Holly L. Derr

April 17, 2014

The Perils of Directing While Female

In their pieces, “Women Directors: Language Worth Repeating” and “The Revolution Will Be Systemic: A Response to ‘Women Directors‘,”Jess K. Smith and Hannah Hessel Ratner have started an important conversation about the language that directors use in rehearsal and the extent to which it is gendered. As Ratner pointed out, this is a conversation that’s…

April 16, 2014

Top Girls is Top Notch Feminist Theater

Few women playwrights have garnered as much praise and generated as much controversy as Caryl Churchill. Her work has been called feminist, post-modern, post-colonial, Marxist, experimental, irritating, innovative, ludicrous and brilliant. She has worked with feminist collectives such as Monstrous Regiment and at establishment institutions such as the Royal Court Theatre, where she was the…

March 31, 2014

5 Things I’m Going to Miss About How I Met Your Mother

5. Slap bets, Slapsgiving, and all the other ways we get to see the sexist and manipulative Barney get the shit kicked out of him. 4. The complex narrative structure at the heart of the show: Stories within stories, jokes that continue to pay off season after season, and a complete disruption of the idea…

March 14, 2014

The Myth of the American Theater Pipeline

At a recent summit of DC-area artistic directors, Ryan Rilette of Round House Theatre made a reference to the infamous “pipeline” of new talent that runs from New York and London to America’s regional theaters, claiming that there are not enough plays by women in this pipeline for his theater to produce. The idea of…

March 13, 2014

“Love Alone” Takes on Malpractice, Grief and Gay Rights

‘Tis the season when theaters across the country announce their 2014-2015 seasons. Two plays continue to dominate the boards, just as they did last year: David Ives’ Venus in Fur and Christopher Durang’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. These shows played off-Broadway in 2010 and 2012, respectively, both transferred to Broadway and both…

March 12, 2014

Cuts to Food Stamps Will Make It Even Harder for Americans in Need

Originally posted at In These Times According to the Congressional Budget Office, cuts to America’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—more commonly known as food stamps—contained in the farm bill signed by President Obama last week will harm 850,000 American households. Around 1.7 million people in 15 states will lose an average of $90 a month in…

March 11, 2014

So You Have a Theater Degree

Originally posted at Ms. in the Biz Got your B or MFA from a theater program? Congratulations! Looking at 30 years of consolidated loan payments even as you get further and further away from the training you’re still paying for? Take heart! Your training matters, even in Hollywood. Just ask Winona Ryder, Felicity Huffman, Alison…

March 10, 2014

Binders Full of Women and People-of-Color Playwrights

Originally posted at Ms. Magazine At a recent panel on diversity in Southern California theater, several of the artistic directors on the panel trotted out familiar platitudes about their commitment to diversity, their willingness to challenge their audiences with plays about people that don’t look like them and their desire to build a more diverse…

March 7, 2014

A Feminist Light in the Piazza

Originally posted at Ms. Magazine The great Southern writer Elizabeth Spencer wrote her most famous story, “The Light in the Piazza, ” while living abroad. She had left the small town in which she grew up, Carollton, Miss., on a Guggenheim Fellowship for Italy. There she also wrote The Voice at the Back Door, about race…

March 6, 2014

Dispatches from LALA Land: Double Casting and The Antaeus Company

Originally posted at HowlRound When The Antaeus Company began in 1991, under the auspices of Center Theater Group, the idea was to find a way to maintain a classical theater company within the specific environment of Los Angeles where, for most actors, a living is made through a series of one-day jobs as costars, guest…