Theater vs. Nazis: The Producers

I saw a local theater’s production of Mel Brooks’ musical The Producers a few weeks ago.  Entirely by coincidence, I happened to be there during the talk-back session.  Now, I’ve participated in talk-back sessions before, so I should have known better than to ask serious questions; most of the time, a talk-back is just another opportunity for the actors to blush beneath the gushing weight of the audience’s praise.  It’s not unreasonable; when are you going to see most of these people again?  If you want them to say something nice about you, you need to seize the opportunity.

The Tyranny of Verisimilitude

As promised.

The theater of the late 19th and early 20th century is replete with stories of daring theater managers trying to outdo each other by creating vast technical marvels; impresarios were doing all kinds of outlandish things, like building giant treadmills onstage so that they could stage Ben-Hur’s chariot race, or whole butcher shops so that the audience could appreciate the smell of meat.

Part of this, I think, was the rise of the photograph:  every year, chemists and Kodak were coming closer and closer to a precise rendition of exactly what the eye could see.

And, naturally, this led to film.

Trans/Cis-realism: A New Approach to Aesthetics

So, in case you haven’t heard, the SOE is starting its newest project — a play about the life of Aphra Behn, the first woman to make her living as a playwright.  Empress of the Moon takes place before she’s written anything, during the periods of her life when she was a spy in Surinam (probably) a spy in Flanders (definitely) and then in debtor’s prison in London (maybe).  It’s a play for six actresses, who will play a number of roles, both male and female.

As soon as I tell people that I’ll have women playing male roles they (often unknowingly) raise a fascinating point by asking me, “Are you going to get women that look like men?”

Empress of the Moon: the Lives of Aphra Behn

(cross-posted at Threat Quality Press)

So. My new play, The Empress of the Moon, is done-ish. First draft done, anyway. We start rehearsals for it today, and we can spend a week or so doing some major re-writes to it, because I have to start choreographing the MILLION swordfights that it requires. Right now, I want to take a minute though, and talk about why, even if this play doesn’t turn out to be really great, I think it’s important that it got written.

[EDIT:  Done, done.  Done!  Buy tickets, or watch the livecast on August 13th!]

There are a lot of women that work in the theater.

The Witch of Edmonton: On the Merits of Preserving Jacobean Dramas

(cross-posted at Threat Quality Press)

Just saw REV Theater Company’s The Witch of Edmonton over the weekend; I’m not going to say much about the quality of the production, as the play isn’t running anymore, so who cares?  It wasn’t the best design, direction, or acting that I’ve ever seen, but I doubt that, even if it were, such elements could have salvaged the play itself.

The dramaturg for this play left extensive notes in the program, gently beginning the process of interpretation.  She (?  I actually can’t remember the person’s name, and have lost the program, so we’ll have to rely on my memory here) says that during the combined reign of the Tudors and the Stuarts, more than 2500 plays were written and produced.  She does not address this question:  how many of them are actually worth doing?

The Love Jerry Controversy

(UPDATE:  Nicole from Nice People responds in the comment section here. Not a hundred percent sure how I feel yet, though I am disdainful of the idea of putting personal safety ahead of art.)

(cross-posted at Threat Quality Press)

Oh, well.  First post, but we might as well jump right in, huh?  Controversy is important in the theater, and I like it.  Love Jerry is a play currently in production by the Nice People Theater Company; it is a musical about a pedophile, about his family, and about how they deal with each other.  I guess; I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m intrigued by the idea, especially because of Wendy Rosenfield’s recent Inquirer review of the piece.

Welcome to the SOE

The Special Operations Executive is Iron Age Theatre’s brand-new experimental and developmental division.  Here is our home page and scratchpad; it’s full of information about our new projects and (occasionally) the mad theories behind them.  We’ll also be posting theory, criticism, and conjecture here, so if you’ve got something interesting to say about the theater in Philadelphia, let us know.