Editor's Note: It seems that at most major transition points of my writing career, Laura Axelrod has been there. When I first started theater blogging, playwright Laura Axelrod was-- along w…
by Isaac Butler Marshall Mason on Hot L: Norman Lear discussing his failed TV series adaptation: A promo for that adaptation that shows, fairly clearly, that the network had no idea what to …
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Editor's Note: One of the ways that people of my generation were first exposed to Lanford Wilson was through high school and summer camp theater programs. Certainly, that's how I encountered…
Editor's Note: In "Maturing With Wilson," playwright Alessandro King documents his journey from hammy high school character actor to adult playwright, a journey guided all along by…
When I first started writing plays, I said, "Theatre should be a three-ring circus." I wanted a lot of people, all talking at once, creating life on the stage. After we formed the Circle Com…
Two Links: -- Earlier this year, a group of artists banded together to do Wilson's Balm In Gilead in Brooklyn. Playwright Stephanie Fleischmann was there to document it. You can check out he…
Transforming Beauty By Jannie Wolff Editor's Note: What better way to kick off our week than with a memoir piece by someone who knew Lanford Wilson. Here, Jannie Wolff"who interned with Circ…
By Isaac Butler Contra-Michael Billington, the reason why it's bad that Judith Miller is going to be a theater critic for Tablet Magazine is not that she has no arts background. It's that sh…
The terrifyingly talented Jessica Blank (The Exonerated, Aftermath etc.) tried to write in a comment and it just wouldn't post. I asked her if I could just go ahead and post it to help keep …
By Isaac Butler Alan Lomax did not write any of the folk and traditional songs that he helped archive and record. And yet he claimed a copyright on them. This is how he came to be a co-autho…
I am currently reading Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook to help brush up on issues in poetry pedagogy prior to teaching a poetry creative writing unit in the fall. She has some rather interes…
I tweeted and facebooked and social networked about this earlier, but if you haven't read it yet, Jason Zinoman's NYTimes blog piece on the value(s) of bad reviews is well worth your time, a…
By Isaac Butler That certainly seems to be the question lying at the heart of this piece in the Guardian by chief arts staff writer Charlotte Higgins. And while you might thing the answer is…
By Isaac Butler Going through my stack of mail upon returning to Minneapolis, I found a season brochure from The Guthrie for their 2011-2012 season. Honestly, it's enough to make you doubt w…
Parabasis, an internet journal of arts, culture and politics, seeks submissions for its upcoming week-long online issue about the work of American playwright Lanford Wilson. What we are look…
So asks Philadelphia theatre critic David Fox. He even goes so far to consult Miss Manners (who, shockingly, says it's okay). While he probably wouldn't personally boo, he could understand w…
There are very, very, very few moments of theater that I think have clearly delineated right and wrong ways of interpretation. But it turns out that-- at least according to Isherwood-- the R…
By Isaac Butler Charging more for something drives people away from seeing it. But don't worry. I'm sure charging $75 for an off-broadway ticket has no impact whatsoever on how many people g…
I've long had this theory that while the rest of the country seems to suffer from a Shakespeare Problem-- which is to say, overproducing Shakespeare to the detriment of the rest of the class…
By Isaac Butler I have a quick question for boosters of dynamic pricing. There are many claims made on behalf of dynamic pricing, the very claims that 99 asks about in this post. These are t…
By Isaac Butler Arena Stage's David Dower tries to explain on Arena's blog why Arena does not accept submissions and what the philosophy behind having a request-based rather than submission-…
By Isaac Butler So blithely asserts the writer Jason Farago at the Guardian in writing about the RSC's mini-season here in the Big Apple. His evidence? The closing of the American Folk Art M…
By Isaac Butler It's really, really, not what you expect when you start reading the blog post.