Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2020 i American Theatre

LAURIE McCANTS HAS NEVER BEEN THE SOLE artistic leader of Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble. That’s because, since its founding in 1978, this small, indomitable Pennsylvania theatre has been just what its name indicates: a true ensemble, with decisions made by consensus, and responsibility and pay shared equitably. McCants, whose last day as a member of BTE was Feb. 29, was among the troupe’s founding members. In the 42 years since helping to start the company, she has appeared in countless plays, most recently Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children. I spoke to her recently about her career and the legacy she leaves behind at BTE. ROB WEINERT-KENDT: Congratulations on a good long run. Why leave now? LAURIE McCANTS: Well, I’m 67. Also, there’s a younger contingent of ensemble members, and I feel quite…

THE FIRST EPISODE OF BLUE’S CLUES AIRED when I was almost 3. Now it’s 2020, the year my son will turn 3, and I am showing him an ancient VHS tape of the Blue’s Clues episodes I watched when I was his age. And then he breaks the VHS player, one of the last relics left from my childhood. Thankfully we find the episodes to purchase on demand. All of this undoubtedly makes me a millennial parent. The last time I wrote a story about parenthood for American Theatre (Nov. ’18), my boy couldn’t even walk. Now he is sprinting, throwing snowballs, coloring the walls. He has no interest in breastmilk; he’s moved onto chicken nuggets and choo choo trains. My family’s needs are constantly in flux. The last time…

Visit PAALtheatre.com/resources for up-to-date listings or to submit a resource. GENERAL RESOURCES FOR PARENT ARTISTS Parent Artist Advocacy League (PAAL)-Best Practices Handbook: PAAL has compiled the first contributions to their Best Practices Handbook for Parent Artists and Employers, to be available nationally to theatres in the United States. The handbook consists of featured interviews with professional parent artists and supportive institutions translated into guide-sheets and principles that can apply to a wide range of institution levels, from Broadway to regional to festival-size theatres. Topics include the intersectional and intergenerational effects of parent discrimination, true stories of individual parent-artist discrimination and job loss, and research recommendations for reducing discrimination. Directory of Family Friendly Theatres Awarded by PAAL for Best Practices: The PAAL Awards offer national recognition for theatre institutions, companies, and…

I GREW UP IN MOMBASA, A SMALL CITY ON THE Kenyan coast, where people speak the Bantu-Arabic trading language called Kiswahili, along with English. Local women walk the streets in black abayas and deras next to tourists in shorts and tank tops; beach boys loiter on the sand, and the sounds of taarab music continue to fill the streets of the old town, where my grandfather was born. Mombasa feels like a different landscape from the rest of Kenya. And for many of us, Nairobi, the inland capital city of Kenya, has always seemed a distant dream. In fact, I didn’t know much about Nairobi except that my father worked diligently in the transport industry to ferry goods from the Port of Mombasa to the inland. I hadn’t spent much…

THE ALDRIDGE CANON I just happened to be looking through an old edition of American Theatre, and I ran across this article about Ira Aldridge (“Ascending Mount Aldridge,” March ’14). The article shares a list of plays and resources about the tragedian. However, the article failed to mention the play that I wrote while a doctoral candidate at SIU-Carbondale. SIU is where the Herbert Marshall collection is housed (the collection was mentioned in the article). My play, An Evening With Ira Aldridge, was written after researching the collection. The play is one of three original works in my dissertation, Negritude: Three Plays for the African American Theatre. An Evening With Ira Aldridge premiered at SIUCarbondale as part of its New Play festival in 1997, and the play was read at…

200 YEARS AGO (1820) The Chestnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia, a Georgian-style building modeled after the Theatre Royal in Bath, England, is destroyed by fire. The company is performing in Baltimore at the time, so there are no injuries or casualties. Though the cause of the blaze is unknown, the use of gas fixtures could have been involved, as historians will consider the theatre the world’s first to employ that technology instead of candlelight or oil lamps. 95 YEARS AGO (1925) Garland Anderson’s Don’t Judge by Appearances is given a reading in New York City with 600 audience members in attendance. The play, written in three weeks while Anderson worked as a switchboard operator and bellhop in San Francisco, will become Broadway’s first three-act play by an African American and…

LAST DECEMBER AT THE PUBLIC THEATER, THE PARENT ARTIST ADVOCACY LEAGUE hosted an extraordinary gathering of theatre leaders, artists, and academics to share best practices and challenges around support for caregivers in the American theatre. The day of inspiring and informationpacked sessions culminated with a Q&A between Emily Mann, outgoing artistic director and resident playwright of Princeton, N.J.’s McCarter Theatre Center, and Mary Hodges, a New York City-based actor and director. The two spoke about their varied experiences as working parents—both the obstacles they’ve faced and the progress they’ve made in rendering their field more responsive and responsible to parent artists. The following has been edited and condensed for clarity. MARY HODGES: I’m going to read a quote from an article about you from 2009. You said, “Being a mother…

ON A RAINY WINTER WEEKNIGHT, THE SANCTUARY of the First Congregational Church of Bellevue, Wash., is gradually filling with people. But this evening, “sanctuary” is probably the wrong word for the high-ceilinged, modern house of worship they are entering. As they fold up their umbrellas and take their seats, those in attendance may not immediately notice a man and woman wearing black T-shirts with the initials ICE (for Immigration and Customs Enforcement) emblazoned in large white letters, or realize how closely this pair is scrutinizing the crowd of more than a hundred. But it soon sinks in: These keenly observant figures are not typical ushers. Periodically they approach individuals, quietly announcing that they are under arrest. Those “in custody” are then firmly led up the aisle to a corner of…

This is an excerpt from the new book Stages: A Theater Memoir, which recounts Poland’s career as a New York theatre producer. IN 1976, HOWARD ASHMAN ASKED HIS FRIEND Kyle Renick if he wanted to start a nonprofit theatre company. Kyle was the business manager of the American Place Theatre and Howard was an editor at Grosset and Dunlap. Soon after they took over the floundering WPA Theatre and immediately put it on the map. The opening productions were an Albee adaptation of Ballad of the Sad Café and Gorey Stories, a revue mentored by Ashman that moved to Broadway. Howard spent the next six years honing his craft as a writer and director, and he began a collaboration with Alan Menken, who he met in Lehman Engel’s BMI Musical…

THE THEATRE FIELD IS NOT BUILT FOR parent artists. Six-day workweeks, 12-hour tech days, last-minute schedule changes—it’s almost like we don’t want parents working in theatre. It is especially challenging for parents who are playwrights, directors, designers, stage managers, and actors whose careers depend on working freelance in several organizations around the country and the world. Parent Artist Advocacy League for Performing Arts + Media (PAAL), founded by Rachel, seeks to elevate the national standard of care for caregivers, and to that end led the first national summit dedicated to caregiver support in the performing arts last December, in partnership with the Public Theater. And the Playwrights Realm, an Off-Broadway theatre coled by Roberta, is centered around equity and inclusion and deeply committed to reflecting the full spectrum of humanity.…

“I BELIEVE THE NEED FOR A (BLACK CULTURAL ART form) is far more critical even than the issue of white racism… All Black artists must begin either to build, or to support, Black theatres in all the Black communities in America,” theatres that “should be concerned with the truth of our lives.” Those are the words of Barbara Ann Teer, writing in The New York Times in 1968. That same year she put her own words into action in Harlem. More than a theatre, the National Black Theatre would be a place to build and celebrate a culture that was uniquely African American. And while most of the theatres founded in those heady days have long since burned out, NBT still stands at the intersection of 125th Street and 5th…