Recent Essays

All theater is local. That is what is inspiring and instructive about the National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere, as opposed to the notion of a "national tour.” In the case of "Yankee Tavern", this is a very political play (hidden inside a thriller structure) and so the politics of each city/community were engaged in differing ways. I was most strongly involved in the productions at Florida Stage and Curious Theatre Company—but followed the feedback in the other theaters as well. All of this info was crucial to me when I then directed a subsequent production at ACT Theatre in Seattle.

Smell can instigate imagination because it sparks multiple visceral possibilities. Our brain takes in a smell, and connects it to a collage of memories logged from the past. And in that collage of memories the audience member’s imagination is set off.

If we truly want Los Angeles theater to grow and provide more jobs that pay, let’s examine what that will take. Help from the unions is certainly part of it, but the idea that tightening restrictions is a panacea for what ails us demonstrates a profound lack of understanding of what the problems really are. We need community awareness. We need much more support from local funders. We need to produce the kind of theater that makes us a vital and necessary part of the community and we need to get the community out to see that what we do is vital.

Jonathan Mandell writes about the intimacy of Scenes From A Marriage, Love Letters, This is Our Youth, and I Am Me

In 1999, I arrived in LA in a Ryder truck with the contents of several friends’ apartments and the unit set for a play we had just successfully produced together in Chicago. We remounted our play—largely unnoticed by audiences or press—in a fifty-seat space on theater row that never saw a sold out crowd. We were all in our early twenties. I don’t recall our non-Equity cast of six (which included me) ever discussing the possibility of getting paid.

Alan Berks offers an overview of the history of MinnesotaPlaylist.

Circus artists Ember Flynne and Michael "Mooch" Mucciolo discuss their work as professional fire performers in Boston, and shed some light on what it takes to succeed in the business.

Truthfully, as a Los Angeles-based theater artist working almost entirely under the 99-seat agreement, at a certain point I just gave up on earning my Equity card, and the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC) wasn’t popping up on my radar. While I may not currently carry a union card in my wallet, I do take great pride in how I am following in my grandfather’s footsteps. We both pursued our passion to craft and share stories, and simultaneously held careers working in the arts to pay the bills.

He fought two guys; beat the crap out of them. And I looked around, and everybody had just stopped training.. And I thought: oh, my god, this is the show. There’s that magnetic presence of the ring.

Albuquerque, New Mexico: We have a varied company, and we’re always looking to put on kick ass plays. It’s pretty cool that we have a company where any of our actresses could play Hamlet. And not like, “Female Hamlet”, but you know, Hamlet. Or where people of different races play siblings, without comment or explanation, and our audiences don’t bat an eye.