Government bailouts saved the automotive and banking industries. American theater is in similar trouble and deserves to be saved.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 12:43PMEditor’s note: Sara Holdren, New York and Vulture’s regular theater critic, is on vacation.Like its narrator, a character simply called “Woman” played with great precision …
SOURCE: Vulture at 10:00PMEditor’s note: Sara Holdren, New York and Vulture’s regular theater critic, is on vacation.“I am not what I am.” This almost-koan, spoken by Iago, comes a mere 64 lines into Othello.…
SOURCE: Vulture at 10:00PM“By the way, did you see the video of Trump’s hair in the wind?”In acting training, teachers refer to a performer’s body and voice as an instrument, but in the case of Nathan Lane, w…
SOURCE: Vulture at 08:00AMBy Isaac Butler Now that I've seen it, I’d like to briefly talk about a couple of aspects of Sam Gold’s recent, much-lauded production of Othello at New York Theatre Workshop and how it …
SOURCE: Parabasis at 12:24PMNYC Fringe Contract: WARNING! The Guild has reviewed this year's contract for the NYC Fringe Festival and believes it is problematic, as are the Festival's application requirements. Playwrig…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 07:20PMHow Tony Kushner’s play became the defining work of American art of the past 25 years.
SOURCE: Slate at 08:23PMIf, like me, you work in theater and spend a lot of time procrastinating on social media, you’ve probably seen many of your friends ranting about small minded academic quislings fact-check…
SOURCE: Slate at 11:05PMBy Isaac Butler Over at American Theatre magazine, Susan Jonas has a great piece about expanding the theatrical canon to include overlooked works by women that is well worth your time. I am,…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 12:58PMby Isaac Butler Let's never write about David Foster Wallace again. Let's never read anything about David Foster Wallace again. Let's instead read things actually written by David Foster Wal…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 10:06PMBy Isaac Butler You know, it's amazing, the racket that war promoters have discovered and built for themselves over the last fifteen years. Really, it's astounding. First, you can get paid t…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 09:07PMBy Isaac Butler "There are some of the younger geniuses-- everybody who has done one successful production on Broadway is a genius-- who are aware of the rewards that a conscious attitu…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 05:30PMby Isaac Butler This week, the good folks over at TCG asked me to respond to some interview questions as part of a roundtable about the future of theater. I'm very proud of the results, whic…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 09:15PMTwo important pieces of news coming out of the LA 99-seat scene that are relevant to the often heated and ugly debate over reforming the Equity contract there. First off, let’s take a look…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 10:52PMBy Isaac Butler Equity has alerted its membership that they are changing the 99-Seat Plan. Well, really, they're eliminating it, but the changes are not quite as drastic as the original prop…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 10:23PMBy Isaac Butler AEA took the rhetorical gloves off today, explaining why it was offensive to use civil rights era imagery as part of a protest against the union and giving people a refresher…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 03:40PMBy Isaac Butler Since my last post on this issue, folks have been pushing back about my use of gross income instead of net income for judging theater size. I initially thought my explanation…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 04:19PMBy Isaac Butler (For my non-theater readers, this post is gonna get into the weeds on a union contract issue in California. This might not be the post for you.) Last week, my old friend and …
SOURCE: Parabasis at 08:30AMby Isaac Butler Over at The Atlantic, Adrian Hong would like us to know that The Interview, the recently canceled film starring Seth Rogan and James Franco about a hapless talk show host and…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 01:35PMBy Isaac Butler Theatre is the slowest of art forms. When Doubleday published Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, it was, if not quite the vanguard of a trend,…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 01:48PMMarianne Combs has a great roundup of people who her readers think should be considered for the Guthrie AD job. There’s some good folks on there, but I think they’re missing a couple. So…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 10:41AMby Isaac Butler Today, the theatrically-minded zones of the internet are all abuzz about Jonathan Mandell’s HowlRound piece, “Is Diversity a Codeword for Exclusion?” The piece is in th…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 03:07PMBy Isaac Butler Laura Miller's incisive bit of close reading of the work of Jennifer Weiner reminds me that I always meant to write about "likable characters," back when there was …
SOURCE: Parabasis at 10:06AMby Isaac Butler Patrick Healy, in the Times: The $12 million Broadway revival of “Annie” closed last month as a critical disappointment and commercial failure. But it turns out that the …
SOURCE: Parabasis at 12:58PMBy Isaac Butler Hey folks... just wanted to let you know that an essay I wrote about August Wilson's 20th Century Cycle appears in this month's American Theatre and can be read online. I've …
SOURCE: Parabasis at 11:50AMBy Isaac Butler You remember Shakespeare Santa Cruz, right? The classics company killed by complex accounting? If you don't, allow me to refresh your memory: In August, the University of Cal…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 07:31AMBy Isaac Butler The Flea Theatre, which relies on the unpaid labor of its resident company "The Bats," who also do menial jobs around the space and used to have to pay to audition,…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 09:10AMBy Isaac Butler In the years that I had been away from New York, The Public Theatre finished the renovations to its lobby. There’s a part of me that’s nostalgic for the old space. True, …
SOURCE: Parabasis at 10:59AMBy Isaac Butler Up on Howlround today, you'll find this lengthy piece about innovation in arts business practices in anticipation of the "National Innovation Summit for Arts & Cultu…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 11:42AM“Most of our friends we find interesting find us boring: the most interesting find us most boring. The few who are somewhere in the middle with whom there is reciprocal interest, we distru…
SOURCE: Parabasis at 11:25AM
