Category: Points of View
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Why Aren’t Audiences Stupid?
Michael Kaiser laments that cultural elites can’t put a ticket-buying fear of ignorance into the masses anymore
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Andy’s 9/11
On September 11th, 2001 I went to work as usual at the Woolworth Building, two blocks from the World Trade Center. My blog posts from 9/11 and the subsequent days are here.
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The Piss Christ Test
Some thoughts on the conflict between artist intent and viewer interpretation
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But Who Will Criticize the Critics?
Where George Hunka irritates us enough to make us write about something we don’t like to write about (which isn’t to say he’s not a nice guy)
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What’s Good for the Kids Is Good for the Grown-Ups
A new essay on Howlround has ideas for improving children’s theater by ending the condescension and making more engaging experiences. The same should be true for adult theater.
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Get Closer: thoughts on activating the audience in live performance
Recent choreographic works by Dean Moss and Yanira Castro invite an examination of interactivity in contemporary performance
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Juliette Mapp’s “The Making of Americans”
I’ve been thinking about how watching live performance is often an act of meditative practice for me. I’ve considered this before, but Andy’s recent post about watching performance as a spiritual practice was quite eloquent and inspiring. It has had me actively pondering how to explain a parallel (or intersecting? or shared?) theory, especially after…
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Why Aren’t There More African-Americans In Contemporary Performance?
Discussions of revitalizing black theater concentrate on playwrights and new plays, but why aren’t more black artists looking to make work outside of the box?
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Body Madness @ Danspace Project: a rumination
A lot of great things have been said about Judy Hussie-Taylor’s Platform structures at Danspace Project. They’ve served as great mobilizers of artists as advocates, curators, and creators and as springboards for a great range of dialogues among the various audiences who attend any (or many) of the shows within any given Platform theme. They…
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Watching Performance As Spiritual Practice
Andy meditates on watching performance as spiritual practice.
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The Arts, The Work and the Gift Economy
The Arts and the Gift Economy. How do we value the work that we do in the arts?