Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week, James Carter.
I'm writing as I head out to Montauk, NY on The Jitney. It's an annual getaway my lady and I do with some of our closest friends. We look forward to it all summer, for it's a time to relax, sit on the beach and have some of the best ice cream in the world.
In the not so distant past, I didn't take vacations. I remember times when I didn't leave NYC for two and three years at a time. I always had an excuse. Usually, it was lack of funds or being busy. Often, it was both. Then, one day I met this woman who vacationed. I mean, that's what she *does*. If she could live her life vacationing, she would. And I learned the value of getting away.
It's so easy to get burnt out - especially at the OOB level. We have few resources, little money and more often than not we're working day jobs on top of the full time hours spent writing, directing, designing, acting or producing. Sometimes, we feel if we feel if we leave town we'll miss out on opportunities.
But, if we don't take a break once in a while, the creative juices freeze up. Personally, I become a nervous wreck. It's imperative we rest. Sure, there's "super people" out there who run on two hours sleep a night and never take a vacation, but I just can't do that. NYC has a pace that is unlike any other. It amps up and sucks dry.
My recommendation: Get outta town!
Can't afford it? Save $5.00 a day. It's costing me $400 to stay with friends in a hotel/motel on the beach for 4 days. We put some money in a kitty, buy groceries, drinks and firewood for a campfire on the beach, and we just chill out. If you save $5 a day for 80 days, you've got enough cash to get away for a long weekend. Still to rich for your blood? Go camping. Or, find a friend with a house in New Jersey, Connecticut or Long Island so you aren't paying for a hotel. You know someone who will put you up for a night or two, and you don't have to go far to find respite.
Got a gig coming up? There's always a gig coming up. If you use this excuse, you'll never truly live, and more likely than not, you're not being picky enough with the work you're doing. True, work begets work, but how many craps shows have you done that suck your soul (and pocketbook) just because you think there *might* be an opportunity? Let this one go, focus on you, and when you return, you'll have clearer eyes to make better career decisions that will take you further.
This may be my last post for the week, since I'm heading off to "The End." The nickname for Montauk is "The End" because it is the last stop on the LIRR in Long Island. I like this, for it always feel like I'm going to the edge of the Earth, somehow. I feel like I can disappear into nothingness for a few days, and return rejuvenated. Tonight, as hurricane Earl smashes into the coast of Montauk I hope it isn't truly "the end," but I have a feeling it won't be. I have a feeling tomorrow's going to be a beautiful, sunny, new day.
Thanks to everyone at the Innovative Theatre Foundation for a chance to sound off here. You guys are tops.
Looking forward to seeing everyone when I get back!
Showing posts with label James Carter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label James Carter. Show all posts
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Public Enemy
Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week, James Carter.
Recently Athol Fugard “berated dramatists” (will the overhyped online headlines never cease?) for failing to confront injustice. He, like those before him, scolds writers who take on more lucrative projects in film and television, and he suggests that these sister mediums are “passive experience.” There is a paragraph where Nicolas Kent, artistic director of the Tricycle Theatre, disagrees with Fugard, but there aren’t many details. Fugard does praise David Hare for his fight against injustice, and he suggests several global topics that are intriguing and valid. However, as I finished the article, I asked the question: Why doesn’t he write these plays?
To be clear – I love Athol Fugard. When I was in high school, I performed a cutting of his Master Harold…and the Boys as part of speech competition, and the first time I read that play I burst out crying. I lived and loved that play all the way to state finals. He is an activist, a director and a phenomenal dramatist. The respect I have for what he does is huge.
That’s why I’m so disappointed. Mr. Fugard obviously hasn’t been to see any theatre OOB in the past nine years. From the start of these despicable wars, I have seen more anti-war plays than anti-war films. The anti-establishment sentiments in theatre are so strong I’ve grown weary of them. Just as people have grown weary of the wars. This isn’t meant to rip apart Mr. Fugard’s opinion. His experience and reputation far outweigh my humble career. It is, however, easy to complain about the lack of political plays, overlooking a more important question:
Do political plays become irrelevant when they continually preach to the choir?
The real reason social change in the theatre is ineffective is because it often plays to an audience who agrees with the themes or messages. This also goes for film and television. Most drama confronting injustices are now passive because audiences have heard it all before. When it comes to film and television, people who want to see politically charged stories will Netflix or TiVo them (Let’s be real here – no one goes to the movies to see an anti-war film. They rent or record them).
A few years back, I went to a festival of “political theater” at the Ohio Theater, and all of the pieces I saw were slightly subversive, quickly & cheaply produced, and very, very leftist. I remember sitting there thinking, “Who is this festival for? Are any of these companies really effecting change in the community?”
