Category: Theater

• September 2, 2016

  Further Thoughts on Creating a Productive Class-Rehearsal Room

  By virtue of the fact that, at many colleges, students can earn credit by being in theater productions, academia has cultivated a strange, liminal space that is both a classroom and a rehearsal room. I’ve been hired a number of times to direct students in a production, teaching them as I go what is expected of…
• August 26, 2016

  A Safe Space to Be Unsafe

  The University of Chicago made news by telling its incoming students not to expect trigger warnings or safe spaces, and not to bother petitioning the administration to disinvite problematic speakers. Responses have varied from “good for them!” to “how authoritarian!” In between sweeping bans on a major component of campus culture and the sweeping fear…
• April 17, 2016

  Lynn Nottage Talks Research, Collaboration, and the Fracturing of America,

  Originally published by Howlround on January 28, 2016 Lynn Nottage’s newest play, Sweat, a co-commission by Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) and Arena Stage, originated in OSF’s American Revolutions: The United States History Cycle. Nottage’s contribution to this ten-year program of commissioning “up to thirty-seven new plays from moments of change in United States history” deals…
• December 15, 2015

  Women’s Voices Theater Festival: A Weekend in the Emerald City

  Originally published by HowlRound on November 10, 2015 This piece is a follow up to an earlier preview of the Women’s Voices Theater Festival. Read the original piece here. Was it Oz? Well, it took me about as long to recover from my weekend in DC as I imagine it took Dorothy to settle back…
• December 14, 2015

  Something is Afoot in DC

  Originally published by HowlRound on October 7, 2015 HowlRound readers and social media revolutionaries may remember an event that occurred in our nation’s capital in February 2014 that became quickly known as the Summit. Convened by Washington Post critic Peter Marks around the issue of gender inequity in theatre, a panel of metro-area artistic directors…
• December 14, 2015

  Comedy of Errors

  by William Shakespeare Saratoga Shakespeare Company, 2015 photos by Madison Caan costumes by Joan Lawson        
• December 14, 2015

  American Medea

  written and directed by Holly L. Derr Skidmore College, Fall 2014 sets by Garret Wilson lighting by Jared Klein costumes by Patricia Pawliczak  
• October 7, 2015

  Beyond the Aristocratic Theater

   (This post was part of the blog salon curated by Jacqueline E. Lawton for the 2015 TCG National Conference: Game Change, originally published in June, 2015. The following questions informed the final plenary session, “Artistic Leadership: How We Change the Game.”) JACQUELINE LAWTON: What was the most game-changing production you’ve seen or created, and why? HOLLY L. DERR: The…
• October 7, 2015

  Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ An Octoroon

  Originally published by HowlRound on March 26, 2015 Dion Boucicault’s The Octoroon, first presented in New York in 1859, bears more than a striking resemblance to its better-known stage sister, George Aiken’s adaptation of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which premiered in 1852. Both plays, in their attempts to create sympathy for slaves while also…
• January 13, 2015

  Oh, THAT Play

  This is hilarious: Oh, THAT Play. via Oh, THAT Play.