Do Tell Mama: An Interview with Sasha Denisova

AMERICAN THEATRE: Sasha Denisova, who based My Mama and The Full-Scale Invasion on her relationship with her real-life Ukrainian mother, spoke to Yury Urnov, who directed the play’s world premiere, a co-production of Philadelphia’s Wilma Theater and Washington, D.C.’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company.

5 Reasons Why Verse Is the Language for Theatre in 2020s

The Theatre Times: While theatre in its early days existed in a strong relationship with verse, the social, cultural, and technological developments of the eighteenth- and nineteenth centuries strained the tie. Many of the twentieth century’s theatre practitioners seemed to adhere to Ibsen’s idea that a theatre artist “should be unwilling to take a verse into his [sic] mouth” (Ibsen 367). However, the first two decades of the new century brought about a resumed interest in verse and its hybrid forms as a theatrical language through which to engage with contemporary audiences.

Ay, to the proof: did Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew have two authors?

Stage | The Guardian: Since the 18th century, scholars have suspected that William Shakespeare was not the sole author of The Taming of the Shrew. Now dramatic evidence of the hand of his fellow great dramatist Christopher Marlowe has been discovered in “groundbreaking” research.

"New Dramaturgies:" Insights Into Mark Bly’s Playwriting Exercises. Interview with Mark Bly

The Theatre Times: Mark Bly is an American dramaturg, editor, and lecturer. He was the chair of the MFA Playwriting Program at the Yale School of Drama from 1992-2004 while being the associate artistic director at the Yale Rep. He taught dramaturgy at Yale and was the director of the MFA Playwriting Program at Hunter College from 2011-2013, and subsequently the MFA Playwriting Program at Fordham/Primary Stages.

Theatres create first online programmes of new work in response to Covid-19

Stage | The Guardian: The National Theatre of Scotland (NTS) and Home in Manchester are among the first theatres to commission major online programmes of work in response to the coronavirus, as theatres around the UK face months of closure caused by the outbreak. The commissions signal how arts venues are swiftly adapting in order to continue bringing new work to audiences.

How Do You Write a Play Inspired by Sandy Hook?

www.clydefitchreport.com: Together We Are Making a Poem in Honor of Life was influenced by the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, that killed 26 people in 2012. Our son was only a few months old at the time, and we found that as brand-new parents, we were affected by the event in unexpected ways. Even speaking about the tragedy suddenly felt wrong — or maybe it was too real to know.

John Waters on the art of shocking audiences

PBS NewsHour: This weekend, a major retrospective of filmmaker John Waters' work, titled “Indecent Exposure,” opened in his hometown at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Often satirizing violence, celebrity and sexuality, the cult film director has long pushed limits of cinematic decency with hits like Hairspray and Cry-Baby.

Radical Ideas Welcome: What Should the Latinx Theatre Commons Do Next?

HowlRound Theatre Commons: On Monday, the Latinx Theatre Commons (LTC) announced an open call for ideas for our next round of programming, which runs March 2020 through December 2023. Over the past six years, the LTC has produced eleven convenings for regional, national, and international cohorts of participants, edited the online journal Café Onda (which has now been incorporated into the HowlRound Journal), hosted the María Irene Fornés Institute to celebrate the living legacy of one of the American theatre’s greatest playwrights and teachers, created a production initiative called El Fuego, and put our Steering Committee members through the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond’s Undoing Racism® Training.

Clare Barron: "The writing's better, because we're working together"

Exeunt Magazine: “I hope it’s emotional in a secret and private way, specific to your own heartbeat.”

Clare Barron is explaining, over a crackly phone line, her hopes for Dance Nation. In a previous interview I’d read, she said that “my ultimate theatrical experience is for everyone to cry”, a line which spoke to me, summoning up the power of being in a dark room where everyone’s mutely sobbing. But as we talk, she elaborates that “I want to write plays where people have an extremely emotional experience, but I don’t want to have one moment where we all cry. I want it to be a surprise, that’s sort of like my whole thing.”

