#231029 - Attention, Intention, Reinvention
Brian Eugenio Herrera's #TheatreClique Newsletter for October 29, 2023
WELCOME to #TheatreClique — my irregular newsletter dedicated to encouraging you to click out to some of the most interesting, intriguing & noteworthy writing about drama, theatre & performance (at least, so says me)…
This Week's #TheatreCliquery:
As attentive readers well know, for some while I’ve been pondering some adjustments to the newsletter’s format and frequency. I’ve been particularly sensitive to how the newsetter’s longstanding “pile of links” format put peculiar pressures on both me as aggregator and you as reader, while I’ve also remained alert to the value of a regular publication rhythm (again, both for me and for you). But I found myself stuck — not sure what changes to make, not inspired/motivated to just keep doing what I’d been doing, but not wanting to shut down the newsletter — all while deeply ambivalent about the unsettled reality of the current (social) media ecosystem…
As luck would have it, I was also recently stuck in the backseat during a multi-hour drive through the Hudson Valley as a recent episode of a new-to-me podcast posed the question: “Is there a sane way to use the internet?” In a frank and far-reaching conversation, SearchEngine host PJ Vogt and guest Ezra Klein spoke about their respectively pathbreaking work in digital media over the last decade or so as they considered the question ““is there a sane way to use the internet?” As I listened, I was particularly taken by their discussion — beginning about halfway through — of how the internet “pillaged the attentional commons” over the last decade and how we must tend to our attentional habits, especially in times (like the last few weeks) of all too real anxiety and despair…
Their conversation helped me understand that I wanted this newsletter to be a space for you (and me) to invest our attention with considered intention — which, as it happens, is one of my definitions of performance (“someone doing something knowingly so that another might knowingly pay attention”). It also got me unstuck on the question of format…
So, in an aspirational spirit of clarity, transparency and accountability, here is how I’d like this newsletter to invest our shared attention…
Henceforth, subscribers will receive at least two missives each month. In the first — arriving typically on whichever Sunday lands closest to the turning of the calendar’s page — you’ll receive an issue much like this one. These top-of-the-month missives will begin with an introductory flourish leading to a link-list of the dozen or so most notably click-worthy pieces from the prior month (or so), which will be followed by an invitation for you to vote on the which show you’d like me to write about; there might also be a special mentions of a podcast or book event or somesuch; and, finally, each top-of-the-month edition will always conclude with a moment of Fornésiana. Then, in somewhere around mid-month each month, I’ll post my reflections on whichever show a majority of y’all thought I should write about. Interspersed among these two regularly monthly missives, you might encounter an occasional “special edition” — possibly containing an interview, or a commentary essay, or or a historical foray, or something retrieved from my myriad archives of past writing.
My hope is that this new routine will prove sustainable, generative and rewarding way for both reader and writer to invest our attention together… Thanks for indulging this longer-than-usual curtain speech but now let’s get to some of what’s been clicking since my last newsletter!
EDITOR’S NOTE: whenever possible, whenever I link to pieces posted behind a paywall, I aim to do so using the “gift” function that certain publications now afford subscribers. So clicking out to articles in the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal should neither present hassle nor burn through your monthly allotment of free views. Here’s hoping more outlets — hello LATimes! please ChicagoTribune!— adopt similar technologies soon...
