WELCOME to the #TheatreClique Round Up — my (mostly) weekly newsletter dedicated to clicking on some of the most interesting, intriguing & noteworthy writing about drama, theatre & performance (at least, so says me)…
This Week's #TheatreClique-ing:
For this week’s opener, and in anticipation of the eighth night of Chanukah, I lift this Shabbat tribute to Stephen Sondheim (1930-2021) offered by Senior Rabbi Angela W. Buchdahl, Rabbi Ari S. Lorge and Senior Cantor Daniel Mutlu of NYC’s Central Synagogue in midtown Manhattan…
Indeed the tributes to, memorials for and reflections upon Stephen Sondheim’s life and legacy continue to flow. Among those catching my attention this week include this incredible piece by Helena Fitzgerald, alongside with pieces by TheFilmExperience’s Nathaniel Rogers; Jacobin’s Marinela D’Aprile; Jewish Currents’ Max Freedman; Ruthie Fierberg; Adam Gopnik; Matt Zoller Seitz; NYTimes’s Anthony Tommasini; Sam Thielman; Mandy Pantinkin (via TheNewStatesman’s Leo Robson); The Westport Country Playhouse; Michael Granoff; and Doug Reside, Curator of the Billy Rose Theatre Division at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts…
And here is some what else has been clicking since my last newsletter…
at TheUndefeated, writer/critic Kelundra Smith surveys how Broadway’s “bounty of Black-led shows are responding to our most difficult questions surrounding loss” • LATimes’s Jessica Gelt reports on what led up to — and what happened as a result of — playwright Dominique Morriseau’s decision to pull the performance rights for Los Angeles’s Center Theatre Group’s production of her play Paradise Blue • The Lark’s Jennifer Haley threaded a twitter-archive of some noteworthy pieces published on (the already missed) Lark blog • LATimes’ Jenny Jarvie digs into the drama in the drama department at Coastal Carolina College, where a politically conservative theatre prof’s resistance to student calls for change led to students calling for his dismissal • and the students in my Fall 2021 Movements for Diversity in American Theater class pin their top highlights, takeaways and reflections from this remarkable semester…
at Polygon, the prodigiously productive Isaac Butler asks how “motion capture” technology has inflected our understanding of great acting in the 21st century with this (remarkably timely) reconsideration of how — twenty years ago — “an unknown stage actor and eighteen animators changed film acting” by bringing Gollum to life for Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings • legendary filmmaker/raconteur John Waters releases his annual list of the year’s ten best films • LATimes’s Ashley Lee details how Pasadena Playhouse’s 2021 production Head Over Heels “defies pre-pandemic theater rules” • NYTimes’s Alexis Soloski talks to Kiki and Herb (aka Justin Vivian Bond and Kenny Mellman) about familiarity, intimacy and holidays • musical theatre writer John Coyne takes on (and takes off from) the current film adaptation of Tick… Tick… BOOM and inadvertently launches this week’s must-read adventurous experiment in arts criticism: “I Do Not Want to Be Jonathan Larsen” • and Wednesday’s World AIDS Day delivered to my feeds this breathtaking StoryCorps animated short from Ace&Son, originally released in June 2020 as part of the “Father Figures” series…
...and — lest I forget — this week in Fornésiana: brings confirmation that Mabou Mines staging of Mud/Drowning will be re-presented as part of ThePublic’s Under the Radar festival in January 2022. This Joanne Akalaitis production pairs a spare staging of Fornés’s Mud (a devastating single act chamber play that reckons with the collision of poverty, intimacy and aspiration) alongside Philip Glass’s operatic resetting of Drowning, Fornés’s haunting rumination on the tender humiliations of erotic longing. This production holds the peculiar distinction of being my final pre-pandemic performance — sidenote: my reflections on that experience — and I’m fascinated by the prospect of reencountering it almost two years later. (If you go on 1/23, say hey.)
Voices from Behind Academentia's Paywall:
If you are not academically-affiliated, or if your institution does not subscribe to these journals, shake the social media trees to see if some academic somewhere might hook you up with a pdf or two. Or check with your friendly neighborhood librarian to see if they can help. But download the pdf directly if you can. Because ACADEMIC CLICKS COUNT too!
Normally, I don’t talk about my own work in this section but a particular article in a particular newspaper had me in my feelings about the ways solid academic work is so casually yet persistently ignored/neglected even (or especially) when it offers deeply researched perspective on the exact phenomenon being discussed… You can blame the paywall (or scholarly jargon) for creating unwieldy barriers to ready access to academic work. You can blame the scholars for not pitching, writing and placing timely op-eds in major outlets, especially what with all of their alleged spare time. But sometimes some blame of some kind needs also land on the journalists and their editors who just never think to look (let alone ask). So I made a thing and put it on the twittter, which made me feel a little bit better — but my larger point still stands…
And by way of brief followup to my…
As I noted last week, the Spring 2022 semester marks the first time in nearly two years that I will not be teaching a course that uses the #TheatreClique newsletter as a weekly resource. Also, last week I launched this brief survey to invite reader input as I ponder whether and/or how the newsletter might continue, especially without its para-curricular justification. I’m still puzzling through some things but, for now, suffice it to say that I expect the newsletter to continue for the foreseeable, with some probable (albeit slight) adjustments with regard to content and publication schedule… #FUNFACT: the engagement numbers for last week’s installment for last week’s installment tripled those of the previous week (not that I fully understand how substack creates its metrics or what they mean)… Thanks so much to those of you who took the moment — either within this survey, or through other channels — to offer your thoughts, which have already helped to clarify my thinking (and strategies) for the future. Your validating and clarifying feedback has fortified my commitment to keep on keeping on with whatever this newsletter experiment is…
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!