The Show Must Go On, Part 4: Off the Page
My plan was to write a draft of the story, and then cut and adapt the scenes. But all things work together for good, at least in this case. Before I spiral much further into angst or research or other forms of writerly avoidance and overthink-age, my producer asked if we could meet to run through the story and workshop it.
Annex Theatre’s Team of Heroes: Behind Closed Doors: Biff! Klertch! Sigh.
Team of Heroes: Behind Closed Doors, now in production at Annex Theatre, is the second part of a proposed trilogy that aims to bring the excitement of comic books on stage with a mix of humor and pathos. Unfortunately, the plays have so far leaned toward zany and wacky comedy, while paying lip service to pathos and drama.
Apology
I apologize for finding this dog to shadow
you even as you pace the attic from desk
to window, you and he, a pair now, contemplating
those tough computer programming issues
at which dogs notoriously shine.
Those “make-em-ups”: 20 years of emerging art from Wing-It Productions
“The spirit of improv itself is the inventive spirit.” —Andrew McMasters
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 as among audiences. For quite sometime in Seattle it has been fashionable among theater artists to talk about educating their audiences. The goal is noble but difficult.
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 the audience. Good news, then. Just by writing last week’s post, I figured out another piece of of why this story’s been tricky. I hadn’t identified the stakes of the story yet. Bad news: I didn’t know what the stakes were yet.
Tell Me the Hurt Thing
Push number four because the stairs are murder: a crooked rattle-
snake spine, windows painted shut, walls twice papered over,
built into catacombs you’re sure they know by heart: busted hall
lights & pitch dark landings, cul-de-sacs colored a murderous
blood-red.
Sandbox Radio IV: The Chase
With its delicate balance of music, pathos and humor Sandbox Radio’s director Leslie Law does much to honor radio programming of the past kept familiar by the likes of Prairie Home Companion, but this project brings to its audience so much more. Sandbox Radio pulls nary a punch and for many answers the question of what, precisely, audio theater will sound like in the future?
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 roles, gender and homosexuality are framed largely by the context of race as it is about individual struggle and acceptance. This brings up other questions of race, of course, but in ways that most of the critics of dance and theater–who tend to be white and largely bourgeois–do not care to grasp because such a discussion, too, would prove reality more complex than currently fashionable when it seems easier to reduce it to psychodrama.
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