California

Theater for students of color is needed in the University: to speak about these issues and at the same time to break the “Berkeley Bubble” by showing that issues students study about in their classes—including, race, class and gender—have a real impact on campus life.

Holly L. Derr writes about SCRC's 2014 Pacific Playwrights Festival, and the goals of the organization's new play development initative.

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.

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.

Lily Janiak discusses the world premiere of Stuart Eugene Bousel's adaptation of Rat Girl, a memior by Kristin Hersh, lead singer of Throwing Muses.

Holly L. Derr gives an overview of new and professionally-tied graduate theatre programs in Los Angeles.

Sara Guerrero shares the process and successes behind South Coast Repertory’s Hispanic Playwrights Project, a bilingual theatre project to gather and tell the stories of the Santa Ana Latino community.

Playwrights Julie Marie Myatt and José Cruz González discuss South Coast Repertory's Dialogue/Diálogos project, which features the stories of more than 700 residents of the Santa Ana community.

Kelly Miller offers insight on how the South Coast Repertory has supported and engaged with playwrights to develop compelling theatre in Orange County. 

foolsFURY is a theater ensemble from San Francisco that sees advantages in working with playwrights and devisors, and seizes opportunities to become a touring company. As they come up on their fifteenth year, artistic director Ben Yalom sheds some light on their transitions, and lets me in on how they are working toward what is next artistically and financially.

When Joseph Campbell spoke of the power of myth he didn’t have LA stage actors in mind. Yet a powerful and prevailing myth has spread for years in theater centers throughout the country about why actors do theater in Los Angeles. The legend claims that LA actors are somehow less serious and do theater only to be seen by casting directors in “the Industry” and not for the art of the work. This is simply not true.

 looks at how Magic Theatre's initative for young theatre-goes went beyond a discount, and how the premiere of Taylor Mac's Hir at the Magic complemented their earlier production of Buried Child.

Los Angeles Theatre Center Encuentro: A Festival of National Latina/o Theatre will be held October 12-November 10 2014 and will feature ten companies from around the country, presenting their work in repertory over the course of the Festival. During the day, the companies will work together to share artistic practice and methodology which will culminate the final weekend of the Festival with public performance(s) of the co-created new work.

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?”

Holly L. Derr writes about how various playwrights have gotten hired from non-TV writing, and the diversity initatives drawing in new talent.