Encuentro 2014 at the The Los Angeles Theatre Center
#CafeOnda
Saturday 18 October through Monday 10 November 2014
Los Angeles, CA, United States
The Los Angeles Theatre Center in association with the Latinx Theatre Commons (LTC) proudly presented Encuentro 2014: A National Latina/o Theatre Festival livestreamed on the global, commons-based peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv from Saturday 18 October through Monday 10 November 2014.
Participate in The Latinx Theatre Commons Second National Convening Nov. 6-9 at the Los Angeles Theatre Center's Encuentro 2014
17 October 2014
The 2014 Latinx Theatre Commons Second National Convening at Los Angeles Theatre Center's Encuentro 2014 runs November 6-9, 2014 and is open to all theatermakers, artists, scholars, administrators, and advocates with an interest in Latina/o theater (or the New American Theater). If you plan to come to any Convening events, please RSVP here no later than November 1, 2014.
Leslie Odom Jr. And His Three Rules for “Getting Into The Room” as a Professional Performer
16 October 2014
1.) Never wait for permission to practice your art. You cannot wait to get a job to be an artist. 2.) Study your art. Never stop studying. 3.) Find a spiritual practice that works for you.
Haley Honeman writes about The Kirkbride Cycle, a site-specific musical performed at Fergus Fall State Hospital, a deinstitutionalized asylum in Minnesota.
A Discussion about Telecommunications for Performance
Monday 13 October 2014
New York, NY, United States
CultureHub presented Staging the Network: A Discussion about Telecommunications for Performance livestreamed on the global, commons-based peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Monday 13 October at 6:30 p.m. EDT (New York) / 11:30 p.m. BST (London) / 22:30 GMT / 5:30 p.m. CDT (Austin) / 3:30 p.m. PDT (Vancouver) / Tuesday, October 14 at 9:30 a.m. AEDT (Sydney).
What I Learned from Not Rehearsing Shakespeare Plays
13 October 2014
I offered to cut "Henry IV, Part One" down to ninety minutes, schedule two rehearsals and one performance, and find a part for anyone who wanted to participate. Eighteen actors jumped on board, and I was determined to not direct them in this play.
"All Our Tragic," adapted and directed by Sean Graney and produced by The Hypocrites at the Den Theatre in Chicago, features all thirty-two surviving Greek tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides compiled into a single twelve-hour epic. It includes seven intermissions of varying lengths and a vegan feast of Mediterranean food is served throughout. The result is rather like a contemporary version of a Dionysian festival.
It was clear from the first gathering on September 30, 2013 that this was not going to be your typical playwriting class. It was not about process, but ontology. It was specifically designed to demystify the writing process by encouraging everyone’s personal creativity.
Linda Mary Montano as Mother Teresa, An Endurance Performance Piece Hosted
Wednesday 8 October 2014
Austin, TX, United States
The VORTEX presented Linda Mary Montano appears as Mother Teresa for three nights of endurance performance at The VORTEX in Austin, Texas livestreamed on the global, commons-based peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Wednesday 8 October at 3 p.m. PDT / 5 p.m. CDT / 6 p.m. EDT. In Twitter, use #howlround and follow @VORTEXonManor.
I was inspired to believe in the power of the arts to mobilize people and sway emotions and opinions and build community in ways that petitions and protests couldn’t. I decided that I could use my skills to pro-actively organize through and for the arts, and became an intern at the Painted Bride and have been with Asian Arts Initiative since then as it has grown into an independent multi-disciplinary community arts center.
Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days at The Theatre @ Boston Court, Pasadena
7 October 2014
Brighde Mullins writes about Andrei Belgrader's production of Samuel Beckett's Happy Days, and then zooms out to discuss the sucess of Beckett's work in post-Katrina New Orleans and San Quentin prison.
Home is not a shared skin tone, language, religion, location, orientation, or political sensibility, though those all play a small role. It’s a sense of history, of being known thoroughly, not just for who you are, but for who you were and who you will be; not just the good, but also the occasionally ugly. It’s the place where people want the best for me, even as I sometimes drive them crazy. It’s the place where I'm not thinking about you or about me, but about us, the house, the whole thing.
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.
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.
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.
Musical Theatre Writers Talk with Andy Einhorn, Ted Chapin, and Michael Korie
Saturday 27 September 2014
New Hope, PA
Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, Pennsylvania presented a new musicals talk-back livestreamed on the global, commons-based peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Saturday 27 September at 11:30 a.m. EDT / 10:30 a.m. CDT / 8:30 a.m. PDT / 15:30 GMT / 4:30 p.m. BST. Featuring the creative teams of String and Thanks: Andy Einhorn, Ted Chapin and Michael Korie. Moderated by Bucks County Playhouse’s Executive Producer Robyn Goodman. In Twitter, use @TheaterBCP and #howlround for Q&A.
I could certainly choose not to work at a lot of small theaters. I could also try and negotiate higher rates. I have done both. But I like to work with good theater artists. It’s hard to say no to a good director or to a good script. As a Los Angeles theater artist, it is almost impossible to not work in 99-seat theater.
Despite profound decentering from its source, Cuban theater has had a consistent representation in Miami. Mirrored by a repertoire of embodied theatrical practices, Cuban theater constitutes an important system of knowing and transmitting knowledge about Cuban culture. Using its own positioning, these epistemologies, in conjunction with actor’s training have gone unrecognized; yet, they have survived expatriation in the midst of divergent perspectives on both how to perform theater as knowledge, as well as how to generate knowledge through theater. Sainetes (or one- act farces), musical comedies, zarzuelas, and serious dramas in particular, are the fabric of this historically and culturally specific communicative process. Overall, the retention of the art form and the formation and maturity of Miami’s exiled actors has depended on the Cuban modern theater performed in exile.
Racism and the Production of Plays that Joke about Race
25 September 2014
Stephen Quigley writes about a production of Avenue Q in South Carolina, and what arises when producing a musical which tackles race outside of its original premiere and setting: New York City.