Tag Archives: representation

Link Roundup! – 6/10/16

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!

♦♦♦♦♦

A promotional photo from Profiles’s 2003 production of Blackbird. Darrell W. Cox starred as a Gulf War veteran spending Christmas with his girlfriend, a heroin-addicted former stripper./ PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: READER STAFF; PHOTO: “WAYNE KARL”

Chicago Reader has a feature about Profiles Theatre, detailing a long history of abuse and reckless behavior toward actors:

But something troubling was occurring behind the scenes of Killer Joe, something that was part of a long-standing pattern of abusive conditions at Profiles for nearly two decades. In extensive interviews conducted over the past year, more than 30 former Profiles cast and crew members described in disturbingly similar terms what they suffered or witnessed while working at the theater. They alleged that, since the 1990s, Cox has physically and psychologically abused many of his costars, collaborators, unpaid crew members, and acting students, some of whom also became romantically involved with Cox while under his supervision at the theater. Others in key roles in the theater, they say, did little if anything to stop it or turned a blind eye altogether. Although the source material Profiles favored was often violent and misogynistic, the quality of its shows and the critical acclaim they garnered—coupled with a culture of fear and silence that developed inside the theater—allowed bad behavior to flourish behind the scenes, unbeknownst to audiences or the media.

♦♦♦♦♦

The Huntington Theatre announced, as reported by the Boston Globe, the deal that will allow them to keep their space on Huntington Ave:

Michael Maso, managing director of the Huntington Theatre, said that under the terms of the agreement with the development group QMG Huntington, LLC, which purchased the three buildings for $25 million, the Huntington will be responsible for restoring the theater, which will abut a new mixed-use development that comprises both retail and residential units.

“We have a great deal of planning to do, and then we will have a great deal of money to raise,” said Maso, who estimated the theater company will need between $60 million to $70 million. “We can and we will fulfill the vision that this agreement makes possible.”

Continue reading →

Link Roundup! – 6/3/16

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!

♦♦♦♦♦

Aneesh Sheth, MJ Kaufman, Shakina Nayfack and Kate Bornstein (Photos by Eric McNatt, taken on location at The Covenant House headquarters.)

Playbill has a great interview with several trans artists talking about representation in theatre:

The American theatre has always been at the forefront of social movements. We were the first to have interracial relations onstage, well before they were acceptable on television or film. Same with same-sex relationships. But then it feels like, in terms of mainstream and commercial theatre and trans stories—it seems like we’re behind. Why do you think that is?

TD: There is the money issue—you’re asking theatres to take a risk and to get educated. All that requires time, money and capacity. You might have to break westernized theatre protocols to educate your front-of-house staff about gender neutral bathrooms or take your ushers aside and teach them how to engage with someone who’s gender neutral.
MJK: I think it’s happening at the fringe and smaller levels. I hope that one day actors get cast in a role because they’re right for the role and they’re good actors. Not because of their gender identity.
BM: I think safety is still an issue. There is a risk involved with visibility, as trans people are still facing violence and harassment. I also feel like there are still biases that almost all marginalized theatremakers face from financiers or venue owners who have their own personal disinterests in our stories or believe that our projects won’t attract a profitable audience.

♦♦♦♦♦

The New York Times has a feature on The Sol Project:

The Sol Project, a new initiative to raise the profile of Latino artists in theater, will make its debut in November with Hilary Bettis’s play “Alligator,” presented with the company New Georges.

The initiative plans to partner with 12 Off Broadway companies to produce one play per season. So far six companies have been announced: New Georges, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, the Public Theater, Labyrinth Theater Company, Atlantic Theater Company and Women’s Project Theater.

Continue reading →

Link Roundup! – 5/6/16

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!

♦♦♦♦♦

Photo By Dahlia Katz

Now Toronto features an article about intimacy choreographers, who help design staged relationships the way a fight choreographer would design moments of violence:

“Some people would say, ‘Well, that’s just acting,’” Sina says, “but it really helps actors establish intimacy quickly and safely if they have techniques to help them find chemistry in the rehearsal process. They’re really effective in helping build relationships onstage – and not just sexual ones.”

Good directors will help the cast establish bonds of trust and mutual respect before attempting to stage difficult material, but with rehearsal periods getting shorter before shows open, actors can find themselves locking lips or exposing themselves or others with a bare minimum of preparation.

♦♦♦♦♦

HowlRound has a report on non-profit internships with a write up by Molly Marinik:

Those whose paid internships did not sufficiently cover their monthly expenses made ends meet in a variety of ways: by living with family, sleeping on friends’ couches, getting part-time jobs when time allowed, using savings, and receiving assistance from family. A handful signed up for food stamps, and some of the theatres even suggested this to the interns as a viable solution. It strikes me as ironic that federal arts funding in the United States is minimal compared with other leading nations, yet through other furtive methods the government winds up subsidizing artists anyway. But that’s another conversation.

