Innholdsfortegnelse for Summer 2024 i American Theatre

One way to think of theatre is as a living bridge between the past and the present: It is by definition always happening right now, but it has been rehearsed, constructed, premeditated, with words and actions that were scripted anywhere from weeks to centuries before the moment of its performance. We see what’s unfolding in front of us but can always sense what’s behind (and before) it. What does theatre have to say to the future? There is as yet no crystal ball available in any medium but our imagination, of course. But to the extent that a staged reality can awaken new possibilities for living and feeling, and forge fresh relationships among its makers and its viewers, theatre can not only show us a glimpse of our future; it…

Close your eyes and imagine your ideal theatremaking ecology. Who do you see? Where are stories being told? What does it smell, sound, and taste like? Now open your eyes. Can you translate your most hopeful imagination into reality? American Theatre has asked 16 of the brightest minds in all areas of our industry to do a version of this thought experiment, and we will be publishing their work over the remainder of this year. The first four essays are in the pages to follow, and the remaining 12, along with these four, will be published on americatheatre.org. We’ve asked contributors to consider four general topics: Business models and collaboration, looking at new or underexplored models for governance as well as for cross-arts and cross-sector alliances; economic justice and labor,…

I have always been interested in new ways of thinking about the world around us. In an Elinor Fuchs Visit to a Small Planet kind of way, I have always put the world in front of me and tried my best to figure out how to shape it so that it tells the story I want to tell. For example, “digiturgy,” which Allison Koch defines as “the art, technique, theory, and practice of composition for digital storytelling,” was my way of life for years. But it sat on the fringes of mainstream dramaturgy—until the pandemic. Prior to 2020, I found ways to incorporate digiturgy into my “traditional” work, but that usually meant me experimenting and poking lightly at the way things have always been done. But the pandemic moved digiturgy…

Luis Alfaro’s play The Travelers tells the stories of six inter-dependent Carthusian brothers at a crumbling monastery in central California. Here Luis speaks to longtime collaborator Sean San José, artistic director of Campo Santo and now the Magic Theatre, where the play had its premiere, about their long journey together. SEAN: We’ve been working together for decades now, and that feels like such a beautiful, long, endless road. Not to overwork the metaphor, but the journey continues with The Travelers; this truly life-changing experience feels like it wants to keep walking with us. It’s still present. LUIS: Very much. Part of the journey I’ve been having with you is also a journey about the Magic Theatre. It’s a kind of mythical place; it’s got all of its history, and that…

NSENGA K. BURTON, PHD (SHE/HER) is an award-winning writer, entrepreneur, and thought leader, as well as founding editor-in-chief of The Burton Wire news site. She is the guest editor for the Theatre Futures series, supported by the Ford Foundation. While collaborating with the essayists, Burton says that she has been struck by the “profound sense of urgency, awareness, love, and responsibility for the direction of the next generation of theatre communities. They see where it’s headed and have thought long and hard about course-correcting for a more creative, diverse, and inclusive tomorrow.” STUART MILLER (HE/HIM) is a journalist in Brooklyn who has been writing about theatre (and many other things) for 35 years. His story on summer theatre in the post-Covid-lockdown world explores many different ways theatres are struggling to survive, also…

FIRST THEATRICAL MEMORY? Being told that I was cast in Dreamgirls right after I auditioned for Michael Bennett and Michael Peters in June 1984. They were looking for the person who would understudy Effie in the company. I was 18 years old. LAST MEMORABLE THEATRICAL EXPERIENCE? Marie and Rosetta at Atlantic Theater in 2016. I won an Obie Award. It was a two-hander with myself and Rebecca Naomi Jones. It was satisfying on every level as a woman and a performer. I didn’t grow up listening to Sister Rosetta Tharpe, but as I got older, I became familiar with her music. FAVORITE PLACE YOU’VE VISITED? Most recently, Cozumel, Mexico. I went on a cruise just before we started rehearsals for Hell’s Kitchen, and it was actually where I did the least.…

It was almost called Stage. “That’s the name that Jim and I and Laura liked most,” said Terry Nemeth, the original publisher of this magazine, about its launch in April 1984 under founding editor Jim O’Quinn and associate editor Laura Ross. “But Peter Zeisler was adamant that it be American Theatre.” It seems clear in hindsight that Zeisler, longtime executive director of our publisher, Theatre Communications Group, was right to insist. In naming a magazine for both the nation and the art form/industry too many still associate with just one U.S. city, TCG was spelling out both its prime allegiance and its coverage area: the resident theatre movement that had sprung up in dozens of U.S. towns and cities in the decades since Theatre Arts, the storied New York-centric theatre…

