USITT Giving Day is Saturday Oct. 26, 2019

Stage Directions: USITT's first ever Giving Day is this Saturday, October 26. Please help us reach our goals by making your contribution today by going to www.usitt.org/donate or by texting text GIVE to 315-305-3604 from your mobile phone.

October is the month USITT was "born" according to the legal documents. As such we are hoping to make strides toward fulfilling our Setting the Next Stage fundraising campaign goal during this month. Giving Day on October 26 will help us meet that goal.

The Ickiness of Marketing Your Art

Exeunt Magazine: Last week me and my colleagues aka The Figs had a marketing meeting with the team at Pleasance, and once again we attempted to describe our show. This is an ongoing game that we have to play whenever meeting new people, speaking to potential bookers or collaborators, or explaining to our relatives when they ask us, just one more time, to explain what it is exactly that we do…

Yuck. We hate talking about our shows, especially before we’ve made them. Because ultimately what you’re doing is trying to sell yourself, or your ideas, before you’ve actually worked out who you are or what you think.

Dressers Career Spotlight: Lauren Gallitelli Talks Dressing Santino Fontana In TOOTSIE

www.broadwayworld.com: We're spotlighting different off-stage careers on Broadway to answer some common questions people might have about perusing a career off the stage!

This week we're chatting with Lauren Gallitelli, who is Santino Fontana's dresser at TOOTSIE on Broadway! Gallitelli has worked on Broadway at shows such as Cinderella, Nice Work If You Can Get It, Sister Act, and more!

What does a typical day look like for a Broadway dresser?

12th Annual Jimmy Awards Will Celebrate on June 29, 2020

www.broadwayworld.com: The Broadway League announces that the 12th annual Jimmy Awards will take place on Monday, June 29, 2020 at 7:30pm at the Minskoff Theatre, 200 West 45th Street in Manhattan. The ceremony will feature 92 nominees from 46 regional awards programs around the US, making it the biggest Jimmy Awards in history.

Why They Walked – Members of the Cast of ‘Starcatcher’ at Citadel Theatre Speak Out

rescripted.org: We write to you to share that we, the cast of Peter and the Starcatcher directed by Jeremy Aluma and produced by Citadel Theatre, concluded three weeks ago that due to persistent and pervasive problems with the production, our relationship with Citadel was no longer sustainable. Our production was scheduled to run from September 18th to October 20th, but after eight public performances and much deliberation, it became clear that in view of the circumstances, we could no longer continue in the production.

A first look at Cirque du Soleil’s ‘R.U.N,’ opening this week at Luxor

Las Vegas Sun Newspaper: Cirque du Soleil and Luxor offered the first real look at new resident show “R.U.N” to a select group of guests and members of the media Tuesday afternoon, making good on the promise of a new action-packed direction for Cirque by performing two exciting acts from the show ahead of its opening night on Thursday.

Everything to Know About Internships in the New York Theatre Community

www.broadwayworld.com: Internship application season is officially underway! With such an array of careers in theatre at your fingertips, an internship can be a great way to explore different areas of the community and learn some vital skills. To help you navigate it all and prepare you to apply, we're giving you an inside look at some of the New York theatre community's most coveted internships, including Feinstein's/54 Below, Marathon Digital, and more to see what the day-to-day intern life is like and what these companies look for in applicants.

We Don’t Need Walls Where We’re Going: 2019 Without Walls Festival Diary

noproscenium.com: The biennial Without Walls Festival descended on San Diego’s Liberty Station this past weekend, bringing artists from around the globe to perform work that ranged from large-scale kid-friendly games to intimate documentary pieces.

The La Jolla Playhouse produces the festival, and the balance of performances embrace the festival name — Without Walls — literally, with a strong focus on work that is outdoors in some fashion or another.

OWNING WHAT ISN’T: COPYRIGHT AND CONCEPTUAL ART

AESTHETICS FOR BIRDS: A few weeks back, as my aesthetics undergrads were taking their final exam, I was sitting in the back of the room, reading Susan M. Bielstein’s 2006 book, Permissions, A Survival Guide: Blunt Talk about Art as Intellectual Property. It’s a book about the history, legality, and pragmatics of art permissions, and it’s a page-turner. Seriously: it’s easily one of the best books about copyright that I’ve read in years (and, by God, that’s saying a lot).

Festyvent Leads the Way with Ground-Breaking Safety Feature into 2020 Festival Season

TPi: Festyvent the UK data analytics firm for the Live – Event Industry is proud to announce the launch of its exciting all new and enhanced app features for music festivals and live events: www.festyvent.com

First up and leading the way with their new and enhanced app features will be SAFE@FESTIVAL, which will allow members of the live audience to alert friends to their exact location if they fall ill or feel vulnerable.

