Category: theatre

“It’s the question of, ‘What do we want straight white men to do that they’re not doing? And what happens when they do that?’ It’s a very current question. Because being a straight white man is a relatively new thing, historically. For years, they got to be the default human. And now, suddenly, they’re being slapped with labels, and they hate it.”

“This is the way that recognition of the issue—which is usually step one—has been sidelined by those who want to feel that they’ve addressed the problem but don’t actually want to address it. They say it’s already been addressed, solved, and resolved. They say that now it’s a merit-based system, and anyone who isn’t entering and moving up the pipeline doesn’t have merit. They say that women have other priorities, choosing families and personal lives over their work. They say that to give voice to artists who don’t meet their standards would be minimizing the quality of the work they offer the world.”

“When artists and audience members share an intimate, borderless space in which they can see one another clearly, the possibilities of proximity can be electric.”

“Once upon a time, the rules were clear. The critic, employed full-time at a major newspaper, attended a show on opening night with tickets paid for by the publications, then ran into a smoky, booze-soaked writing room to pound out an analysis before a 10:30pm deadline, dictating copy over the telephone to a waiting stenographer.”

“Film’s ability to glide from the supernatural panorama to the eyes of the protagonist is a boon for a play in which the outer world uncannily mirrors the unconscious life of the protagonist.”

In San Diego last summer, at the national conference of the Dramatists Guild, the results of a major research project called “The Count” found that of some 2,500 productions sampled nationwide, only about 22 percent were of works by female writers.

Although the organization is financially stable (thanks in no small part to a $23 million endowment, one of the largest for a regional theater in America), the size of the main theater (398 seats) severely limits how much the theater can generate in ticket sales, even though it has the largest subscription base in the state at 15,000. So it has to depend on other revenue streams.

“In my experience, the art world has a disdain for theater. When I present my work to theater people, they call it performance art. When I present it to the art world, they call it theater.”

“I don’t really write about the real world. Or let me put it in a different way. Pretty much everything I’ve written doesn’t take place in any real country. It’s always a made-up country. My plays are more like dreams that are dreamed by someone from planet Earth but they don’t quite take place on planet Earth.”

The 6,000-seat Radio City Music Hall has long been the preferred home for the awards because of its size and proximity to Broadway. But Radio City will be booked this summer with the new “Rockettes New York Spectacular.”