Thursday, May 10, 2012
Perhaps you've heard of this whole Naomi Schaefer Riley kerfuffle, perhaps you haven't, but basically what happened was this: In a blog run by the Chronicle of Higher Education (the closest …
SOURCE: Parabasis at 11:23AMMonday, April 23, 2012
One of my favorite finds over the couple of years I've been doing Stagegrade has been the work of critic David Barbour at Lighting & Sound America. He's been in the game a long time, long en…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 11:37AMFriday, April 20, 2012
By Isaac Butler "As for Dowling, he's working with Louise Erdrich to adapt some of her novels for the stage. He says that he expects the Guthrie to be able to stage more women's work if…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 12:44PMMonday, April 16, 2012
Congratulations are due to the Guthrie for taking an early lead in the Worst Season In America prize, after winning it hands down last year. Here it is, folks, read 'em and weep.
SOURCE: Parabasis at 08:43PMSunday, April 15, 2012
By Isaac Butler On twitter the other day dynamic pricing raised its ugly, seductive head again, this time via the feed of the (new to me) Pitchcentral out of England. Oddly, they seemed to b…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 06:15PMWednesday, April 11, 2012
I apologize in advance for how angry this blog post is. I normally try to be somewhat restrained (while still spunky!) with my rhetoric but sometimes you just gotta unload. Richard Dare, CEO…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 11:01AMSunday, April 8, 2012
I woke up this morning still troubled by that Hilton Als's blog post about August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, because I think it shows some serious problems with his critical practice…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 11:22AMSaturday, April 7, 2012
I forgot to mention this earlier, but the ASME nominations just dropped. ASME is the American Society of Magazine Editors. Their awards are a big deal. Anyway, in case you haven't heard, not…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 01:46PMFriday, April 6, 2012
Over at the Huffington Post, Lauren Gunderson makes the case for more roles for women onstage, something that often gets left out in conversations about gender parity in theatre. She notes, …
SOURCE: Parabasis at 09:22AMThursday, April 5, 2012
By Isaac Butler I should also say that Roxane Gay positively nails the dynamics that shape these conversations whereever they occur. And the dance she outlines should be very familiar to rea…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 02:11PMBy Isaac Butler (Updated Below) The good people over at the Guardian Online have a great Noises Off roundup of the latest series of articles and posts about the lack of female voices (includ…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 01:06PMSaturday, March 24, 2012
By Isaac Butler Here in Minneapolis, we have a station run by our local NPR affiliate called "The Current." The Current mainly plays up-to-date indie rock. They play a lot of local…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 05:53PMWednesday, March 21, 2012
By Isaac Butler The Lark is administering a brand new grant from the Jerome foundation that will pay out to winners something $40K over two years. The twist? It's for early-career writers an…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 01:47PMThursday, March 15, 2012
By Isaac Butler A short essay by yours truly on intellectual property and theatre is up at HowlRound. You can point your browsers this-a-way to take a gander. The essay is more a laying out …
SOURCE: Parabasis at 10:39AMWednesday, March 14, 2012
It was fun when off-off Broadway was just starting…when I lost all of those playwrights or when we all went wandering away, they stayed with me and just increased and added some of the oth…
SOURCE: HowlRound at 11:35PMWednesday, February 22, 2012
Perhaps you have seen the trailers for the new cinematic adaptation of The Lorax that are making the rounds. Here's one: This marks yet another chapter is ongoing descecration of Dr. Seuss's…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 12:16PMFriday, February 17, 2012
By Isaac Butler The Whale, which will appear at Playwrights Horizons next season, is currently running at Denver Theater Center. This has lead a few outlets (including the Denver Post) to ma…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 04:33PMThursday, February 16, 2012
By Isaac Butler Claudia La Rocco has a new blog post up pushing the ball a little bit further forward in talking about politics, representation and art, specifically w/r/t Seminar on Broadwa…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 10:01AMWednesday, February 15, 2012
... Is pretty damn good.
SOURCE: Parabasis at 02:24PMTuesday, February 14, 2012
By Isaac Butler I suggest you point your browsers this-a-way to read playwright Cory Hinkle's take on the positives and negatives of the Minneapolis theater scene. Hinkle is much kinder abou…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 09:31AMSaturday, January 7, 2012
Whew! Big chunk to talk about today, in a less summary fashion below: The wheels start turning and characters start reappearing in this chunk of The Pale King and we keep returning to the sa…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 06:19PMFrom The Pale King: I had an idea I'd try and write a play... It would be a totally real, true-to-life play. It would be unperformable, that was part of the point.
SOURCE: Parabasis at 06:09PMWednesday, January 4, 2012
This Michael Feingold review of Close Up Space has been making the rounds as he uses the show as an opportunity to pontificate on what's bothering him about The Kids These Days With Their Wh…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 02:28PMSaturday, December 24, 2011
Claudia La Rocco has a fantastic piece in the Times today talking about how gender stereotypes are playing out on Broadway, given how many female playwrights are represented on the boards th…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 11:13AMTuesday, December 20, 2011
An intrepid reader alerted me to the fact that the Times has, in fact, covered the issues of creeping commercialism in nonprofit theater before with a great deal more nuance and old-school j…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 04:13PMFriday, December 9, 2011
Other than being black, Lydia Diamond and Tyler Perry have nothing in common.
SOURCE: Parabasis at 09:24AMWednesday, December 7, 2011
A wonderful mini-essay from Rob Weinert-Kendt on our desire to see "important" plays and what that means: [Shame about entertainment] has a lot to do with what we mean when we say we're ente…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 08:11PMTuesday, November 29, 2011
This blog has (mostly) stayed out of the contretemps surrounding Arena Stage’s play submission policy (short version: they’ve stopped taking new play submissions, sort-of, for the long v…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 11:36AMMonday, November 7, 2011
Two awesome things that are even more awesome together!
SOURCE: Parabasis at 04:21PMSaturday, November 5, 2011
I have a feeling this week is going to see me defending Arena Stage quite a bit. Peter Marks pens a piece alledging some kind of shadowy wrongdoing on Arena Stage's part for closing their la…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 11:27AMMonday, October 17, 2011
By Isaac Butler The ultimate purpose of art-- particularly writing-- is not self-expression. Self-expression is, in general, what art is made out of, it's base materials. But like how a wood…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 01:53PM 
