Category: Performing Arts
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Those “make-em-ups”: 20 years of emerging art from Wing-It Productions
“The spirit of improv itself is the inventive spirit.” —Andrew McMasters
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The Working Artist Series with The Cabiri: Educating the audience
How does one get into aerial arts, anyway? It is no secret that one of the great problems of the performing arts is creating continuity. Not only continuity of style, and not only continuity of tradition, but also continuity of knowledge among practitioners as well…
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The Show Must Go On, Part 3: The Structure and The Stakes
One piece of my self-assigned homework last week was to look at more storytelling guidelines, so I did. This set of storytelling tips on The Moth, hit me hard, especially this part: the stakes of the story need to be clear to you, and to…
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Live! The Realest MC: Posture and Poise
On the surface, Kyle Abraham’s new dance work at On the Boards, Live! The Realest MC, seems to be about gay issues. It is a queer retelling of The Adventures of Pinocchio. The reality, however, is more complex. It is as much about how sex…
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Straight from the Can: Tin Can Studio serves up food for the soul and then some
In keeping with her art’s humble origins, Hayes and her husband Michael White Hayes drew their new art space’s moniker from a similar pool. “We were very deliberate about choosing the name Tin Can Studio. A tin can is a simple, common thing but it’s…
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The Working Artist: Spotlight on the Cabiri – Behind the Scenes
Many people watch pseudo-documentary work such as Behind the Music with the Latest Lame Boy Band and the like. But even those quasi-real glimpses at the artist’s life reek of antiseptic. Yes, they occasionally contain elements of soap opera and other things to please the…
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An Interview with the Solo Performance Festival’s Keira McDonald
The Star’s José Amador sits down to talk with Keira McDonald, the Solo Performance Festival founder and curator, about her role within the festival and in guiding new artists through the creative process; as well as what lies beneath her decision to leave her leadership…
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The Show Must Go On, Part 2: The Story We Tell Ourselves
I’ve signed up to do a storytelling show, though I’m not a natural storyteller. I pitched my story because being in a show sounds like fun. Because oral storytelling is a skill that I want to learn as a writer. Because I used to be…
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Seattle Public Theater’s Back Back Back
In order to review Back Back Back, a play about three baseball players who struggle with the decision to use steroids, we appropriately sent a baseball fan with some knowledge of the issues at hand. That baseball fan also happened to be Star theater critic,…
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Death, Sex: Election Season
In an espoused effort to direct attention to the talents of playwrights, the nine ten-minute plays that comprise Balagan Theatre’s shorts festival, Death, Sex: Election Season, draw from one pool of eleven actors, each of whom portrays several roles in the evening. Similarly, in further…