In their seminal anthology, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, INCITE, a network of radical feminists of color, defines the nonprofit industrial complex as a system of relationships among the state (local and federal governments), the owning classes, foundations, and nonprofit/NGO social service and social justice organizations that results in the surveillance, control, and derailment of political movements. When applying these ideas to nonprofit theatres in the U.S., I ponder how these dynamics manifest in our work and art-making. A portion of all Americans’ tax dollars fund the nonprofit theatre industry, but the marginalization of artists and audiences of color persists. Plays by and about BIPOC folks continue to be produced at a much lower rate than their white counterparts nationwide. We have seen the historical…

SUSTAINING DONORS ($10,000+) Institutions Bloomberg Philanthropies Doris Duke Foundation Edelstein Family Foundation Edgerton Foundation Ford Foundation The Heinz Endowments Howard Gilman Foundation John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation The Joyce Foundation Mellon Foundation National Endowment for the Arts New York City Department of Cultural Affairs The New York Community Trust New York State Council on the Arts Paul M. Angell Family Foundation The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Richard King Mellon Foundation Richenthal Foundation The Sheri and Les Biller Family Foundation The Shubert Foundation Theater League of Kansas City Walder Foundation The Wallace Foundation Walt Disney Imagineering Willa Kim Estate William & Eva Fox Foundation Individuals Eve Alvord Ralph Bryan Chenault Family Foundation James Chosy John Fontillas Olga Garay-English Jeffrey Gural - GFP Real Estate Jason Delane Lee and Yvonne…

In our industry, we spend a lot of time thinking about the now. The urgency of scarce funding, political whims, and butts in seats often does not allow for much dreaming. However, with this future-focused issue, I invite you all to dream of a brighter tomorrow for the American theatre. As this is my last letter to you all as the interim CEO for TCG, I want to take a minute to share some thoughts about the future that I see for our beautiful ecosystem—and to share some of my history, so that we don’t continue to make the same mistakes I’ve witnessed in the last two decades. For the last few years, I have acted as a freelance strategic resource for theatres in transition and have operated as a…

NETWORKING AND KNOWLEDGE-BUILDING TCG’s Research programs include long-standing studies such as the Salary Survey and Fiscal Survey, as well as responsive snapshot surveys. The National Conference is a biennial gathering of theatre professionals to forge connections, address field-wide issues, and celebrate the theatre of the host community. Theatre for Activism is a series of gatherings to strengthen care, share practices, and forge connections between activists and theatre practitioners. GRANTMAKING AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS THRIVE! Uplifting Theatres of Color provides unrestricted funds for those who have all too often been outside the grantmaking sector’s funding opportunities: Black theatres, Indigenous theatres and Theatres of Color which are closely connected to and have positive impacts on their chosen communities. The Rising Leaders of Color Program forms cohorts of exceptionally talented early-career leaders of color who participate…

In the mid-20th century, John McGrath was a screenwriter and playwright working with England’s Royal Court Theatre, which enjoyed a reputation for staging “dangerous” and “vital” works, often about that great mass of people known as the working class. But McGrath looked around one day and realized that the real performance was being done by the institution itself, as nothing in it—neither the actors, the audience, the aesthetics, nor the location—was truly representative of, created with, or fundamentally for the working class. So, by the late 1960s, McGrath gave up his promising career in the bourgeois theatre of the day and founded the 7:84 Theatre Company, whose first task was to figure out just how the working class really lived and entertained itself. The company—so named because around that time…

In the spring, D.C. audiences met Shakespeare Theatre Company’s long-awaited Macbeth—not upon the heath, nor even downtown, at the company’s glossy Sidney Harman Hall or comparatively intimate Klein Theatre, but at the former Black Entertainment Television studios in Brentwood. There lay the promises of the season’s hottest ticket: marquee talent, industrial chic trappings, and the fruits of an international endeavor more complex than the Bard’s densest soliloquies. The cavernous studio entrance was marked by an angular “M,” looming like a sort of contemporary family crest. The lobby inside was lined with black curtains and free-standing walls made of wood and wire that demarcated separate spaces for concessions, upscale porta-potties with running water, and a luxury donors lounge. Beyond that lay what production staff called “Area B”: an immersive walk-through rendered…