Reclaiming Elitism
Thoughtful communities should always value judgment over opinion. Popularity is not a judgment and should never concern anyone thinking about what is beautiful. Push come to shove, I will always encourage what is beautiful over what is popular.
Things I Did Not Write About in 2012, Part 1
As publisher, for the most part I have been happy with our evolving aesthetic and our presentation. As a writer, however, certain things have resisted publication not by design but by oversight or simply through lack of time. While everyone else in the world is assembling fairly meaningless lists about the past year, I figured this would be a good time for a redress.
Loss Machine and the Magic of the Banal
Here, as the magician clearly shows his tricks, the purpose is to prevent the audience from simply falling in love with effects by making the audience pay attention to their cumulative structure. Not “How’d he do that?” but rather, “What will he do next?”
Verbalists Audio: November Reading
Audio recording of the Verbalists storytelling group, recorded live 10 November, 2012.
Back Again…Again: An Interview with The Habit
The Star’s Kelly Dermody recently interviewed The Habit’s Luke Thayer, Jeff Schell and Mark Siano and talked about their creation process, the group’s temporary sojourn to Los Angeles, and what their future is going to look like.
In Memoriam: Tristan Devin
Kelly Dermody mourns the loss of local comedian and entrepreneur, Tristan Devin.
Landscape of the Body: The Limits of Pastiche
John Guare’s plays were po-mo before po-mo was the American theater’s default setting. They revel in pop culture references. They erase the line between reality and the phony “hyperreality” promoted every day in the media. His approach to the material is that so beloved of deconstructionists everywhere: pastiche. The difficulty in staging this pastiche is that the play often threatens to turn into pure chaos.
Amarillo y El Dorado: Teatro Línea de Sombra Bring It at On the Boards
The desire to be somewhere better is indigenous to the human race. There are probably at least a myriad of clichés about how “the grass is greener” and it is certainly common to wish one were somewhere else. When life is relatively stable, this desire to find greener pastures is a luxury. When life is chaos, this desire is no longer a luxury but a thirst for life.
Odin’s Horse and the Lehrstück ohne Lehre
In our post-Bush era, political theater is increasingly rare. In our remote, cozy and often smug city of Seattle it is rarer still. Anything encouraging Americans to get together in a group to solve problems is a general anathema. Stereotypes have hardened. Dialogue is emotional and without sense. Issues are treated not as matters to solve by consensus but rather to be solved by fiat. It is no wonder discussion feels polarized.
The Skriker: The Bitch is Back
Caryl Churchill is renown for not talking about the meaning of her plays in public. A positive result of this reticence is that her plays retain their complexity as works of art. A negative result is that there is a lot of pure rubbish written about them.
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