On Tuesday evening, Boston elected the first new mayor in 20 years.  Massachusetts House Representative Marty Walsh defeated city counselor John Connolly by capturing 52% of the vote (An interesting precinct break-down map can be found at WBUR.org).  Walsh will replace longtime mayor Thomas Menino as the city of Boston’s 48th mayor on January 6th.

A change in leadership like this brings with it a host of implications for future policy, both in the arts and in other sectors.  Walsh has called for “an arts renaissance in the city of Boston” and according to the mayor elects website, believes that “art can change lives, build communities, create jobs, and create new opportunities for individuals, neighborhoods, and Boston as a whole.”

Some wonderful promises and plans have been laid out by Walsh, including but not limited to…

–  Increase funding to the arts sector– which has been historically underfunded when compared to 30 of the other largest US cities.

–  Create an Arts r Cultural Affairs Commissioner position on his cabinet and hire a Chief Development Officer for the City.

–  Fully support the Boston Public Schools Arts Expansion Initiative and expand other arts education programs.

–  Create an Artists First Initiative to address artists’ occupational health needs, professional development, affordable artist space, fair trade, and compensation.

–  Walsh promises to have his Cultural Affairs Commissioner actively and regularly solicit feedback from stakeholders and the arts community to ensure the Cultural Affairs Team is working to its fullest potential.

Walsh has positioned himself as a champion of the arts and culture during his political career.  A partial list of his voting record includes… (information taken from martywalsh.org):

• being the first candidate to hold an arts and culture town hall meeting

• repeatedly voting to increase funding for the Massachusetts Cultural Council

• voting to override Romney’s veto of $1.9 million of funds for the Massachusetts Cultural Council

• voting for the 2006 Economic Stimulus Bill which established the state’s Cultural Facilities Fund

• voting for the Economic Development Bill which established the Commonwealth’s Cultural Districts Program in 2010

• cosigning an act establishing a Disaster and Emergency Aid Fund for Massachusetts Artists

• voting for the state’s landmark Health Care Reform law which enabled many of our artists, cultural workers, and so many of our residents to gain access to needed affordable health care

For further reading on Walsh, his positions, and his campaign promises that pertain to the arts, you can check out…

1. His responses to the MassCreative.org Create the Vote Questionnaire.

2. His Arts and Cultural Affairs platform at MartyWalsh.org.

In this interesting indiegogo.com campaign, the American Conservatory Theater is partnering with the Wellesley Centers for Women to undertake a research project to determine why women have never surpassed 27% of artistic leadership roles in the major American nonprofit theaters.

Recognizing a gap in gender parity and outlining a plan to learn more about the problem is an important mission.  A similar mission can be found in C1’s XX Playlab (kicking off this weekend), which strives to close the gap in the representation of female playwrights.

The project has a goal of $25,000, and at the time of posting, 52 days to get there.  To learn more about the project and to donate to the indiegogo campaign, click HERE.

In this TCG Circle interview as part of the Diversity and Inclusion blog salon, Jacqueline E. Lawton interviews Cynthia Burns Coogan, literary manager, playwright, dramaturg about the staggering disparity between female and male representation in our nations theaters.

As it stands, only 17% of plays produced in the United States and England are by female playwrights.  When asked about a need for gender-based theaters, Coogan replied:

I don’t know that we need gender based theaters, though I celebrate them, but we do need gender consciousness in decision-making.

An interesting read with some well-articulated views on gender parity in the theater.

The interview can be found HERE.

Cinema houses in Sweden are taking a stab at gender biases in the films they show by subjecting them to the Bechdel Test.

A small portion of the article…

To get an A rating, a movie must pass the so-called Bechdel test, which means it must have at least two named female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man.

“The entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, all Star Wars movies, The Social Network, Pulp Fiction and all but one of the Harry Potter movies fail this test,” said Ellen Tejle, the director of Bio Rio, an art-house cinema in Stockholm’s trendy Södermalm district.

As C1 kicks off the XX Playlab event this weekend, seeing other creative ways to tackle gender parity is refreshing.

Read the entire Guardian article at the link provided.

“How do you compare a naturally gifted actor with no work ethic against a hard working but not-so-engaging student on stage?” -Wyckham Avery

In this interesting article over at Howlround.com, a theatre educator discusses some of the challenges that come along with offering assessments in a high school theatre class.  What criteria are used, how heavily is attendance and participation weighted, and other concerns are outlined and discussed.

The full article can be found HERE.

“The theater can raise questions that no other medium can raise in quite the communal way a play does. There are issues about science that very often don’t get expressed and don’t get discussed…. [having] to do with the moral dimensions of our research.  We’re trying to find out what the human conditions behind science are, and that’s, I think, one of the greatest values that we have in the theater.”  -Playwright Alan Brody

This fascinating collaboration is happening right in our back yard, over at MIT.

