HowlRound Theatre Commons: Well, my last official day at ACT was 30 June, but as it happened, I was directing down at the La Jolla Playhouse, and so I flew back on the day off to clean out my office, which was really surreal and strange. I keep everything. I had twenty-five years of scripts and maquettes, and opening night cards and thousands of books. Then I went back and finished the show at La Jolla. And then we brought A Thousand Splendid Suns back to the Geary, kind of my last hurrah. We closed on a matinee on Sunday, and then we did a huge blowout party, and that was that.
1 comment:
I have followed Carey Perloff's career, and I do have a lot of respect for them. In this interview, I found her words about the codification of the theatre to be really interesting. On the one hand, these best practices have helped our marketing and development teams make our industry more successful and lucrative, and for that I am very grateful. I do however, really respond to her point about the negative side, she says, "One of the things I really worry about with the theatre is that every theatre is sort of pursuing the same thing, doing the same five plays, and commissioning the same writers." I can't tell you how many times in DC we would have three or four repeat shows across different theaters every season. Bad Jews, Carousel, Oliver, and Wild Party are the few that come to my mind. If a show is popular and sells, thats one thing, but flooding the same market with the same content can't be good either! How do audiences even decide which one they want to see? What makes each theatre unique? At a certain point, producing new works and giving new opportunities to new artists must be considered over putting on yet another big broadway musical or popular edgy play that is no longer edgy because I've seen it three times in one season.
Post a Comment