Then, stuck onto the end of the evening, like drunken Uncle Harry, who happened to show up at the party and wanted to give a toast, was “The Right Wing.” Not the entire Right Wing, mind you, just a few viewpoints. A couple monologues and vignettes about abortion, the war and the economy. Mostly, social issues. All pushing back hard against an audience that didn’t agree at all.
I was one of those who didn’t agree. I laughed it off. I thought it was a piece of shit theatre (it was poorly done). But then I saw people talking, reacting, and getting riled up. It was the highlight of post show conversation. Taylor Mac had performed at the beginning of the night, and most people were asking “How did this conservative piece end up in a festival about politics?”
It was beautiful.
It was the first time I saw a New York theatre audience think about their politics. It made people discuss issues, rather than heading to the bar after the show and patting each other on the back for a “job well done” for “sticking it to the man”. I have no way to gauge the percentage of political plays produced in New York every year, but my guess is that of those political plays, over 90% of carry a leftist view. I’m not suggesting everyone go out and write plays supporting the Republicans, The Tea Party or fundamental religious groups. I’m suggesting we stop preaching to the choir. These plays are not effective in the echo chamber of liberalism. One of our foremost political playwrights doesn’t even hear the messages anymore. They are caught in the cacophony of leftist messages from people who don’t know how to propagate their message.
Granted, there are theaters across the world that are choosing seasons to placate subscribers, and Mr. Fugard’s argument that theaters are more concerned with the bottom line than facilitating change is spot on. What would happen, though, if political plays really took their message to the people?
About six years ago, The Imagination Liberation Front produced a play at Performance Space 122 titled I’m Gonna Kill the President: A Federal Offense. It was a huge success, and people loved it for the subversive and leftist outlandish antics. At the end of the play, they brought an audience member onstage and made her take out a cell phone and call the “White House.” At which point, the entire audience yelled in unison: “I’m Gonna Kill the President!” Not only was it political, it was funny and pushed peoples’ buttons on many levels. People left the show feeling a little unnerved, more supported in their beliefs that President Bush’s regime were full of assholes, and very entertained. In the end, though, I wonder if anyone was really stirred to action.
Cut to two years later: I’m Gonna Kill… goes on tour. The company packs themselves into a van and hit the heartland: Kalamazoo, Michigan. They present the play, and it all goes as planned – until the end. After the phone call to the White House, “FBI agents” (actors) storm the location and “arrest” the entire cast. The cast is handcuffed, the audience requested to exit the theater. That’s supposed to be the end of the play. Everyone goes home. But, one audience member wasn’t about to go quietly. He began to argue with the “FBI agents” and other audience members began arguing with him. Punches were thrown and a fight ensued. The producers had to talk the audience down, insisting what they’d experienced was part of the show. Finally, embarrassed and disheveled, the man backed down, and the play was truly over.
When was the last time you went to the theatre and there was a fist fight? Or, an argument? Or, even a heated discussion?
Danny Hoch’s most recent show Taking Over played The Public Theater a couple seasons back, and the play dealt with gentrification, primarily. The performance I attended was dead quiet. The lack of audience response was palpable. I enjoyed the show, but I felt a disconnect between Danny and the audience. A couple months before his engagement at The Public, Danny performed the play as part of the Hip Hop Theater Festival in The Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn. I had the opportunity to ask Danny how those shows differed from the performances he gave at The Public. The difference, he said, was huge. In the boroughs, Danny was playing to his audience, his crowd. When a character in the play, a native New Yorker, yelled at those gentrifying, Danny said the hometown crowd cheered the character on. At The Public, he was “public enemy.”
It’s important for us to be public enemy, and we won’t do that by staying in black boxes in downtown NYC where our 10 friends, 4 family members and a couple strangers cheer us on. We need to take it to the unconverted. If you have a play about the economy, figure a way to do it on the steps of The Federal Reserve or in front of the bull statue on Wall Street. A play about war? Find a way to do it next to an Army recruiting center. Have a great idea about a satire on Barak Obama being a Muslim? Do it in Alabama. Just don’t get shot.
OOB doesn’t just mean small, it doesn’t just mean scrappy, it doesn’t just mean New York City. It means doing theatre the big boys won’t touch. When New York Theatre Workshop wouldn’t put up My Name is Rachel Corrie, members of LAByrinth Theatre company met at a bar across the street from the theater and read excerpts of the play in protest. It wasn’t a production, but it took the controversy directly to the doorstep of injustice.