Two faculty members at MIT have partnered up a pair of local theatre companies to bring scientists and theatre artists into regular conversation with one another.  The Underground Railway Theater and the Nora Theater Company, have partnered up with MIT to form the Catalyst Collaborative at MIT (CC@MIT) in order to create and present plays that deepen public understanding of science and technology.

Paulette Beete at the NEA website has written an article discussing how MIT and some other theatre artists have put these two seemingly disparate disciplines (science and theatre) into conversation with one another.  The entire article can be read HERE.

The folks at FutureBoston.com are engaging in a spotlight of some of the city’s neighborhoods.  This series has been great in outlining the history, features, and landmarks that make each of Boston’s neighborhoods unique.

Not all of the neighborhoods have been profiled yet, but those that are…

Beacon Hill

Mission Hill

Jamaica Plain

Roxbury

As more neighborhoods are profiled, I will add them to the list.

C1 playwright Kirsten Greenidge just penned a wonderful opinion piece over at the Boston Globe.  The link to the article can be found HERE, or you can read the piece in its entirety below:

THANKSGIVING IS a peculiar holiday with a somewhat amorphous focal point. How many of us, in front of our friends and family, truly stop and say aloud what we are thankful for? Posting it on Facebook for a month beforehand does not count.

In any case, Thanksgiving, for those who celebrate it, can still be as joyful as a high school band marching past Macy’s — or as anxiety-inducing as driving to Logan to pick up your great-aunt Cora, who could never really tell you apart from your sisters. Uncle Phil always drinks too much, and cousin Pam should drink more, and it’s not going to be the same without Nana this year, so why bother? Where to go, who to invite, what to make? Not long ago at my children’s playground, I talked to a dad whose responsibility it is to bake the pies and cakes. Each year, he says, it scares the hell out of him.

I am the author of a play called “Splendor,” which was produced recently in Boston. It takes place over a few decades of Thanksgivings in a Massachusetts town like the one where I grew up. What draws me to the holiday is how it makes us see the intricacies and intimacies that make up a family. To me, Thanksgiving will always stir memories of ironing napkins for my mother the Wednesday before, and of seeing our counters covered with bags of flour and sugar, cans of cranberry sauce, piles of potatoes and celery stalks — ingredients so plentiful (even when we couldn’t really afford them) that we couldn’t fit them in the cupboard. My favorite part of the meal was dessert, because that’s when the women — my mother, my grandmother, my aunts — would finally relax. That is when I learned to listen, which was an invaluable part of my childhood.

Even if you are somewhat stripped bare emotionally, the holiday is, or can be, a day of repose. This is a luxury absent from our everyday lives. Rarely do we turn off our phones and turn to our friends, our neighbors, our children and say: I see you, I hear you. In this age of constant e-mail and tweeting, our workdays and our free time are not easily distinguishable. Despite the human cost, we are always open for business. Increasingly, that mindset is creeping into Thanksgiving, but not every family suffers equally.

In “Splendor,” the colorful character Gloria’s teenage daughter questions her whereabouts on Thanksgiving Eve. Gloria, a cashier at a grocery store, retorts, “I got the afternoon off, like the rest of regular people the day before Thanksgiving in these United States of America.” To Gloria, who’s used to working, being able to stay home on the eve of a holiday is a luxury afforded to others — presumably those whom our culture deems more deserving.

My husband works in the restaurant business, where holiday shifts are routine; someone has to work them, and it’s usually not the owner. For us, it is dismaying to read about the current trend in retail of opening for business on Thanksgiving, or at midnight the following day. An additional day of sales is paid for in the time lost with family or friends. That additional day is not made possible by a CEO graciously forgoing her turkey dinner so that we may all buy a new flat-screen TV. It is not made possible by a salaried manager choosing to work a little longer, and deciding to make up lost family time in other ways, while we elbow our way through the mall. Instead, these days are made possible by wage earners for whom a holiday shift is, in practice, hardly optional.

In the course of writing “Splendor,” I talked to a lot of people who shared moving and humorous stories about Thanksgiving in their families — recalling the magic the day held for them as children, or looking forward to handing the recipes and family gravy boats to the next generation.

To many of us consumers, that Thanksgiving night shopping trip might feel like the perfect antidote to unbearable family time. But there is something to be said for resisting the urge to shop and choosing to be present with our friends and family, if just for a short while.

Kirsten Greenidge is a Boston-area playwright.

Company 1’s associate production manager Kevin Parker has himself a blog.

But beyond that, he wrote a highly entertaining and whip-smart post where he talks about theatre production “in terms of industrial engineering.”  Within the article, Parker discusses the fine line he walks as a production manager between helping to achieve art on stage and the costs required to do so.

Very enjoyable, and highly recommendable read can be found at the link HERE.