patricia Speelman, was created in July, timed with the departure of Southern's artistic director of 33 years, Jeff Bartlett. A new ...
Tom Wojtunik.(NEWS IN BRIEF)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... Director Tom Wojtunik, who helmed Proof for the Astoria Performing Arts Center in 2007, has been named the organization's new artistic director. Along with the new season, Wojtunik will premiere "The 15/20s," an ongoing festival of ...
David Angus.(NEWS IN BRIEF)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... Glimmerglass Opera of Cooperstown, N.Y., appointed David Angus music director for the company following a two-year search to replace Stewart Robertson. Angus, who was ...
M. John Richard.(NEWS IN BRIEF)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... M. John Richard departs the New Jersey Performing Arts Center after 19 years to become the new ...
Jennifer Tipton.(NEWS IN BRIEF)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... It's been a good year for veteran lighting designer Jennifer Tipton, who received one of the jackpot calls from the MacArthur Foundation this year, naming her the recipient of a half-million-dollar boon commonly known as the "Genius" grant. Tipton was also a ...
Adriana Sevan.(NEWS IN BRIEF)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... Middle East America, a new-plays initiative sponsored by Golden Thread Productions of San Francisco, Lark Play Development Center of New York, and Silk Road Theatre Project of Chicago, has announced the winner of its first ...
Samuel D. Hunter.(NEWS IN BRIEF)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... Meanwhile, the Lark also welcomed its second Playwrights of New York (PONY) Fellow, ...
George S. Irving.(NEWS IN BRIEF)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... This month New York's York Theatre Company will hold a celebratory concert to present George ...
Shem Bitterman.(NEWS IN BRIEF)
Dec 01, 2008 ... This year's PEN USA Literary Award-winner in the ...
Michael Golamco.(NEWS IN BRIEF)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... By decision of a panel of judges from various Chicago theatres, Michael Golamco's Year Zero won him the grand ...
P.J. Gibson, Magdalena Gomez, Lenelle Moise, Lydia Diamond and Lois A. Wiley.(AWARDS & PRIZES)(Whisper. Laugh. Shout. Tell the Story Awards)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... The Washington, D.C., organization Black Women Playwrights presented its first "Whisper. Laugh. Shout. Tell the Story" Awards to ...
Jill BC Du Boff.(AWARDS & PRIZES)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... In New York City, the League of Professional Theatre Women presented sound designer Jill BC Du Boff with its Ruth Morley Designing Women Award ....
Arden Theatre Company.(AWARDS & PRIZES)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... The Theatre Alliance of Geater Philadelphia passed out Barrymore Awards to several companies, Arden Theatre Company first among them (with six awards) for Assasins, Sleeping Beauty, Wittenberg and Our Town in Old City. Other award-reaping shows included Walnut Street Theatre's Les ...
Chicago Shakespeare Theater and Chicago Dramatists.(AWARDS & PRIZES)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... Chicago Shakespeare Theater and Chicago Dramatists topped the list of award recipients at the 40th annual Jeff Awards for Equity theatre in the Windy City, earning special notice for their stagings of The Comedy of Errors and A Steady Rain, respectively. Those shows were not only named top ...
Vampire Cowboys Theatre Company's.(AWARDS & PRIZES)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... In September, Off-Off-Broadway's plaudits, the IT Awards, smiled on the ensemble of Vampire Cowboys Theatre Company's Fight Girl Battle World, along with that show's costume designer Jessica Wegener and choreographer Qui Nguyen; solo performer Andrea Caban (for You Got Questions? I Got ...
Marcus Gardley.(AWARDS & PRIZES)(Creative Work Fund handed out to Marcus Gardley and Cutting Ball Theater, Rhodessa Jones and the Women's HIV Program, and Cherrie Moraga and Campo Santo)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... In the Bay Area, the Creative Work Fund handed out several performing arts awards; among the pairs that will use the prizes toward collaboration are Marcus ...
Rick McKay.(AWARDS & PRIZES)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... Among those applauded at the Theatre Museum Awards for Excellence in New York were documentarian Rick ...
Jimmy Vaughn.(AWARDS & PRIZES)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... The Southwest Theatre and Film Association, based in Denton, Tex., has combined its ...
