Some considerations of safety issues in the K-12 environment. Safety issues in these facilities are in many ways even more important than at the college level and professional level. This is for several reasons:

1. Children have a less developed sense of hazard recognition and awareness of the abstract potential for injury to…

A recent LA Times article contends that there’s a current trend in playwriting: shorter plays.

What’s a short play? Oh, about 90 minutes, usually without an intermission.

I have to smile at myself as I write this as almost all of my plays are about 90 minutes, the majority without intermission. Now, I didn’t intentionally decide to skirt the…

The holidays for me are a chaotic time of seasonal shows, sending Christmas cards, decorating, making and eating, food, and... well, commercialism. Even though I don't have kids of my own, I'm keenly aware of my friends and relatives…

Steve Chbosky is the author of the book, Perks of Being a Wallflower, one of my favorite books. He also directed the movie adaptation of his book. This letter was first written when the movie opened in theaters; he was at the Arclight Cinema premiere of the film, where I saw it with a good friend from CalArts.

Dear friend,

I had forgotten how much your book moved me. I had forgotten how much it has…

Harlan Ellison has a stock answer for people who ask where gets all those wonderful story ideas. “Schenectady, New York. The delivery service brings a six-pack every Thursday.” It even spawned an anthology of short stories, “It Came From Schenectady,” which is a lot of fun.

If only it were that easy.

But if you’re serious about writing, you know that ideas come from everywhere. Sometimes, reading a news…

So I have a confession. Christmas music drives me crazy. Absolutely CRAZY.

This is…

Shows like Glee really piss me off sometimes.

Granted, I haven't watched since approximately two episodes into season 2. And I actually did enjoy the over-the-top melodramatic style and some of the stupid-crazy plot twists enough to get that far. (and the pretty music! And all the pretty people!)

What killed the show for me though?

Well, for one, the whole "everyone hates Glee club but our productions have a bajillion dollar budget with 50 orchestra members, custom…

Designing for Secret Bridesmaids' Business is a rather unlikely thing for me as I have always been designing stylised and/ or abstract sets since my first set design project in college. I always feel that realistic sets is not my forte as I am not a person that like to go into fine details about what should be in the setting.

…

I'm a gamer; I'm not ashamed to admit it. I play table-top strategy and tactics games. I play table-top RPG games. I play online first-person shooters. I play online MMORPGs. I love gaming--I'm part of the generation raised with Atari 2600, the first NES, Donkey Kong, Q-Bert, and Mario Brothers. (Remember when Mario was saving Pauline, not Peach?)

One of the things you figure out about video games, pretty quickly if you're any good at them, is that they teach you how to play while…

In the Terminator movie franchise the world has become an apocalyptic wasteland as the intelligent machines seek to eliminate mankind from the world. Most of the machines we deal with are, by comparison and capability, pretty benign . . . until we lose focus on what we are doing. Then it seems that they are plotting our demise, or at least deliberately try to frustrate us. Have you ever had had a copy machine…

As a poet, every so often, I come across one of my early poems. I mean an early one. From like Jr. High. And I cringe. Shoulders say hello to ears. There’s nothing more embarrassing than a young poet’s first timid steps onto the page. Often because they (and when I say “they” I mean “I”) are mimicking. Mimicking what they’ve read and what they perceive to be poetry.

And I’ve seen this with other poets at the beginning of their career. It’s as if we all have to write through all those…

As I've blogged about in the past, every now and then I get to help out in ASF's prop department. Most recently, I had a "all I need to know I learned in kindergarten" type moment during an amazingly fun morning helping the props team make some fake food, using the kindergarten and crafting stand-by: salt dough.

Not just for homemade ornaments or figures! Specifically, I made pies and tarts for a street vendor in our upcoming production of A Christmas Carol.

Salt dough is…

As a college instructor of an intro course to theatre appreciation I try to add dimension to the arts by getting the students to think about how science assists theatre arts. This is an important component in the course because I have many computer science technology majors enrolled.

Adding Arts into the Science Technology Engineering Math programs is key to balancing the education received and to stimulating the learning. An article in Education News (www.educationnews.org/technology/will-adding-arts-to-stem-improve-education-and-innovation/)…

About last night…

I want to touch on a little “political theatre” sort of, but I don’t want to talk about things political per se. This isn’t about policy or beliefs, it’s not the place for that. (If you’ve looked at my Twitter avatar in the last few weeks, you can probably guess which way I voted.) We’re here to talk about the words, the spectacle, the shared events on stage.

We stuck with NBC for…

Writing has always been a passion of mine - rivaled only by theatre. I've been writing since grade school, and graduated college with a creative writing minor. But I found that after college without regular classes or workshops or deadlines my writing habits declined, and my word output dwindled to, well, zero. What I needed was a kick start to keep my pen in hand.…

Yes, yes, I know. This is probably the 5 billionth (or maybe just fifth) blog I've written on auditioning. But auditions are such a huge part of being an actor. Also, just yesterday, we had our auditions for a workshop production of Lunatic Sun, a new musical by composer Paul Matthis. I wrote the…

I have been in the re-launch of my radio show, Musical Theatre Talk, for a while. I thought it was all set, then things didn't go as I'd hoped. Not to worry, though!

I'm getting it back on track to get MTT and a whole NEW venture set up by January 2013. Stay tuned for updates by following me on Twitter or…