Continuing the Conversation

Hello, this is Andie Arthur, executive director of the South Florida Theatre League, with a late night edition of Continuing the Conversation, where I bring articles of interest from the national and international theatre community to the Scene.

This week, I wanted to start out with an older, favorite blog post that I often need to remind myself of: Talk About What’s Good. We spend a lot of time in this field gripping about it (myself included) and often venting feels good – but we also need to spend time focusing on what is working and do what we can do to encourage it.

BLACK PLAY ARCHIVE

Last week, I pointed out some disappointing racism in the international theatre community, but this week I want to highlight the Black Play Archive where “will allow users to search biographical, production, and publication details of works by Black British Playwrights.”

A LOOK AT BOSTON

Ilana Brownstein focuses on what’s good and what possible changes are coming for the better in her article for HowlRound on Boston Theatre. I think it’s a good comparison point to Bill Hirschman’s articles for Florida Theatre OnStage – to see how regions are different and similar. As always there’s many good ideas that we could import from elsewhere. Brownstein mentions The Donkey Show as a training ground for young artists and audiences, creating a space for a completely different type of theatre. The Arsht produced The Donkey Show this summer – but what can we do as a community to provide these sort of exciting extended opportunities?

KNOW THEATRE DIFFERENTLY

Know Theatre of Cincinnati is changing their programming. Instead of scheduling a traditional season, they plan to program on a rolling basis. It’s a brand new announcement, but as with 13P, it’s interesting to look at new models of institutions – what benefits are there to not following a traditional season line up? I’m interested to follow this story a few years down the line.

YOUNGER ARTS DONORS

The Washington Post has a nice article about younger arts donors and focuses on how the nature of giving changes among the generations. I think particularly interesting that younger donors want to be actively involved in the organizations they donate to – a name in the program isn’t what they’re looking for.

OWNING YOUR COMFORT LEVEL

So this isn’t really focusing on what’s good, but Kris Joseph has a great blog post on how actors need to own their own comfort levels. “Don’t sacrifice your dignity and self-worth for a gig” is a good message for us all.

And this is really just more sad news in a month of sad news, but today the Alliance for Audience in Phoenix announced that it was ceasing operations. The Alliance functioned as the Phoenix equivalent of the South Florida Theatre League. Their executive director Matt Leherman has been a tremendous help to me in my role here, and I’m really saddened by this.

Thanks and I’ll see you next week!