Ken Davenport.(AWARDS & PRIZES)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... Producer Ken Davenport and Arlene Romoff of the Hearing Loss Association of New Jersey, an advocate for open ...
Center Theatre Group, National Black.(AWARDS & PRIZES)(Center Theatre Group, National Black Arts Festival, Ping Chong & Company, SITI Company, Steppenwolf Theatre Company and the Wooster Group)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... A $15.125-million, five-year pilot program called Leading for the Future: Innovative Support for Artistic Excellence, created by Nonprofit Finance Fund and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation in order to explore new business and funding practices for arts groups, announced in October ...
Theresa Rebeck.(AWARDS & PRIZES)
Dec 01, 2008 ... The honored playwright at Nebraska's Great Plains ...
Laura Annawyn Shamas.(AWARDS & PRIZES)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... At the Five Civilized Tribes Museum in Muskogee, Ok., Laura Annawyn Shamas--a member of the ...
Ken LaZebnik.(AWARDS & PRIZES)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park crowned Theory of Mind by Ken LaZebnik with a Macy's ...
Joseph Adler.(AWARDS & PRIZES)
Dec 01, 2008 ... Joseph Adler, producing artistic director of GableStage in Coral Gables, Fla., ...
Mitchell Thomas.(AWARDS & PRIZES)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... The Lilly Fellows Program in the Humanities and the Arts, which bestows the annual Meyer Prize on a university faculty member whose work exemplifies ...
Ruth M. Feldman.(AWARDS & PRIZES)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... Ruth M. Feldman received the Raymond E. Baldwin Award from the Connecticut Board of Education and Services ...
Bruce Adler.(IN MEMORIAM)(Obituary)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... Bruce Adler, who acted on Broadway and in regional theatre, died this past summer at age 63. Adler descended from an established Yiddish theatre family and was performing by the time he was three. He was twice nominated for Tony Awards, first for his work in 1990's Those Were ...
John E. Booth.(IN MEMORIAM)(Obituary)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... Theatre author John E. Booth died in September at his home in New Mexico at age 89. Booth began his career as a stringer for the drama and travel desks of the New York Times, and published Actors Talk About Acting, co-authored with Times theatre critic ...
Michael D. Mitchell.(IN MEMORIAM)(Obituary)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... Michael D. Mitchell, who for nearly 10 years led the Fulton Theatre, the resident Equity company of the historic Fulton Opera House in Lancaster, Pa., died in September at age 68. Mitchell was diagnosed with cancer this past February, ...
Richard Monette.(IN MEMORIAM)(Obituary)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... Richard Monette, the longest-serving artistic director in Stratford Shakespeare Festival history, died in September at age 64. He guided the Canadian theatre from 1994to 2007, having performed and directed there since 1965. Monette's ...
Paul Newman.(IN MEMORIAM)(Obituary)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... Legendary film actor Paul Newman died in September at 83. He caught the eye of Warner Brothers in 1953 in his Broadway debut, Picnic. Despite an explosive film career, he returned to Broadway several times, including in 1959 for Sweet Bird of Youth opposite Geraldine Page, ...
Minding their peas and cues.(FRONT & CENTER)(Theater review)
Dec 01, 2008; ... DESPITE ITS TITLE, KIRSTEN CHILDS'S The Princess and the Black-Eyed Pea isn't simply a retelling of the familiar Hans Christian Andersen story. "What Kristen has miraculously done is take the essence of Andersen's original tale and turn it inside out," declares Stafford Arima, who directs ...
Family reunion.(MILWAUKEE)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008; ... IT'S A STORY ABOUT FAMILIES AND war. From 1943 to '46, four of Martin Daly's five children were scattered around the globe, all of them serving the war effort. Unable to keep up with individual letters, Martin compiled his children's missives from the front into a family newsletter called ...
Otter be good.(EAST HADDAM, CONN.)(Theater review)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008; ... Move over, Grinches and Scrooges: a warmer, fuzzier hero visits Goodspeed Musicals Dec. 7-Jan. 4. The 1977 Jim Henson TV movie Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas arrives on stage with new song by original tunesmith Paul Williams, including a rollicking scene-setter called "Waterville," ...
Burning down the house.(NEW YORK CITY)(The Scandal )(Theater review)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008; ... "The only way to get out of the house sometimes is to burn it down," jokes playwright and actor Kristen Kosmas. Kosmas is speaking metaphorically, of course, but in the case of her play The Scandal!, the burnt house is quite literal. Scandal protagonist Pink seeks solace in flames in an ...
