It’s wrong to call a production like The Seafarer a “fleeting joy” except in the most literal sense, but this week that’s the sense I’m experiencing. Sunday was our last performance. What makes the performing arts so special, of course, is the very thing that makes their joys ephemeral. They are real at the moment [...]
As I noted in my blog on auditions, I always say I cast “to ensemble.” That means I cast to get good combinations onstage, not to get a collection of shiny individual actors. One of the categories in the SAG (Screen Actors’ Guild) Awards is “best ensemble,” meaning best cast as a whole, and I [...]
So scant days before opening, I had nobody backstage, and now I have a competent and cooperative crew doing as wonderful a job backstage as my actors are doing onstage. The program had to be printed before many of these people materialized, so I wanted to be sure to celebrate them here.
Always before we hold the publicity shoot I feel somewhat resentful that I’m going to be more or less sacrificing a rehearsal for the sake of some photos. But then on the night, I realize that with the right photographer and with proper preparation by all involved, the shoot can actually push the production forward [...]
Directors at community theaters often gripe about Actors Equity Association, the union that represents stage actors and stage managers. We encounter a lot of frustrations in this regard. First of all, some of us have friends who are Equity actors and whom we would love to be able to cast in our non-professional productions. In [...]
