Massachusetts

Deborah Stein and Suli Holum share their inspirations behind creating The Wholehearted.

In this installment of the Disability in Theatre series, Kevin Becerra interviews Adina Tal, Founder and Artisitc Director of  Nalaga’at Center in Tel Aviv, on her production of Not by Bread Alone. 

The Wheelock Family Theatre, Boston was started by four people: Andrea Genser, Susan Kosoff, Jane Staab, and Tony Hancock. The mission of the theatre was to make a professional theater that would be accessible to everyone, with a multicultural cast, with black, yellow, white, green people. When you start defining people by color, just pull in green and blue and orange, like the Muppets. We just want to widen our embrace. The priority was to be affordable, but from the start, we would always have a show that was interpreted. That was in 1981, and we worked with a lot of people to make that happen. Audio description started around 1990 at Imagination Stage, and Wheelock Family Theatre was drawn to it, as we wanted to cast a wider net, and include blind people.

We did "Pippi", and we had American Sign Language interpretation every weekend. This is because Wendy Lement, the producer at Wheelock, directed the play herself, and wanted the interpreters to be integrated with the cast. They were signing performers, rather than interpreters. They were each assigned a character in the cast, had their own blocking, and dressed to blend in onstage. "Pippi" was unusual in that the interpreters/sign performers rehearsed with the cast from day one until the opening night. They started from scratch, not knowing who the characters are, and worked alongside the cast to develop them. (This interview was conducted in ASL, and was translated and edited by Ariel Baker-Gibbs.)

HowlRound is working with playwright residency sites around the country to track the impact of what it means to have a playwright on staff. At each of the fourteen theaters we have a Commons Producer—a theater practitioner from the local community working with the theater and the playwright to tell the story of each residency and make the learning from this experiment accessible as it's happening. Periodically we will post these residency updates on HowlRound in the hopes that it will be useful to field-wide learning on the question of what it means to employ playwrights inside of theaters.

Allison Vanouse continues her look at productions from university students in Boston. In this post she reviews Steven Berkoff's adaptation of Kafka's Metamorphosis, directed by Elaine Vaan Hogue

I have been making apple scones / For a friend who died / Doug, my neighbor, whose last name / I don’t know

Allison Vanouse looks at student theatre — which is infrequently reviewed — choosing to critique Conspiracy (an adaptation of the 2001 HBO film), from the Harvard Radcliffe Dramatic Club.

Allison Vanouse reviews the 2013 Actor's Shakespeare Project production of Romeo and Juliet, directed by Allyn Burrows and Bobbie Steinbach at the Strand Theatre in Dorchester.

Allison Vanouse writes about the work of Shen Wei, and the modern semiotics of the lift in dance.

Allison Vanouse writes about Pere Ubu, and how their experimental rock channels the ghost of Ubu Roi.

Ariel Baker-Gibbs reviews Tribes, and wonders who the play about deaf culture is speaking to: deaf audeinces, or the hearing audiences who are fascinated by them?

Allison Vanouse writes about Disney Theatrical Enterprise's approach to theatermaking, and how high art and children's theater meet in their regional theater collaboration: The Jungle Book.