Wednesday, November 28, 2018
Desperate refugees are being teargassed at the border for having the audacity to take the Statue of Liberty at her word. The economy is slipping badly due to Trump’s mismanagement. The…
SOURCE: bittergertrude.com at 02:17PMThursday, July 5, 2018
“People ask me sometimes, when do you think it will it be enough? When will there be enough women on the court? And my answer is when there are nine.” — Ruth Bader Ginsberg…
SOURCE: bittergertrude.com at 03:15PMWednesday, May 16, 2018
Krista Knight is a young playwright well-known and well-loved in the new plays community. She’s well-loved both for her work (her plays have been produced all over the country) …
SOURCE: bittergertrude.com at 10:05PMWednesday, May 9, 2018
Bitter Gertrude is thrilled to host our first guest blogger ever, the brilliant Ming Peiffer! Dear People In Positions Of Power, When you decide to NOT produce a white artist’…
SOURCE: bittergertrude.com at 10:43AMSaturday, February 10, 2018
I’m old enough to remember Frito Bandito. I was a preschooler but I remember it well. He was a racist stereotype– a Mexican “bandito” character always trying to steal…
SOURCE: bittergertrude.com at 11:16PMSunday, January 14, 2018
As a very young woman, I haunted thrift stores, which, in those days, were chock full of amazing finds. Thrift store book sections filled my library, and I would buy anything related to thea…
SOURCE: bittergertrude.com at 06:40PMWednesday, December 6, 2017
During Thanksgiving, I was having a conversation with a very liberal family member. He was adamant that he supported and believed women. Then he immediately went on to tell me that women are…
SOURCE: bittergertrude.com at 12:48PMFriday, August 4, 2017
“Why do you have to make everything political?” This is a common question my fellow white people like to ask when someone offers a cultural critique of a popular musical, film, v…
SOURCE: bittergertrude.com at 01:20PMSunday, July 16, 2017
When I was young, I was so impressed by Robin Williams. He was the fey-touched improv golden boy, America’s trickster demigod, the wisest of all wise fools. I held him in a kind of awe…
SOURCE: bittergertrude.com at 05:32PMWednesday, July 12, 2017
It’s always exasperating to see people scolding directors for “desecrating” a canonical play or a canonical playwright’s “intent” because they cast actors…
SOURCE: bittergertrude.com at 09:38PMWednesday, July 5, 2017
It was an honor to be invited to view a rehearsal of California Shakespeare Theater’s upcoming production of The Glass Menagerie and write a piece for their blog. An excerpt: “Li…
SOURCE: bittergertrude.com at 03:29PMWednesday, June 21, 2017
I had intended to write about the Philando Castile verdict. Philando Castile was murdered because an officer claims he believed Castile was reaching for his gun when he was reaching for his…
SOURCE: bittergertrude.com at 12:11PMTuesday, June 13, 2017
The Public Theatre is staging Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar as part of its annual Shakespeare in the Park, and hauling out that most overdone of concepts: Julius Caesar is POTUS! They&#…
SOURCE: bittergertrude.com at 06:19PMTuesday, May 23, 2017
For the, oh, seven of you out there who haven’t yet heard, the Albee estate denied the rights to a production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? because the company (Complete …
SOURCE: bittergertrude.com at 02:30PMFriday, March 17, 2017
1. The adults keep brushing it off, but a group of boys (plus one underdeveloped female character who has 14 lines total) know better! It’s up to Our Young Heroes Who Are Mostly White …
SOURCE: bittergertrude.com at 11:54AMWednesday, January 18, 2017
There is no more powerful tool for changing ideas, shifting cultural zeitgeist, and resisting authoritarianism than art. While theatre is not the biggest bat artists wield, our impact on the…
SOURCE: bittergertrude.com at 02:13PMMonday, November 21, 2016
. . . just not in the way Donald Trump thinks. Theatre needs to be safe from encroachment on our freedom of speech. Vice President Elect Mike Pence attended a production of Hamilton on Frid…
SOURCE: bittergertrude.com at 02:24PMFriday, October 21, 2016
When I write about diversity in representational media (theatre, film, TV, video games), often the white anger (and there is always white anger) uses “artistic freedom” as its ba…
SOURCE: bittergertrude.com at 02:28PMFriday, September 30, 2016
Recently director Tim Burton was asked by Bustle writer Rachel Simon why his latest film, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, features an all white cast with the single…
SOURCE: bittergertrude.com at 02:10PMWednesday, September 7, 2016
In theatre and in academia, my two worlds, we talk a lot about “diversity.” In theatre, we talk about diversity in casting, we talk about diversity in programming, we talk about …
SOURCE: bittergertrude.com at 02:01PMWednesday, August 24, 2016
And by “my book is out,” I mean Caridad Svich‘s book is out. The ever-brilliant (srsly) Svich has released a collection of essays for TCG entitled Audience (R)Evolution: Di…
SOURCE: bittergertrude.com at 12:11PMWednesday, August 3, 2016
The theatre community prides itself on its left-leaning culture, openness to diversity, and acceptance of difference. Yet we have constant problems with gender parity. Women are underreprese…
SOURCE: bittergertrude.com at 10:36AMSunday, July 3, 2016
The initial response to the devastating exposé of the abuse at celebrated Chicago theatre Profiles Theatre was swift and decisive: we were all appalled. Nearly everyone in the industry de…
SOURCE: bittergertrude.com at 05:17PMFriday, January 29, 2016
The Oscars are nonsense. They’re Hollywood’s Homecoming Queen elections, as insular, as clique-ish, and as disconnected from any actual merit as any Homecoming election in any …
SOURCE: bittergertrude.com at 01:34PMSaturday, January 9, 2016
The news has dropped that this, our 20th season, will be my company’s last as a producing organization. It’s been overwhelming and emotional to say the least. I’ve …
SOURCE: bittergertrude.com at 01:55PMSunday, November 15, 2015
I don’t have any insider information. But I’ve been both teaching theatre in the university system and producing professional theatre for over 20 years, and I’m sick of the…
SOURCE: bittergertrude.com at 12:15PMThursday, October 22, 2015
There’s been an interesting development in the small theatre/AEA controversy in LA. Actors have banded together to sue their own union. Part of the complaint is that the union ignore…
SOURCE: bittergertrude.com at 02:51PMTuesday, October 13, 2015
There has been some fiery controversy around Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s announcement that they’re commissioning “translations” of all 39 Shakespeare plays into …
SOURCE: bittergertrude.com at 12:54PMWednesday, October 7, 2015
I know, I know: I write about overused tropes often. (Who said irony is dead?) Maybe one day I’ll compile them all into a self-published e-screed entitled “Melissa Reads Too Man…
SOURCE: bittergertrude.com at 07:32AMWednesday, September 16, 2015
With last year’s massive national controversy about The Mikado in Seattle, it’s difficult to believe that anyone, anywhere, would be doing The Mikado in yellowface, right? I mean…
SOURCE: bittergertrude.com at 02:47PMSaturday, September 12, 2015
I just had an interesting conversation with someone whose white teens are using the slang words “finna,” “aight,” “brah,” etc. She characterized it as …
SOURCE: bittergertrude.com at 03:29PM 
