WELCOME to this week’s #TheatreClique Round Up... my emphatically irregular newsletter dedicated to clicking on some of this week’s most interesting, intriguing & noteworthy writing about drama, theatre & performance (at least, so says me)…
This Week's #TheatreClique-ing:
For this week’s opener, I (again) lift Daniel Alexander Jones’s luminous What To Do When Everything Feels Broken, which was recently named as being among the TED editorial team’s “Best of 2020”…
Now to this week’s theatre clicks…
the still-roiling The Flea debacle gets some careful attention from Joey Sims at The Brooklyn Rail (“How the Flea Become the Fled”) and Diep Tran at Backstage (“The Flea Theater Conflict Raises Questions of Equity and Exploitation”) • at Harvard Business Review, Li Jin offers a fascinating overview of the complications wrought by “the missing creator middle class” in the burgeoning “passion economy” • producer Michael Barra considers how the pandemic will transform the live theater industry at Fortune • American Theatre profiles Victor Vazquez and other casting directors committed to “rerouting the casting pipeline” • Vogue’s Liam Hess reports on Jeremy O. Harris’s limited edition fashion collection •Clare Barron offers a generous, intimate rumination on “Not Writing” at Playwrights Horizon’s Almanac…
The Seattle Times goes deep into the remarkable collaborations emerging as Seattle arts leaders “get serious about becoming anti-racist” • Angela Sun — writing for CBC Arts — insists that “it's not enough to 'save' theatre; we have to transform how its marginalized artists are treated” • Kate Schwartz profiles Honor Roll’s work against Sage-ism in OnStageBlog • WeSeeYouWhiteAmericanTheatre launches the 12 Days of Watchmas… on the 1st day of Watchmas, WSYWAT gives “The Anatomy of Anonymity” • on the 2nd day they offer “the story of my white skin” • on the 3rd day they present “White American Theater’s Problem with Tokenism” • on the 4th day they give “Theatrical Training Programs, We See You” • on the 5th day they offer “The Movement Begins Like This” • the 6th day deliver a “BIPOC Leaders Survival Guide” • day the 7th of Watchmas, WSYWAT brings “Liberation Begins with the BIPOC Imagination” • and to receive what days 8-9-10-11-12 bring, click back to We See You WAT… [UPDATE: not long after this newsletter was published, sometime during the evening of Sunday 20 December 2020, the Medium page of We See You White American Theatre was shut down, with the 401error-page noting that the account was “under investigation or was found in violation of the Medium Rules”; the organization offered its preliminary response on twitter and instagram. The block appears to have been removed sometime during the night, with full access to readers restored by the following morning.]
Jonathan Mandell lists theatre’s heroes of 2020 (or “those who have stepped up to this moment of multiple crises”) • Chris Jones surveys “the darkness and frustration, creativity and hope” of Chicago theatre in 2020 • Kerry Reid offers considers the many theatrical conflicts, controversies and drama marking 2020’s brief onstage season • Alexis Soloski reflects on “semi okay takeaways from this disaster year” • in a remarkable conversation at the Brooklyn Rail, the co-creators of Circle Jerk circle up to discuss the process of developing, dramaturging, directing and producing one of the most talked about paratheatrical events of the year • and Ryan Donovan's students at The New School answer the question: What Would You Do to Change Broadway for Good?…
Tim Murphy talks to Justin Vivian Bond about getting through 2020 and the holidays (with their upcoming holiday show Good Morning, Midnight, It’s Christmas) • after its successful on-demand run earlier this month, my favorite 2020 holiday treat thus far — The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Special— is now streaming on Hulu • Helen Shaw trains our attention on two remarkable seasonal (?) offerings: Taylor Mac’s Holiday Sauce and Joshua William Gelb’s Theatre in Quarantine presentation of Heather Christian’s musical monodrama I Am Sending You the Sacred Face • extra special holiday thanks are due to Helen for tweets like this and this and this, which compelled me to rearrange my Friday evening to catch the final live presentation of this thrilling and wondrous performance, which now streams at the QiT YouTube channel…
apropos of nothing (except for the fact that it’s my newsletter), I can’t stop thinking about how Heidi Gardner’s sketch from SNL a few weeks back so deftly captures some of the quirks in contemporary commentary about arts and culture…
I should also note that this newsletter may not arrive as reliably in your inbox every Sunday over the next six weeks. I may take an otherwise unannounced week off here or there between now and the start of my next teaching semester. But — by way of Season’s Greetings — I’ll close with…
...this week in Fornésiana: Caridad Svich’s Better Maybe — a brief open script originally commissioned by The Fornés Institute as part of the Play at Home initiative — receives a lovely communal video staging from the folks at Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland, Oregon….
MAY WE ALL ENJOY A HAPPY, HEALTHY & BETTER MAYBE 2021!
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!