Continue reading →

Link Roundup! – 9/25/15

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!

♦♦♦♦♦

Joy Mead’s great article about unconscious bias for American Theatre is a must-read:

Implicit biases can lead us to interpret plays by female and nonwhite writers through the lens of our stereotypes, which can impair our ability to see them accurately. Scientists who study cognition have found that stereotypes prime us with expectations and assumptions, and then confirmation bias motivates us to focus on anything that confirms our preconceptions and overlook the rest.

There are regular examples of this dynamic in theatre. For example, in a recent Boston Globe review of A. Rey Pamatmat’s Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them at Company One Theatre, critic Jeffrey Gantz wished the Filipino-American characters’ “culture [was] on display” and complained “it seems odd they have no racial problems at school.” Gantz assumed the playwright’s identity was the most relevant context for his work and looked so hard for the play he expected that he missed the one actually before him. Playwright Mike Lew calls this phenomenon the “anthropological gaze,” noting that it can be a serious obstacle to production. “How do you distinguish the singularity of your voice when your voice isn’t really being heard to begin with?” Lew asks.

♦♦♦♦♦

Speaking of A. Rey Pamatmat, his recent 2amt post is also another good read about representation on stage:

If you’re telling me the only way to preserve an enduring work of art is by performing it in a way that is racist and outdated, then you’re telling me that white supremacy is so central to the work that it’s not an enduring piece of art. Enduring art can be revisited and reconceived to speak to people of a different time and in a different context than the ones in which it was created — you know, it can endure. Frankly, I don’t believe white supremacy is so central to the works of Gilbert and Sullivan or to The Mikado specifically that it’s reworking would mean nothing of value would be left in the show. It could be produced in a way that speaks to the broader audience of people that make up New York theatregoers. The most important thing to preserve in The Mikado is not the fact that it was conceived from ideas of white supremacy in a time and place of unchallenged white supremacy. The important things to preserve are catchy tunes and some poo jokes.

Continue reading →

Link Roundup! – 9/18/15

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!

♦♦♦♦♦

Inua Ellams addresses participants in the 2015 London Midnight Run.

In American Theatre, Teresa Eyring talks about the Midnight Run in London:

The brainchild of the London-based Nigerian poet and playwright Inua Ellams, the Midnight Run is now in its 10th year and has been replicated in 4 other cities. In this anniversary year, groups of 30 or more people gathered at theatres in South, North, East, and West London (the Albany, the Roundhouse, the Almeida, and the Bush). Each group was populated with a facilitator and several artists. The facilitators’ jobs were to map out a journey through their assigned sections of London. Artists, who were part of our group, gave workshops along the way. Participants experienced parks, churchyards, secret pathways, and businesses they wouldn’t have otherwise seen—or seen in this manner. Rory Bowens, an assistant studio manager at NTS (Nuts to Soup radio), conducted interviews and captured sounds. A story was broadcast at midnight. Meanwhile, Katie Garrett filmed the experience. Honoring UNESCO’s International Year of Light, 50 percent of the proceeds went to provide sustainable lighting to a women’s center in Senegal.

♦♦♦♦♦

Bitter Gertrude’s game of Racist Art Apologia Bingo is worth reading in light of another maddening casting controversy, this involving The New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players’ production of The Mikado:

The main problem with the “preserving ART” argument is that racism and racist caricatures had one cultural context in the Victorian (or Elizabethan, or Classical, or what you will) era, and have completely different contexts now. Fighting to preserve a racist work as written most often vandalizes that work’s original intent. The racist symbol was created to convey a meaning it can no longer convey. Yellowface can no longer convey the meaning Gilbert originally intended when writing The Mikado because that meaning has been superceded by a modern understanding of yellowface’s inherent racism. Even if you believe the yellowface in The Mikado means “Victorians are racist; isn’t that funny?” it can never mean that to an audience in 2015 because yellowface is read as racist in and of itself, and stomping your feet and insisting that Gilbert’s intent was completely different does exactly nothing to change that.

Continue reading →

Link Roundup! – 7/31/15

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!

♦♦♦♦♦

Two students from the creative:connection project collaborate on a piece of music. Photograph: Create

The Guardian has a story about how theatre and the arts can connect youth with disabilities with non-disabled kids:

National statistics show that 65% of people avoid disabled people because they don’t know how to act around them, while 67% say they feel uncomfortable when talking to a disabled person. A survey by Scope and Mumsnet also found that four in 10 parents said their disabled child rarely or never had the opportunity to socialise with non-disabled children.

This project has been designed to bring disabled and non-disabled students together to create friendships and a shared understanding. Not all communication is verbal – which the creative arts are a great way to show. By encouraging these young people to work together, listen to one another and explore communication through sound, music, art and movement, we’re breaking down some of those social barriers and strengthening bonds between disabled and non-disabled people.