WriteGirlTaps Actors, Screenwriters to Support Young, Female Writers

Variety: Actors and screenwriters came together Saturday night to support the young women involved in WriteGirl at the organization’s annual Lights, Camera, WriteGirl! event.

Why I Am Boycotting Writers Theatre in Chicago

www.clydefitchreport.com: The controversy at Writers, a widely respected company located near Chicago, is a few months old, so I’ll quickly recap. Last fall, CFR broke a story that former Writers intern Tom Robson accused longtime Artistic Director Michael Halberstam of sexually harassing him both verbally and physically in 2003. The story spread to other outlets; soon, the trade publication PerformInk released a more detailed account of how widespread Halberstam’s harassment had been, reporting that “what happened to Robson has happened to others,” and that schools were even warning students about auditioning for the company.

August Wilson Society's Pittsburgh conference keeps the playwright's words front and center

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: The August Wilson Society gathers in Pittsburgh April 26 with the theme “Go Back and Pick Up the Ball.” Fittingly, it is a line chosen from Wilson’s “Two Trains Running,” when the character Holloway says, “If you drop the ball, you got to go back and pick it up.”

Broadway’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ Hit With Lawsuit

Variety: The upcoming Broadway adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird” — with a buzzy creative team that includes writer Aaron Sorkin and star Jeff Daniels — has been hit with a lawsuit by the estate of Harper Lee, the late writer who penned the 1960 novel.

How to Never Run Out of Great Ideas

The Writing Cooperative: Have you ever gotten your car stuck in the mud or snow?

No matter how hard you push the gas, the car just won’t budge.

This is how engaging your creativity feels like at times. Sometimes, no matter how much work you put in, you don’t feel like you’re getting anywhere.

Have we reached peak playwright on TV?

WhatsOnStage.com: If you want to see who is hot in theatre writing today, just turn on the TV. We have reached peak- playwright with new series from Jack Thorne, Jez Butterworth, David Hare and Mike Bartlett all following hot on the heels of each other.

Conscious Casting and Letting Playwrights Lead

HowlRound: Can a Japanese family be Mexican? That question was at the heart of an email exchange with a theatre doing one of my plays. It wasn’t really a debate; the roles had already been cast. But the director wasn’t trying to pull a fast one—in writing my play’s character notes, I had sent mixed messages about what I valued and expected. And I know I’m not alone in still learning how to navigate this terrain.

In the Heat of the Night at Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company

Theater Reviews + Features | Pittsburgh | Pittsburgh City Paper: Playwright Matt Pelfrey’s stage adaptation of In the Heat of the Night takes place in 1962 in Argo, Ala., eight years after the largely toothless Supreme Court ordered an integrated society, and two years before Congress finally bit down and passed the necessary laws to begin to make it happen.

A. Rey Pamatmat: The Theatre People’s Playwright

Breaking Character: When you pick up a play by A. Rey Pamatmat, it won’t take long for you to become fully engrossed by his characters. Whether the play concerns the lives of under-parented children in Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them, or takes an LGBT approach to the themes of one of Shakespeare’s more obscure works in Thunder Above, Deeps Below, Rey’s voice is always unmistakable and deeply original. It’s a hallmark of his craft not only as a writer, but as a collaborator with other artists.

Young dramatists take turn in spotlight with Plays by Young Writers fest

The San Diego Union-Tribune: Anyone fretting about the future of theater will likely find solace — not to mention inspiration — in the Playwrights Project’s celebration of young dramatists’ work.

Since 1985, the San Diego-based organization has been running a statewide writing contest for students from elementary through high school. The winners are celebrated with an annual festival, open both to school groups and the public.

Why Plays About Sexual Assault Are Too Murky for Our Own Good

The New York Times: At the close of Anna Ziegler’s “Actually,” a play about an accusation of sexual misconduct on an Ivy League campus, a feather flutters down from the ceiling. That’s a feather meant to tip the scales of justice. (Scales don’t always work that way, but just go with it.) The stage goes dark before the feather lands.