Unify the Stage

I just read this blog post in the Guardian from this summer about the secret lives of freelance directors having day jobs.  This is a problem in the US as well. If you're not financially backed in some way, it's almost impossible to be a freelance director. Many of us take many more jobs than we should have, instead of focusing on one project at a time, leading to some less-than-artistically-amazing work. I sometimes ponder what a wonder it is that any spectacular work happens in the theatre. I left my last temp job about five years ago. I was teaching Mon-Thurs and answering phones at an accounting firm on Fridays. The small bump in my monthly income was significant to me at the time. Me and most of my friends have day jobs as college teachers, or on artistic staffs. My mentor, Anna D. Shapiro basically told just those were our options, "name me one director who just lives off of their freelance directing." she challenged me and my grad school cohort. Ther

Leigh Silverman inspires me. She's an incredible director, has a ton of really focused energy, has been wildly successful in her career (directed on Broadway at 31), and she isn't an asshole. In fact, she's been incredibly generous with her time and energy when I've met her or had drinks with her. Her support of other women in the field is an absolute inspiration. So I was thrilled to read this recent interview, which is written beautifully by Victoria Myers  on a website that I'm very glad to have discovered called The Interval: the smart girls' guide to theatricality . Incredible articles, very smart, funny, and about women in the theatre. It's New York focused for the most part, (maybe I should offer to write some Chicago articles?) but it makes me really happy. Other highlights from my reading about directors include: this interview with Lisel Tommy , 7 Women from Theatre History you should know , and 7 more Women from THYSK . This site is going t

"If Theatre could be half as good as HBO, we'd be hitting gold" Simon Stone in the Guardian. 

I just completed reading Margaret Webster: A Life in the Theater by Milly S. Barranger , I purchased it, along with Webster's own books Shakespeare without Tears  and her autobiography:  Don't Put your Daughter on the Stage after hearing about Webster's influential work as a woman director. I haven't read the other two yet, I thought I'd get a background before delving into Webster's own words, and I wasn't disappointed. The book is compelling, readable, and by the end I felt like I had such a picture of Webster's complex and beautiful life. As Barranger says on the final page, "The director's legacy, like the theater, is often dismissed sa ephemeral--as intangible form. Margaret Webster's legacy is lodged in the accomplishment of a pioneering artist, defying time in the work of those artists, especially women, who follow knowingly or otherwise in her footprints." I discovered in this book a connection which made me feel both an und

An amazing woman, director, founder of regional theatre, passed away at 91. Here is a bit about her, read and be inspired: New York Times NPR Washington Post

I wrote this blog post for TCG, about leadership in theatre. You can read it here .

Katie Mitchell is a personal hero of mine, a trailblazing auteur director who is also, *gasp!*, a woman. I often wonder why we have such fantastic male auteur directors and so few female auteurs. I have a lot of theories about it, some of them are too personal to go into here on this blog on this day. That's because I have been known to deconstruct a classic in my time, but I haven't done it often, or often professionally. And so when I wonder this about the world, I also wonder this about myself. Lately, a couple of fabulous articles have come out about Katie Mitchell and her work. I must be honest here, I haven't seen her work, and it's certainly controversial. But here's what inspires me about her: first off, if you read her amazing book THE DIRECTOR'S CRAFT, then you know that she isn't just making up ideas and placing them on her productions, she is doing some serious and deep text analysis to get to her conclusions. The attention to detail in every

Mary really beautifully and simply articulates semiotics in the theater, identifying a definition of theatricality that I found astute as a "visible metaphor that calls attention to itself". It's a great talk.