On Drag Bans, High School Culture Wars, Awards, Disability and the first ever #TheatreClique CHALLENGE...
Brian Eugenio Herrera's #TheatreClique Newsletter for March 20, 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:
Before I get to some of what’s been clicking in the six weeks since my last newsletter (sorry) — and be sure to scroll through all the way to the end of this newsletter for a special #TheatreClique CHALLENGE — I just have to lift this recent performance by “underground trash queen”/drag artist Meatball taking on George Santos and his alleged drag persona Kitara Ravache…
SEE ALSO: Meatball’s brilliant Santos-inspired makeup tutorial on TikTok…
EDITOR’S NOTE: whenever possible, whenever I link to pieces posted behind a paywall, I 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! — adopt similar technologies soon...
#NowClickThis…
in an eye-opening and instructive account, BroadwayNews’ Ruthie Fierberg details just how narrowly the theatre industry avoided “a massive financial crisis” (and possible shutdown) as a result of FDIC’s takeover of Signature Bank in the wake of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank…
TheNewRepublic’s Pablo Manríquez profiles Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) and his resistance to the Biden administration’s plan to substantially raise the cost of artist visas…
San Francisco Chronicle’s Lily Janiak tests the capacity of “ChatCPT [to] write a better theater review than a paid critic”…
Variety’s chief film critic Peter Debruge tries his hand at theatre criticism and along the way pans Sunday in the Park with George…
NewYorker’s Helen Shaw offers a memorial tribute to the life, work, and theatrical worlds of Mikéah Ernest Jennings (1979-2022)…
advocate/influencer Kate Reinking threads an explainer on the whats, the whys and the hows of becoming a “theatre influencer”…
at Medium, on the third anniversary of the 2020 shutdown of live arts, arts marketer Damian Bazadona narrates “A Trip down Trauma Lane” — a (remarkable) time capsule of the first eight months of the pandemic, as viewed from inside one arts organization…
at HowlRound, arts writer Jonathan Mandell considers three years of Bard at the Gate and why digital theatre is here to stay…
writer/editor Rob Weinert-Kendt digs deep into why this Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd is different (see also cultural reporter Anthony Mason’s CBS Sunday Morning feature on the production)…
on DRAG BANS…
at AmericanTheatre, actor/writer/director K. Woodzick reminds us “why the fight over drag is a struggle for us all” • NPR’s Manuela Lopez Restrepo teases out some of the historical antecedents of the contemporary surge in “anti-drag” laws • drag artist/advocate Jinkx Monsoon breaks Chicago box office records while also doing some dragsplaining for cable news audiences via ABC News Live and MSNBC’s “The 11th Hour” • GLAAD announces a March 20 briefing for drag artists on how to combat anti-drag bills and and how to keep artists, audiences and venues safe • the ACLU launches the Drag Defense Fund • Princeton Alumni Weekly’s Nicholas DeVito talks to attorney/advocate Abby Rubenfeld PU’75 about why and how she’s working to contest the Tennessee drag ban • and Actors’ Equity urges theatres in the state to condemn Tennessee’s new legislation restricting drag performance and lobby for its elimination…
on HIGH SCHOOL CULTURE WARS…
NPR’s Elizabeth Blair digs into how “bills restricting drag could impact high school theatre productions” and follows up with an exploration of whether high school theatre is becoming the “next battleground in the culture war” • local reporter GeaugaMapleleaf’s Ann Wishart details how The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee creators responded to Cardinal High School’s requests for script changes • at Slate, screenwriter/fight-choreographer/teacher Patrick Vala-Haynes reflects on being asked to “no longer teach a contact face slap” and what it means to teach stage violence in high schools today • WITF’s Jeremy Long reports on why the Lebanon County (PA) school district forbade The Addams Family from being staged by schools in the district (btw, just last year, the musical was the ranked as the #3 “Most Produced” high school musical in America) • at The Daily Beast, author Jodi Picoult details how having her books banned helped her see “what Florida doesn’t want you to know about its book bans”
on AWARDS and REPRESENTATION:
in celebration of the many Oscar victories of Everything Everywhere All at Once, the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) threads TEN of its “favorite pieces” written by AAJA members on the film and its impact/s • in the NYTimes, writer/critic Isaac Butler evinces some of the history undergirding the gendered logics of “award worthy” screen acting • Stacker’s Eliza Siegel ponders whether “nongendered acting awards might help fix Hollywood's gender problem” • actor Ke Huy Quan talks about his life and career in a far-reaching (and deeply moving) conversation with TalkEasy podcast host Sam Fragoso • and at HyperAllergic, artist/advocate Rhea Nayyar asks “where were South Asian dancers in the Oscars’ ‘Best Song’ performance?”, while Indiwire’s Proma Khosla evinces how the Oscars failed South Asian artists with Its ‘Naatu Naatu’ performance…
on DISABILITY AND THEATRE ARCHITECTURES…
UrbanOmnibus’ Kevin Ritter goes deep the architectural (and urban planning) obstacles to creating accessible performance spaces in NYC by tracing the development and production history of Ryan Haddad’s Dark Disabled Stories • DisabilityScoop highlights Philadelphia Inquirer’s Earl Hopkins profile how Philly Children’s Theatre creates sensory-inclusive productions • at AmericanTheatre, freelance writer/editor Alexis Hauk profiles how writer-director Sean Daniels is working to “bring recovery fully onstage and create an entirely new way of thinking about artists and addiction” • at TDF, writer/editor Allison Considine talks to longtime actor/radio-host Christine Pedi about her (new-to-her) experience of “being a disabled person on the stage” • AmericanTheatre’s Alexandra Pierson talks to actor/writer/advocate Ryan Haddad about how his latest show gets “down and dirty about the ways society views and treats disabled people” • and at them, writer/critic Naveen Kumar talks to Haddad about his latest play Dark Disabled Stories • see also conversations with Haddad at Theatrely & Playbill, as well as this video conversation from TDF…
And Lest I Forget — This Week 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...
Evelyn Brown, A Diary (1980) has long been thought to be among the most irretrievable of the Fornés works thought lost to time. But after years of research and rehearsal, the intrepid team of director Alice Reagan and dramaturg Gwendolyn Alker are bringing their reconstruction of Evelyn Brown to NYC’s LaMama early this summer. They have also kickstarted a fundraiser to cover production costs…
And I hereby issue a challenge to all you #TheatreCliquers: for every contribution to the Evelyn Brown kickstarter made between March 20 and March 31, 2023, I will personally contribute an additional $5. Just take a screenshot of your Kickstarter confirmation receipt and upload it to this Google form (sign in required) OR send me the confirmation via email OR tag me in a tweet… just be sure to let me know you pledged somehow. Pledge ANY amount and I’ll add another $5 to the pot. And if you’ve already pledged, I betcha you can spare one more dollar… so pledge again!
Let’s marshall the force of the #TheatreClique to help this important production happen!!!
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!