HowlRound: The original idea behind Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s American Revolutions Cycle was to commission a new play for every American president. But when Artistic Director Bill Rauch brought in his longtime colleague from Cornerstone Theatre Company, Alison Carey, to direct the program, she steered it towards a more inherently dramatic premise: To commission thirty-seven new plays about a moment of change in American history. Associate director of the program, Julie Felise Dubiner, told me she thinks the idea is working because “it lets playwrights follow their passions and that moment-of-change imperative implies dramatic action.”
1 comment:
This seems like a really cool and really important play. I’m always glad to see theater tackle issues in the world in a way that gets people talking. I really like that this article points out the way we as a country tend to try to scream out our own points but we aren’t as good as having an actual dialogue about controversial topics. I also like that this play goes into depth about an important issue that I don’t feel like it particularly well covered in schools, or at very least was not particularly well covered in any of my history classes. I am sadden by the fact that OSF has to make a specific point to make sure no one brings a gun into the theater, which I assume is because they are worried about pro-life extremists deciding to shoot people in the theater as a way of protesting the play. I think it is terrible that our society is at a point where people feel like violence is a solution to people they disagree with expressing their views. That aside, this article makes me very hopeful about the potential for theater to get people to think about important issues.
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