Link Roundups feature articles and bits of internet goodness that our dramaturgy team digs up. If you find something you want to send our way, drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter!
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Julissa Rodriguez – Gabriel Garcia Roman
NPR’s feature of photographer Gabriel Garcia Roman’s portraits of queer people of color, inspired by fresco paintings of saints, is so awesome:
The photo series, called “Queer Icons,” evokes the colorful, religious artwork that Roman grew up with. “Because I grew up Catholic in a Mexican community in Chicago, my first introduction to art was religious art,” he says…And because Roman’s subjects are activists and artists who do good for the community, “I wanted to represent them as saints,” he says. He also wanted to capture their pride and their strength. “I wanted them to be warriors — that’s why a lot of them are looking straight at the camera, saying ‘Here I am, and I’m not going to hide.'”
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This Guardian article asks an important question: how would you explain theatre to somebody who’s never been?
There’s been lots of talk recently around the idea that theatre sometimes feels too much like an exclusive club for those who are in the know. Questions are being asked about why so many people think that it’s not for them – something I touched upon in a blog earlier this year. Figures from the Warwick Commission make worrying reading: the wealthiest, best educated and least ethnically diverse 8% of society make up nearly half of live music audiences and a third of theatregoers and gallery visitors…Perhaps what we don’t talk about enough is the pleasure of theatre, how it makes us feel, and why those of us who go frequently love it so much.