The acoustics of axe murder, and other insights from 2 horror sound experts

www.avclub.com: You can tell that Josh Ethier comes from a DIY background simply by the number of times his name appears in the credits. Ethier primarily works with his friend and creative partner Joe Begos through their production company Channel 83 Films, whose most recent projects are Bliss (2019) and the upcoming VFW. Ethier served as editor and sound designer for both of those films, and worked with sound editor Shawn Duffy to implement that design for the final product.

Teacher Helps Students Heal Through Theater Arts

www.cmu.edu/news: There are likely few teachers who have witnessed how the arts can help to heal wounds that little else can. One of those teachers, Melody Herzfeld, saw firsthand how tragedy can be overcome through the healing power of the arts.

Herzfeld is the fourth winner of the Excellence In Theatre Education Award (EITEA), accepting her honor at Radio City Music Hall in June 2018. She is the theater teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

How Matthew McGee, Little Shop's puppet master, created new, more terrifying Audrey IIs

DC Theatre Scene: In a season with high profile productions of Little Shop of Horrors on Broadway and across the country, the DMV is getting its own taste of the Alan Menken sci-fi musical theatre classic this October, with a new twist. Little Shop of Horrors at Constellation Theatre Company may be in a small space, but they’re doing big things, especially with its innovative puppet design by the intrepid puppet designer/actor Matthew McGee. The four pods – designated as Pods One, Two, Three and Four – display the terrifying development of a plant into an alien-like monster.

Growing Up in Puerto Rico, Broadway Felt So Far Away. TDF Helped Bring it Closer

Theatre Development Fund – TDF: I first fell in love with Broadway musicals listening to the original cast recording of Lin-Manuel Miranda's In the Heights in my house in Puerto Rico. I was enthralled by the opening notes of the title song, marked by the beat of the palitos right before Miranda raps, "Lights up on Washington Heights." It reminded me of the lively Puerto Rican Christmas songs I grew up with. I've been hooked on Broadway ever since.

The wide world of Disney on stage just keeps getting wider.

The Washington Post: When the Walt Disney Co. rolled its massive entertainment resources onto Broadway 25 years ago with the unveiling of a stage version of the animated movie musical “Beauty and the Beast,” the advance felt to some in the industry like the start of an occupation.

Broadway was no landscape for the bottom-line ethos of corporate America. It was the domain of independent producers, singularly driven, often iconoclastic men and women (but mostly men) who assembled shows on the strength of their own instincts, and some ability at raising dough. The fear back then, elucidated in countless cocktail conversations and column inches, was that the Great White Way would now run green, primarily for deep-pocketed companies, and that the theater’s entrepreneurial class would be priced out of the neighborhood.

City Theatre's Young Playwrights Festival turns 20

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: City Theatre marks the 20th EQT Young Playwrights Festival this weekend, with performances of one-act works by middle school and high school students.

This year, City sifted through 367 entries from 30 schools in seven counties in Western Pennsylvania and three in northern West Virginia. Winners represent five school districts, and more than 1,000 students have the opportunity to attend the festival this year.

Drag, Disco, and the Donkey

HowlRound Theatre Commons: September 2019 was the ten-year anniversary—and the last glittery curtain call—of The Donkey Show, which ran every weekend at American Repertory Theater’s OBERON stage in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream was placed in a Studio 54–esque immersive club environment, infused with a disco-pop score, and, cut down to a barebones ninety-minute spectacle, had become a long-time staple for Harvard undergrads, bachelorette parties, and tourists looking for a fun night on the town.

Review Roundup: The Public Theater's FOR COLORED GIRLS... - What Did the Critics Think?

www.broadwayworld.com: The Public Theater presents a major New York revival of FOR COLORED GIRLS WHO HAVE CONSIDERED SUICIDE/WHEN THE RAINBOW IS ENUF, written by legendary playwright/poet Ntozake Shange.

Directed by Obie Award winner Leah C. Gardiner with choreography by Camille A. Brown, FOR COLORED GIRLS officially opened on Tuesday, October 22. This powerful revival has been extended one week and will now run through Sunday, November 24.

Review Roundup: Harvey Fierstein in BELLA BELLA - What Did the Critics Think?

www.broadwayworld.com: Fierstein returns to MTC taking on New York City's very own political firebrand, Bella Abzug, in his new raucous, heart-rending and absurdly humorous solo show. Set in 1976, on the eve of her bid to become New York State's first female Senator, Bella Bella finds this larger-than-life, truth-slinging, groundbreaking, hat-wearing icon squirreled away in the bathroom of a midtown hotel awaiting that night's election results while a coterie of family and celebs await her entrance. Directing is Kimberly Senior (The Niceties).

Women Light Up LDI 2019

ETNow.com: Leading women from the world of lighting, video and digital media design will host a series of panel discussions, knowledge-sharing and training sessions at LDI2019.

It follows a long tradition of women taking the helm at LDI, from founder Pat MacKay to creative director Ellen Lampert-Gréaux, to show manager Jessi Cybulski and Marian Sandberg, digital products content director, to sales managers including Kelly Turner and Jo Zola.