Off Stage Conversations

Hello Everyone. It's Andie Arthur, executive director of the South Florida Theatre League, with Off Stage Conversations, where I take a look at what's happening in the national and international theatre community.

Before I get started though, I want to invite anyone who is interested to a workshop the League is co-sponsoring with the Broward County Cultural Division and the Theatre Communications Group on Succession Planning, Strategic Planning and Diversity. All three things that I've talked about a lot in this blog and I hope to see some of you there.

Mary Zimmerman, The Jungle Book, and furthering diversity discussions

Famed Chicago Director Mary Zimmerman gave a problematic interview in Chicago Mag. Jamil Khoury of Silk Road Theatre Project gives a polite, but honest appraisal on why what Zimmerman said was problematic. What makes this story different than most of the other stories I've linked over the past few months is that Zimmerman reached out to Khoury to respond. While some of her defense is "I was misquoted," she also engages with the criticism.

Meanwhile, Lily Janiak discusses how to talk about race in reviews, specifically referencing Zimmerman's The White Snake.

Every Town Is Our Town

Kate Powers recaps her experience in directing a production of Our Town at Sing Sing. It's a great piece if you need to restore your faith in what we do.

Unpaid Internships are mostly Illegal

Parabasis and Howard Sherman weigh in on the recent federal court decision on the illegality of unpaid internships.

NASA's Social Media Strategy

In a larger interview on theatre and technology, Sean Daniel's talks about NASA's social media strategy:

I was really inspired by the way NASA was using social media to connect with people interested in the space program.

First of all, everyone who tweets for them is authorized to talk to The New York Times - so what you're reading on-line isn't an intern they got to do Twitter, you're connecting directly with the top of the organization. Also, all their social media is made to lead you to towards meeting people in person, BUT you can't bring a guest or partner when you come to their tweet-ups - you are forced to meet new people or talk to the astronauts.

It's using social media to enhance and facilitate people talking to people, not to replace it. I was very inspired by that, and it helped to formulate some of the thinking around our engagment programs.

Working with the Religious Sector

Karen DeLossi of Partners for Sacred Places has a piece on how religious institutions can reach out to arts organizations for the benefit of both. I'm personally very interested in working with Partners for Sacred Places in the future to see if similar space partnerships could happen in South Florida.