#NowClickThis…
In Case You Missed It (please know that some of these track back a few months…)
at HowlRound, writer/advocate Todd London digs into what is “so fascinating and so hard” about — as well as what might be learned from — “the so-called ‘crisis’ of the theatre”;
at AmericanTheatre, on the occasion of the magazine’s return to print after a multi-year pause, writer/editor Rob Weinert-Kendt explains why a “hard-copy magazine about this ephemeral art form” matters to the American theatre;
at Nothing for the Group and Rescripted, artist/organizer Annalisa Dias invites the American theatre to “be like soil” and understand the contemporary crisis as one of “decomposition instead of collapse”:
at Rescripted, writer/director/administrator Genevieve Swanson opens the question “what is GenZ theatre?”;
at Kate’s Substack, designer Kate McGee offers 45 humble suggestions for the future of American theatre;
in a truly fascinating piece at Medium, theatre/event marketer Damian Bazadona deploys AI to distill the fifteen major concerns about the future of the subscription model as expressed in 500+ comments offered by theatre patrons on a recent New York Times story;
at High Country News, editor Nick Martin evinces the history re/made by Larissa Fasthorse’s Broadway debut;
at Vulture, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Wicked, arts writer/critic Jackson McHenry’s conversation with actors Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth captures an unexpectedly rich oral history of collaboration in commercial theatre;
at the Los Angeles Review of Books, writer/advocate Koritha Mitchell vividly maps the imperative of integrating corporeality into the artistic/intellectual excavation of slavery’s legacies;
at HarpersBazaar, journalist Houreidja Tall talks to the creative team about bringing Jaja’s African Hair Braiding to life on Broadway — see also TheBroadwayShow’s video interview with wig designer Nikiya Mathis;
NewYorker’s Helen Shaw offers a hauntingly vivid portrait of the notorious writer (and fabulist) James Grissom…
at MS. Magazine, cultural historian Julia Micklenberg re/introduces us to the remarkable poet/dramatist/lyricist/columnist Eve Merriam;
at the New York Times, obituary writer Richard Sandomir documents the formidable life and multi-faceted career of actor/educator Joanna Merlin (see also my own idiosyncratic appreciation of a memorable Merlin moment at TheFilmExperience, circa 2013);
at LitHub, novelist Isabella Hammad offers a snapshot history of Palestinian theatre over the last one hundred years;
and at Jewish Currents, editor Arielle Angel reminds us that “We Cannot Cross Until We Carry Each Other” and (following an introduction by poetry editor Claire Schwartz) poet Dionne Brand offers "a prologue for now - Gaza"…
#NowHearThis:
Wherein I highlight recent theatrically-inclined podcasts and playlists…
In the latest edition of On TAP: A Theatre and Performance Studies Podcast, hear about how a “special issue” of a major academic journal comes together and about how digging into the journal’s past might also say something about the journal’s future…
This recent edition of the Daily Princetonian’s Daybreak podcast digs into what it feels like when a class you’re taking or a campus production you’re doing suddenly becomes part of the national news cycle…
Hear director/scholar Alison Mahoney and actor Megan Michael discuss the use of access aesthetics in the upcoming Pitt Stages production of Will Arbery’s Corsicana as part of WQED’s Voice of the Arts program…
#ReflectionsOfATheatregoer — Reader’s Choice
Wherein I highlight some of my recent personal theatregoing and invite #TheatreCliquers to pick which show I should reflect on for the midmonth edition of this newsletter.
As noted above, each forthcoming midmonth edition of this newsletter will be dedicated to my reflective commentary on a show (or shows) I’ve seen recently. I don’t expect that these pieces will be reviews exactly, nor do I expect them to be as casually ruminative as my moviegoing diary over at Letterboxd, but — rather — these midmonth missives will be part of my ongoing exploration of how I might capture some of my general (and critically generous) thoughts on the shows I see. And to help select which of the above shows will be spotlighted in the upcoming midmonth edition of #TheatreClique, I invite you to cast your VOTE via this handy-dandy poll.
#BePresentInTheMemory — This Month in Fornésiana…
Wherein I highlight noteworthy recent or upcoming engagements with the life, work and legacy of legendary playwright, director and teacher María Irene Fornés...
Imagine my surprise when, in one of my semi-regular research rambles in pursuit of this or that bit of Fornésiana, I stumbled upon this feature — in the Sunday Arts section of my hometown paper — in which la maestra discusses her work, her process, and her disability at some length… At first I couldn’t believe I didn’t know this article existed, and then I remembered that it wouldn’t be until the following Spring when I first encountered her work (plus I was living in Providence at the time, preparing to head into tech for the giant original Molière musical I was then directing, go figure)… Still, paths cross as they cross and, for an archive rat like me, it was a deeply stirring thrill to feel them cross even across time in this particular way.
Until next time, dear #TheatreClique, please share this newsletter with those friends, colleagues and students who might appreciate the opportunity to encounter the many voices gathered in each week’s edition. Errors and oversights published in the newsletter will be corrected in the archival versions. And, in the meantime, keep clicking those links — good writing needs good readers and our theatre clicks count!