105 years ago (1903).(ALMANAC)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008 ... Only a month after it opens its doors, Chicago's Iroquois Theatre, the design of which had been touted as "fireproof," becomes the scene of tragedy when more than 600 perish in a blaze during a performance of Mr. Bluebeard. 80 YEARS AGO (1928) Ethel Barrymore performs for the ...
Wendy darling sings Bernstein.(Leonard Bernstein)(Theater review)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008; ... flying to Neverland might be as simple as a sprinkle of pixie dust and thinking happy thoughts--but producing a premiere musical requires more than fairy-tale optimism. That's a lesson Santa Barbara Theatre has learned while working since 2005--the company's inaugural year--to mount J.M ....
The Clinton mythtique.(NEW YORK CITY)(Hillary Rodham Clinton)(Hillary: A Modern Greek Tragedy with a (Somewhat) Happy Ending)(Theater review)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2008; ... WHEN WENDY WEINER BEGAN WRITING HILLARY: A Modern Greek Tragedy with a (Somewhat) Happy Ending, she had no idea that her unlikely heroine would become the first major female candidate for president. And even though Hillary's candidacy may now seem like old news, Weiner has found a way to ...
Campfires: the Builders Association signals through the flames with messages for a hyper-mediated world.(incorporation of modern techniques in plays)
Dec 01, 2008; ... Give us the chance to work in a theatre incorporating modern techniques, and capable of meeting the demands which our conception of the theatrical spectacle will create, and we shall stage productions which will attract just as many spectators as cinema.--Vsevolod Meyerhold ...
McBurney meets miller: the acclaimed British experimentalist stretches an American classic to new dimensions.(Simon McBurney and Arthur Miller, All My Sons)
Dec 01, 2008; ... "Over the last 20 years I have seen thousands of productions in the theatre, but it is the images from Complicite shows that are branded on my brain." So wrote Lyn Gardner, theatre critic of the U.K.'s Guardian, about Complicite, the unique London-based company that has dazzled ...
Arias with a Twist: HERE Arts Center.(Basil Twist and Joey Arias' Arias with a Twist)
Dec 01, 2008 ... Basil Twist, DIRECTION, SCENIC AND PUPPET DESIGN: I had seen Joey Arias's shows in Las Vegas, and I thought to myself, "I can do something like that, in my small way!" So the task we set for ourselves was to make a sort of miracle happen in the small space of the renovated Dorothy B ....
Let's talk about god: 6 playwrights examine the role of religious faith in their work.(Nathan Wright, Bina Sharif, Molly Rice, Jason Grote, Dael Orlandersmith, and Quiara Algeria Hudes)
Dec 01, 2008; ... I HAVE THE GOD GENE. LONG BEFORE I WAS A playwright I felt a strong sense of a presence filling empty rooms. As a child I begged my mother to take me to church; at 10 I was saved by Billy Graham via television, phoning the call center while my brother and sister looked on in horror. That ...
A critic infiltrates Paula Vogel's boot camp: the results, she says, are transformational.
Dec 01, 2008; ... "IMPOSSIBLE TO STAGE" IS ONE OF PAULA VOGEL'S mischievous goals as an inventive, iconoclastic playwright. "Impossible to teach" is what many would claim of playwriting. But it's certainly not true in Vogel's classroom. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In 24 years as head of ...
Those Were the Days: 2 history-rich photo books intersect at Broadway and 42nd.(The Story of 42nd Street and Photos of Broadway: New York Theater, 1850-1970)(Book review)
Dec 01, 2008; ... THE DECENTRALIZATION OF THE AMERICAN theatre over the past half-century can be quantified in any number of ways. One measure is that most of the plays that have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in recent years began their life far from the city where the awards are judged and given. Had ...
Bees in audience bonnets: how a theatre is turning play readings into springboards of discussion.(Hornet's Nest)
Dec 01, 2008; ... CHALLENGE: When theatre really does its job, an audience buzzes afterward. I recently saw Sarah Kane's Blasted at New York City's Soho Rep where, after the applause concluded a palpable electrical current seemed to run throughout the crows. Strangers exchanged "wows" and expressions of ...