The only way to bring change is to raise awareness, and when we produce plays and share them for people who are already aware, it might as well be falling on deaf ears. We don’t need more plays confronting injustice. We need to take the plays fighting injustice to those causing injustice.
It's a start, a work of art
To revolutionize make a change nothin's strange
People, people we are the same
No we're not the same
Cause we don't know the game
What we need is awareness, we can't get careless
You say what is this?
My beloved lets get down to business
Mental self defensive fitness (Yo) bum rush the show
You gotta go for what you know
Make everybody see, in order to fight the powers that be
Lemme hear you say... Fight the Power
“Fight the Power” – Public Enemy, 1989
Recently Athol Fugard “berated dramatists” (will the overhyped online headlines never cease?) for failing to confront injustice. He, like those before him, scolds writers who take on more lucrative projects in film and television, and he suggests that these sister mediums are “passive experience.” There is a paragraph where Nicolas Kent, artistic director of the Tricycle Theatre, disagrees with Fugard, but there aren’t many details. Fugard does praise David Hare for his fight against injustice, and he suggests several global topics that are intriguing and valid. However, as I finished the article, I asked the question: Why doesn’t he write these plays?
To be clear – I love Athol Fugard. When I was in high school, I performed a cutting of his Master Harold…and the Boys as part of speech competition, and the first time I read that play I burst out crying. I lived and loved that play all the way to state finals. He is an activist, a director and a phenomenal dramatist. The respect I have for what he does is huge.
That’s why I’m so disappointed. Mr. Fugard obviously hasn’t been to see any theatre OOB in the past nine years. From the start of these despicable wars, I have seen more anti-war plays than anti-war films. The anti-establishment sentiments in theatre are so strong I’ve grown weary of them. Just as people have grown weary of the wars. This isn’t meant to rip apart Mr. Fugard’s opinion. His experience and reputation far outweigh my humble career. It is, however, easy to complain about the lack of political plays, overlooking a more important question:
Do political plays become irrelevant when they continually preach to the choir?
The real reason social change in the theatre is ineffective is because it often plays to an audience who agrees with the themes or messages. This also goes for film and television. Most drama confronting injustices are now passive because audiences have heard it all before. When it comes to film and television, people who want to see politically charged stories will Netflix or TiVo them (Let’s be real here – no one goes to the movies to see an anti-war film. They rent or record them).
A few years back, I went to a festival of “political theater” at the Ohio Theater, and all of the pieces I saw were slightly subversive, quickly & cheaply produced, and very, very leftist. I remember sitting there thinking, “Who is this festival for? Are any of these companies really effecting change in the community?”
Then, stuck onto the end of the evening, like drunken Uncle Harry, who happened to show up at the party and wanted to give a toast, was “The Right Wing.” Not the entire Right Wing, mind you, just a few viewpoints. A couple monologues and vignettes about abortion, the war and the economy. Mostly, social issues. All pushing back hard against an audience that didn’t agree at all.
I was one of those who didn’t agree. I laughed it off. I thought it was a piece of shit theatre (it was poorly done). But then I saw people talking, reacting, and getting riled up. It was the highlight of post show conversation. Taylor Mac had performed at the beginning of the night, and most people were asking “How did this conservative piece end up in a festival about politics?”
It was beautiful.
It was the first time I saw a New York theatre audience think about their politics. It made people discuss issues, rather than heading to the bar after the show and patting each other on the back for a “job well done” for “sticking it to the man”. I have no way to gauge the percentage of political plays produced in New York every year, but my guess is that of those political plays, over 90% of carry a leftist view. I’m not suggesting everyone go out and write plays supporting the Republicans, The Tea Party or fundamental religious groups. I’m suggesting we stop preaching to the choir. These plays are not effective in the echo chamber of liberalism. One of our foremost political playwrights doesn’t even hear the messages anymore. They are caught in the cacophony of leftist messages from people who don’t know how to propagate their message.
Granted, there are theaters across the world that are choosing seasons to placate subscribers, and Mr. Fugard’s argument that theaters are more concerned with the bottom line than facilitating change is spot on. What would happen, though, if political plays really took their message to the people?
About six years ago, The Imagination Liberation Front produced a play at Performance Space 122 titled I’m Gonna Kill the President: A Federal Offense. It was a huge success, and people loved it for the subversive and leftist outlandish antics. At the end of the play, they brought an audience member onstage and made her take out a cell phone and call the “White House.” At which point, the entire audience yelled in unison: “I’m Gonna Kill the President!” Not only was it political, it was funny and pushed peoples’ buttons on many levels. People left the show feeling a little unnerved, more supported in their beliefs that President Bush’s regime were full of assholes, and very entertained. In the end, though, I wonder if anyone was really stirred to action.
