We’re all dealing with a new normal. Life as it was has changed in both the theatre and the streets of your city. Will the closeness we once felt still be there?
Christopher Salazar, Caro Zeller, and Gabriela Fernandez-Coffey in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival production of The Copper Children. Photo by Jenny Graham.
Jul 28, 2020
“I'm still hopeful. I still believe.” That’s Candrice Jones, whose play Flex was set to premiere at Actors Theatre of Louisville’s storied Humana Festival on March 20, 2020. Her first major professional production in one of the season’s most visible new play festivals was canceled just days before it began.
Illustration: Ian Sklarsky for The Dramatist
Jul 24, 2020
It is a distinct pleasure to write the Season in Review for the Northern California region: in part because it is an opportunity to acknowledge both artists and theaters, and in part because the number of new works being produced in Northern California is heartening (not to mention inspiring).
Shotgun Players' production of Far Far Better Things
Jul 28, 2020
Amid the present pandemic’s frightful statistics and sheltering mandates; amid the face masks, six-foot intervals, empty shelves, and eager Zoom offerings; amid the panic, financial hardship, and all that anxiety, it’s hard and not a little sad to recall that we did, indeed, have a theatrical season here in Southern California, B.C. – Before Covid – and it was full of sparkling, compelling work, including a number of world premieres, that wowed civilians and dramatists alike.
The IAMA Theatre Company production of Mama Metal
Jul 27, 2020
The July 2 Dramatist LIVE was all about playwright and performer, Charles Busch.
Jul 16, 2020
A couple of years ago, I asked a friend what a Black man should do when he is stopped by a policeman. My friend, a highly ranked police officer, said you should do whatever the officer tells you to do.
Jun 19, 2020
In August of 2019, I was invited to attend a meeting of women playwrights on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in the home of Susan Miller. The purpose of the gathering was to begin to organize as a body to address the ongoing lack of parity for female (and ultimately, female identifying) playwrights over forty years of age in the American theatre.
The executive committee of Honor Roll! L to R: Cheryl Davis, Yvette Heyliger, Sarah Tuft, Lucy Wang, Jacquelyn Reingold, Olga Humphrey, and Cynthia Cooper.
Jun 15, 2020
What is setting? It’s defined as; “the space or type of surroundings where something is positioned or where an event takes place” or “the time and place a play, novel or film is represented as happening.” OK, but there is something starchy, hard, and fast about the definition that I don’t like.
Playwright Charles Fuller. Illustration by Allen Todd Yeager for The Dramatist.
Jun 05, 2020
What is provocation? What does it mean to create work that isn’t so easy to receive? And is there value to that?
Illustration by A.E. Kieren
Jun 04, 2020
The Dramatist LIVE co-host Christine Toy Johnson opened the May 28 installment with the acknowledgment “it’s been a rough week for a lot of people; there’s so much pain and rage.”
Jun 10, 2020