♦♦♦♦♦

This past month, the Globe and Mail has been running a series following the theatre program of a Canadian high school as they rehearse and mount a musical. Parts 1-5 are online now:

After a decade of writing about the art form he loves, critic J. Kelly Nestruck found himself in a moment of crisis. Theatre, it seemed, had grown elitist and out of touch with the country it was supposed to entertain. To renew his faith, he went back to where it all began: high school. But can a group of teens enduring their own struggles prove that theatre is still worth fighting for?

Continue reading →

Link Roundup! – 7/23/15

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!

♦♦♦♦♦

Berkeley Rep’s teen council gathers at a monthly meeting. (Photo by Ben Hanna)

American Theatre Magazine has a story about how regional theatres are using teen programming to change the makeup of their audiences:

Large theatre institutions can seem impenetrable to high schoolers. Narrow programming interests, high ticket costs, and a lack of diversity are just a few of the barriers that can make theatres feel unwelcoming, or worse, irrelevant to teen audiences. So it’s hardly surprising that many theatres are working to break down these walls and integrate teens into their organizations—and not only into their audiences. Through teen council or teen ensemble programs, young folks all over the country are getting hands-on experiences at regional theatres, where they learn all aspects of producing theatre, receive leadership training, and make important contributions to their respective institutions.

♦♦♦♦♦

On her blog, Melissa Hilllman breaks down the issues with the overuse of the word “offended”:

People who are resisting bigotry are often dismissed with the belittling idea that they’re “offended,” as if fighting cultural oppression and the tools with which it creates, disseminates, and preserves that oppression are equivalent to an imaginary schoolmarm shocked at finding the word “fuck” carved into a desk. No, we are not “offended.” We’re fighting bigotry, and it’s belittling to pretend it’s just about offending our personal, delicate sensibilities.

Continue reading →

Link Roundup! – 7/10/15

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!

♦♦♦♦♦

CityLab’s recent report on the Martin Prosperity Institute’s project to map connections between cities, inequality, and creative economies around the world is fascinating and has some great maps of the data:

Capitalism is in transition. It’s pulling away from its previous industrial model to a new one based on creativity and knowledge. In place of the natural resources and large-scale industries that powered the economies of previous centuries, economic growth today turns on knowledge, innovation, and talent. In a new report released Wednesday, my Martin Prosperity Institute colleagues Charlotta Mellander and Karen King and I evaluate 139 nations worldwide on their ability to compete and prosper in this new, creativity-powered knowledge economy.

♦♦♦♦♦

Buzzfeed’s post highlighting the work of Dylan Marron and his Tumblr Every Single Word is a stark look at how far the film industry still has to go before POC are represented equally on screen.

The Every Single Word series urges people to question why movies with such universal themes so frequently feature white protagonists. Marron wants the audience to come up with their own conclusions about the lack of diversity in Hollywood after watching the clips. “I present these cuts without comment and without embellishment,” he said. “As the volume of videos keeps getting bigger, a pattern will emerge. When you lay out patterns in front of people, they speak much louder than any megaphone rant.”

Continue reading →

Link Roundup! – 7/3/15

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!

♦♦♦♦♦

Photo: Adam Chandler

HuffPost Arts & Culture has a great roundup of ways that the arts are helping the community in Charleston, NC heal in the wake of the shooting at the Emanuel AME Church:

“People use creativity to make sense of all of this. They use the arts to express these deep emotions of sorrow and pain and loss,” Zommer said. “The arts can do that. They can help us heal.” From designers and dancers in Charleston’s tight-knit creative community to musicians who live hundreds of miles away, artists have addressed the killings. Their work…shows how art helps us survive and strengthen amid tragedy.

♦♦♦♦♦

Medium is featuring an illustrated guide to the Creative Advantage program in Seattle, a program designed to boost arts education in the city:

Continue reading →

Link Roundup! – 6/19/15

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!

♦♦♦♦♦

There have been a lot of eloquent and heart-wrenching responses in the wake of the Emanuel AME church shooting that killed nine people earlier this week, and NPR has a round-up of a few to get you started, like this one from Huffington Post Black Voices writer Julia Craven:

Racism is not a mental illness. Unlike actual mental illnesses, it is taught and instilled. Mental illness was not the state policy of South Carolina, or any state for that matter, for hundreds of years — racism was. Assuming actions grounded in racial biases are irrational not only neutralizes their impact, it also paints the perpetrator as a victim.

♦♦♦♦♦

Everyday Feminism does a great job breaking down what’s wrong with cultural appropriation:

For many people, barriers like classism, racism, and xenophobia mean they don’t have the right look, language, or position of privilege to earn income with their culturally specific tools – and yet oftentimes, white people can turn those same culturally specific tools into profit, thereby hurting the community they’re borrowing from.

Continue reading →