Aesthetics

Writers and directors such as Robert Wilson, María Irene Fornes, Richard Foreman, Caryl Churchill, Elizabeth LeCompte, Judith Malina, Julian Beck, Peter Brook, Ed Bullins, and Joseph Chaikin challenged our notions of space and duration, meaning and eventfulness, theatricality and chance. They revolutionized our sense of what a play might be. That was their revolution. What is our avant-garde?

Some might point out that Noh lacks the excess of Gothic. There is no visual, aural, or excess of story, but one cannot deny the emotional excesses of the tortured soul, the ecstatic god, the deranged woman. The emotional excess in Noh is so restrained that it feels, somehow, more Gothic than, say, the ravings of a mad scientist.

Jonathan Mandell looks at the 2013-2014 Broadway season and the six productions which featured men cross-dressing

Who is allowed to draw on cultural tradition in a creative process and still be considered a “contemporary” artist? When does something become “heritage” or “tradition” and what attains status or gains cultural currency? Through this first "Innovate Heritage: Conversations between Arts and Heritage" conference in Berlin, Germany, with nearly forty speakers and artists from over thirty countries, we hope to open dialogue around some of these issues and many more that continue to expand, reconnect and inspire us.

So "Noh" is generally a move from praxis to peace, an elegant elision of motive to arrive at what has happened and what always happens.

Alice Stanley Jr writes about three site-specific and interactive and/or immersive theatrical experiences.

This week's conversation topic is "Bringing New Genres to Theater: Sci-fi, Anime, Geek, Fantasy, Steampunk…" and will be moderated by Kelley Holley @Kelley_Holley—who like all of our moderators, authors, and content producers—self-selected to peer-produce on this commons-based platform! This hour-long Howl will take place on Thursday, May 29 on hashtag #newplay at 11am PDT (Vancouver) / 1pm CDT (Austin) / 2pm EDT (Toronto) / 18:00 GMT / 7pm BST (London).

Srila Nayak reviews the American Repertory Theater’s production of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and highlights how the production uses music, color-consious-casting, spectacle, and stage-magic.

I was young, knew nothing and was impressionable. I remember being fond of Yuriko’s direction. She would say things like, “go forward from here” while pointing to her heart. No one had ever given me direction like that before. That first play was the beginning of my romance with Noh (performed in Japan since the thirteenth-century, it’s the world’s oldest, continually performed, masked lyric drama) and I fell hard.

The Unicorn Theatre in Kansas City, Missouri, prides itself on producing “bold new plays,” under artistic director Cynthia Levin. The 2013-2014 season has been somewhat of a “dream” season for the Unicorn staff—“full of the best contemporary theater in America,” said Levin. As the literary assistant and dramaturg, I have the joy and privilege of digging into the scripts selected for the season. Not only are the plays new plays, many that are fresh out of New York, and world premieres, but also several of them have something else in common: war. While war is not new, the new season of plays in Kansas eloquently captures our era of endless war both open and covert.

Eric Bass provides insight into the art of puppet theatre. 

This week's conversation topic is "Curtain Calls & Curtain Speeches: Why, How, and When Do You Do It?" and will be moderated by Annie Paladino @anniepaladino and Zhenya Lavy @ZhenyaLavy—who like all of our moderators, authors, and content producers—self-selected to peer-produce on this commons-based platform! This hour-long Howl will take place on Thursday, May 15 on hashtag #newplay at 11am PDT (Vancouver) / 1pm CDT (Austin) / 2pm EDT (Toronto) / 18:00 GMT / 7pm BST (London).

Srila Nayak shares an overview of Pulitzer prize-winning dramatist Ayad Akhtar's career. 

We usually consider a fight choreographer’s job to be staging the fights so that they are safe. Certainly safety is essential: actors should not be getting hurt in the exercise of their art. But a violence designer is far more than a mere “safety foreman.” Like any other artist working in the theater, the violence designer’s primary role is doing interpretive work: making choices that help tell the story. Not the story of Hamlet, but the story of this Hamlet: that is to say, the story that this production of Hamlet is telling.

We cannot be preoccupied before or during a show with differences of race, class, sexuality, etc., and assume because of these differences the lives of those we see before us are foreign territory. When we do that, we rob ourselves of what might be a beautiful and transformative experience if only we give it a chance. Instead we should keep an open mind and find the human connecting points. When we do that, we’ll find that deep down, we are more alike than we are different.

But maybe the reason I obsess over sports is because of how very different they are from what I have chosen to do. In sports, there’s the illusion of fairness and opportunity. Not so much with theater—Chekhov isn’t fair. The biz doesn’t always offer opportunities. Whereas in every sporting event the outcome isn’t decided, it’s still up in the air, it’s still up to the players. I’d like that to be true of every play. Maybe Othello will change his mind, maybe the cherry orchard won’t be sold. But he always goes through it, the tree always falls, I know the end.

Jonathan Mandell looks at reocurring devices and techniques of spectacle in Broadway productions.

What make theater Jewish? This strikes me as just as complex a query as, “What makes a person Jewish?” or, for that matter, “What makes theater?”

The idea that there are profound plays of political content, and then there are “relationship plays” is an attitude I have encountered many times in many places. It seems to me that there is this idea that theater must be political theater, because we, in our cushioned Occidental culture, have determined that diversity is a political issue, not a tool through which to be inclusive and explore humanity…right?

This week's conversation topic is "How Universal is Your Writing?" and will be moderated by Ross Howard @rhplaywright and Samuel French, Inc. @mrsamuelfrench—who like all of our moderators, authors, and content producers—self-select to peer-produce on this commons-based platform! This hour-long Howl will take place on Thursday, February 27 on hashtag #newplay at 11am PST (Vancouver) / 1pm CST (Austin) / 2pm EST (New York) / 7:00pm GMT (London) / 8pm CET (Berlin). On Thursday, get heard in the conversation by searching for #newplay in Twitter (sort by “all”) and by putting “#newplay” somewhere in your messages. Spread the word!

Summer Banks offers an overview of eco-theatre and talks about her experience watching Katie Mitchell's production of Atmen.

Bethany Lynn Corey offers a reflection and insight on the benefits of visual theatre.