Inspired by recent productions, and my fellow blogger Rich Dionne's post Theatre, Performance and Narrative,I've been thinking a lot about the embellishments we add to productions - be it in time spent, technology used, technique or effect, to further the world of the play. I'm talking about things like the extra hour spent programming cyc fades to replicate a sunset, using hand sewing details rather than paint on a period costume, finding that extra music or sound to use as…

Wow! We had GREAT participation for the Annie edition of Photo of the Week! Let's keep the momentum rolling! This week we've got three more pics vying for your vote. The prize is a copy of Building the Successful Theatre Company, by Lisa Mulcahy. Without further ado -- here are the nominees!

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A long and eventful tour closes with Sunday's two shows of As You Like It, one of them a makeup date for the rain which has followed us like…

Last night I returned home after travelling the Mississippi Delta for five days, interviewing people affected by the flooding of the Mississippi river and marveling at the awesome power of the river. A colleague of mine, Gordon McCall, has been developing a piece based on our relationship to water, and asked me to join him on an impromptu trip to see the effects of this 100-year flood of the Mississippi. We spent five days on…

Electricity and water don’t mix. Add wind, lightning, and slippery mud and it gets really crazy really fast. Then Mother Nature will send-in the hail balls, too. This is where you need a strong emergency plan not just for your crew, but for the entire audience. Plan early and know the weather threshold for…

Early in my career as a playwright, I had one classic rock star moment that I will absolutely never forget.

I had spent an entire week diligently workshopping the first full-length play I'd ever written, then sat through a really great reading of the play before climbing the stage nervously to experience my first talk back. The director of the workshop and reading was a lovely, intelligent man, and he'd done a lot to reassure me about the experience. He'd been supportive all week, so…

Last week, I turned 36. The day before and all day on my birthday, I did audio set-up for the Alabama Arts Council's Celebration of the Arts Awards, a huge event honoring Alabama native artists and contributors to the arts of all forms.

When I first learned I would be putting in a 14 hour plus day on my birthday, I was pretty ticked. I grumbled a lot about how that was pretty typical - I seem to usually work on my birthday, and/or have really terrible "day of" birthdays. The…

For the longest time, I did not publicly call myself an artist.

In high school, this was simply because I wasn't one. As a freshman, I knew for a fact I would grow up to be a famed biochemist. Then a neurosurgeon. Then a marine biologist. But as time went on, my ineptitude at lab work, an incredibly unmanly fear of internal organs and blood, and a recurring nightmare of being eaten alive by vicious telepathically linked dolphins ended all those dreams.

By…

Thanks, everyone, who uploaded your Annie photos! For anyone who doesn't know what's going on, we put out a special call for photos from Annie to compete in a special edition of the Photo of the Week contest. Because it's special we're giving out more than one prize, too! The people who submitted the photos below are all competing for a 2GB thumb drive, a copy of Actor’s…

At the end of the semester, I had the unique opportunity to guest lecture for a colleague in his graduate direction class for a couple of course meetings. The topic was vaguely-defined as “technology.” Initially, my colleague and I had thought I’d talk about different technologies—for example, show control, scenery automation, or video projection—and how to utilize them in a theatrical production. But as I exchanged emails with his students prior to the class sessions to see how much…

Summer Stock, Concerts, Festivals, Art in the Park, County Fairs – it comes in many forms, and they can be a lot of fun as well as a lot of work. Hot, stinky, itchy, work usually, but still fun in spite of the bad working conditions. Working outdoors in amphitheatres, parks, stadiums, and empty fields can present risks that are not common to the indoors theatre environment. Be prepared and plan ahead for…

File this one under: highly speculative. In fact, the idea was inspired by my post on Theater and Biofeedback, so it's really, really out there.

I live near the American Film Institute's Silver Theatre and Cultural Center. It's known as one of the few genuinely great places to see…

The South is reeling from mother nature's onslaught these past few weeks... People never fail to amaze me. So many people are willing to give up their time, money, talent, and whatever they can to help those who are affected.

I read and article recently about a car dealer in NY state that sponsored a car wash and donated all the proceeds to tornado recovery... NY is a long way from Alabama!

Beyond that - what has made me proud to be an artist is to see the…

The human mind is a funny thing. It has an unbelievable ability to make connections, retain information, draw complicated inferences, and sort through tremendous amounts of data and recompile it in new ways. Even just getting to this blog involves complex mental processes—taking abstractions of icons and images and interacting with user interfaces, assimilating text and graphics in order to access and absorb new information. Even in our day to day interactions with people and places, we…

Having surmounted assorted technical troubles (like not having any electricity available on site), I enter into our travel week re-equipped, reconfigured and resilient. The 10th century castle we will be performing at in Prague is apparently not going to have electricity available for me at all, so I've ditched the…

I read this article in the Guardian (UK) and I thought others might be interested in reading it.

Good Theatre Is Where You Find It!

How many of you have had this experience? In less than two weeks time you pay $80 - $100 to see a professional show that is has no energy, bad sound and leaves you wanting your money back. Then you pay $10 to see an amateur show that lights the place up, makes you laugh, makes you cry and brings you back to see another performance.

I think good theatre is where you find it. It doesn't matter whose name in on the marquee,…