“With the broad acceptance of scarcity, the drawdown of resources ensues, and business begins: the race for the best education in a world believed to be short of good teachers; the race for the best-paying jobs in a world believed to be deprived of respectable work and access to resources; the competition to acquire land and housing in a world where we believe there is a housing shortage; the pressure to buy all the right advantages and implements for our children in a world that is believed to have limited space and opportunity for them; the hustle to work hard and bank and invest and save in a world where we believe money is the only means of having our needs met. Continue reading →

This post could be called “The Enshittifcation of Theater,” and so could the next one. By 1870, all the pieces were in place to overthrow the resident stock companies across the nation:- a railroad system connecting many of the cities coast to coast;- a canal that connected travel from New York to the Great Lakes;- a large metropolis (New York City) at the head of both the train and canal system;- a burgeoning star system that was much in demand across the country. Continue reading →

“The change I am talking about appeals to me precisely because it need not wait upon “other people.” Anyone who wants to do so can begin it in himself and in his household as soon as he is ready-by becoming answerable to at least some of his own needs, by acquiring skills and tools, by learning what his real needs are, by refusing the glamorous and the frivolous. When a person learns to act on his own best hopes he enfranchises and validates them as no government or policy ever will. Continue reading →

Recap During the first 75 years of theater in America: Companies were independent, semi-permanent, self-contained units; They were managed by the leading actor, who chose the plays that were done, when and how long they would be done, and who in the company would play the roles; Company members were paid a share of the profits; They played standard English fare, especially Shakespeare, in rotating repertoire; The theater building was either owned by the company, or were leased long-term; The company played in a particular community, but would go on short tours each year; actors in stock companies normally led stable, settled lives and enjoyed working conditions comparable to workers in other fields; By the 1820s, a star actor from Europe or, eventually, America would come to town and perform plays with the resident company members before moving on to another town. Continue reading →

I wrote this in 2008, and it still is true today: From Daniel Quinn’s deceptively simple and inspiring Beyond Civilization: Humanity’s Next Great Adventure: The river I mentioned earlier is the river of vision. Our culture’s river of vision is carrying us toward catastrophe. Sticks planted in the mud may impede the flow of the river, but we don’t need to impede its flow, we need to divert it into an entirely new channel. Continue reading →

“My poetry is basically a poetry of praise. It’s an affirmation of the world, of the beauty of the world, and, at the same time, it’s a protest against cruelty. I cannot accept the cruelty of the world … “

— Czeslaw Milosz

When i largely disconnected from social media, I remembered what it was like to have only my own thoughts to entertain myself. It was the main reason I started reading so much – to make me more interesting to myself!

My latest weekly newsletter in which I talk about Brown’s elimination of the MFAs in Acting and Directing (apparently, the highly-regarded playwriting program emerged unscathed), Trump’s turning the NEA into a military marching band, and a dream about the 5 types of stories in the world (I only remember 2). Continue reading →

Dear Programmer types (e.g., @manton (although you shouldn’t reply–you have enough with answering micro.blog questions), @mtt, @amerpie, who am I missing…): I need some help. Here is what I’m trying to do. I use a nearby academic library to get many books for my research. Many of them have very small print for my aged eyes, so I bought a CZUR scanner and I scan them and convert them to epub to read on my tablet. Continue reading →

I just made the mistake of checking in on Threads. Good God, it’s just one person after another hyperventilating. I was never so glad to get back to micro.blog as now.

playbill.com/article/b…

Brown and Trinity Rep shutting down MFA in Acting and Directing.

Let me take this opportunity to plug my book DIY Theater MFA.

playbill.com/article/b…

Brown and Trinity Rep shutting down MFA in Acting and Directing.

Let me take this opportunity to plug my book DIY Theater MFA.

My friend Michael Phillips at the Chicago Tribune discusses the changes of “emphasis” at the National Endowment for the Arts here. I agree with the reactions of Chicago arts leaders. At the same time, this is why I have argued against seeking government funding in Building a Sustainable Theater. As we saw when Congress eliminated the Federal Theatre Project during the anti-communism scare in 1939, the political winds change and suddenly your business model is on shaky ground. Continue reading →

Every once in a while, rarely, I have one of Those Dreams. These are dreams that have a very different form than my normal dreams, and usually communicatre something to me in a language very different from the way I think. In other words, these dreams (of which I have had a total of three in a decade) seem to come from someone other than me, and are not action oriented, although they can be narrative. Continue reading →

[Since I just sort of launched into The Rooted Stage Series without really explaining what I was trying to do, I think I ought to pause an provide some context. I’ve tried several times to write a Preface/Introduction, but got bogged down. Here, I want to do this as if I was being interviewed by a slightly skeptical version of me, in dialogue form. So: Me is, well, me; and MeToo is the skeptical questioner. Continue reading →

Before it turns into a celebration of Substack, Sophia Efthimiatou’s post has some wonderful thoughts about having nothing to say as the entryway for true receiving, especially artistic receiving. “What has been lost,” she says, “is a quality that never came easy to us to begin with, and that is our ability to receive. To receive, as Steinbeck put it, “anything from anyone, to receive gracefully and thankfully, and to make the gift seem very fine. Continue reading →

Yesterday, I wrote about the birth of the star system prior to 1870, when notable actors would travel from resident stock company to resident stock company throughout the country, performing with the company actors for a few days and then moving on. Today, I need to double back to talk about real estate for a moment, because it is crucial to the story of what happened in 1896. To do so, I am reliant on the invaluable work, once again, of Alfred L Bernheim’s 1932 classic (reissued in 1964) The Business of the Theatre: An Economic History of the American Theatre, 1750-1932. Continue reading →

Zelda Fichandler, the co-founder of Arena Stage in DC, and one of the Founding Mothers (along with Eva La Gallienne, Margo, Jones, and Nina Vance): “There is no real way of likening us to other culture carriers such as the British National or the Royal Shakespeare Company or the present Moscow Art Theatre, since we are all of us broke and have small companies instead of very big ones. We spend half of our life at fundraising dinners and defending play choices to citizen boards of directors, since with the impulse that we should have theaters in our land came also the impulse that the community should be part of them, should put up some of the money, should even have a voice in them, and—now hear this! Continue reading →

As I wrote in The Rooted Stage: Beginnings, part 1 of this series, the first century of the American theater was dominated by the resident stock company which had the following characteristics: rooted in a single place in a single theater using a consistent group of actors performed a variety of plays independent (i.e., the capital invested in the company came from those within the company itself) organized as a cooperative But all of that changed around 1870, and again in 1896. Continue reading →

I was at a wonderful, new local restaurant today. It opened several months ago, and it was our first visit. The food was excellent, the atmosphere understated and comfortably classy. There was a nice bar with about eight chairs and fewer than ten tables, each of which sat four people. The restaurant is open five days a week for lunch and dinner. The staff seemed to be the two owners–maybe there was another staff person during another shift, I don’t know. Continue reading →