Cut to two years later: I’m Gonna Kill… goes on tour. The company packs themselves into a van and hit the heartland: Kalamazoo, Michigan. They present the play, and it all goes as planned – until the end. After the phone call to the White House, “FBI agents” (actors) storm the location and “arrest” the entire cast. The cast is handcuffed, the audience requested to exit the theater. That’s supposed to be the end of the play. Everyone goes home. But, one audience member wasn’t about to go quietly. He began to argue with the “FBI agents” and other audience members began arguing with him. Punches were thrown and a fight ensued. The producers had to talk the audience down, insisting what they’d experienced was part of the show. Finally, embarrassed and disheveled, the man backed down, and the play was truly over.
When was the last time you went to the theatre and there was a fist fight? Or, an argument? Or, even a heated discussion?
Danny Hoch’s most recent show Taking Over played The Public Theater a couple seasons back, and the play dealt with gentrification, primarily. The performance I attended was dead quiet. The lack of audience response was palpable. I enjoyed the show, but I felt a disconnect between Danny and the audience. A couple months before his engagement at The Public, Danny performed the play as part of the Hip Hop Theater Festival in The Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn. I had the opportunity to ask Danny how those shows differed from the performances he gave at The Public. The difference, he said, was huge. In the boroughs, Danny was playing to his audience, his crowd. When a character in the play, a native New Yorker, yelled at those gentrifying, Danny said the hometown crowd cheered the character on. At The Public, he was “public enemy.”
It’s important for us to be public enemy, and we won’t do that by staying in black boxes in downtown NYC where our 10 friends, 4 family members and a couple strangers cheer us on. We need to take it to the unconverted. If you have a play about the economy, figure a way to do it on the steps of The Federal Reserve or in front of the bull statue on Wall Street. A play about war? Find a way to do it next to an Army recruiting center. Have a great idea about a satire on Barak Obama being a Muslim? Do it in Alabama. Just don’t get shot.
OOB doesn’t just mean small, it doesn’t just mean scrappy, it doesn’t just mean New York City. It means doing theatre the big boys won’t touch. When New York Theatre Workshop wouldn’t put up My Name is Rachel Corrie, members of LAByrinth Theatre company met at a bar across the street from the theater and read excerpts of the play in protest. It wasn’t a production, but it took the controversy directly to the doorstep of injustice.
The only way to bring change is to raise awareness, and when we produce plays and share them for people who are already aware, it might as well be falling on deaf ears. We don’t need more plays confronting injustice. We need to take the plays fighting injustice to those causing injustice.
It's a start, a work of art
To revolutionize make a change nothin's strange
People, people we are the same
No we're not the same
Cause we don't know the game
What we need is awareness, we can't get careless
You say what is this?
My beloved lets get down to business
Mental self defensive fitness (Yo) bum rush the show
You gotta go for what you know
Make everybody see, in order to fight the powers that be
Lemme hear you say... Fight the Power
“Fight the Power” – Public Enemy, 1989
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Out with the Old…
Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week, James Carter.
This week is my 17th anniversary of living in New York City. I, like so many before me, came here to study acting. I attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and shortly thereafter, I was cast in my first play. The play came and went, and the venue, One Dream in TriBeCa, disappeared, too, like so many of the other Off-Off Broadway spaces in downtown New York. I went on to perform at Nada on Ludlow, cut my teeth writing at Collective:Unconscious , and I experienced some of my favorite avant-garde work at Surf Reality and The Theatorium. All are gone, except the names and memories. Trav S.D. gave a great obituary for some of these venues in a 2003 The Village Voice article, examining a shift in the theatrical landscape of the Lower East Side. Recently, our beloved Ohio Theatre lost its space, and this season, 3LD (who recently overcame their own real estate woes) will help keep The Ohio floating on their ship for the time being. When we’re in the thick of it, it feels like the creative joy will never end. But it does end. Everything always does.
I don’t want to lament the loss of downtown theaters. Too often, our community focuses on loss of “great theaters” that cultivated life from their petri dishes of downtown awesomeness. Some truly are victims of inflation, real estate vampires and lack of funding. Some people, however, do not know how to manage spaces and let venues run to near ruins because egos stand in the way of allowing those more knowledgeable help them improve or change bad business practices. There are great moments in OOB, but there are horrors, too. The loss of some theaters may not be a bad thing. I even suggest the loss of some theaters have created opportunity where many OOB theatre artists would have never imagined 15 years ago. That opportunity is Brooklyn.
What I’m sharing isn’t new. The Brick, Chez Bushwick and Vampire Cowboys are the shit. They are the new homes to displaced downtowners who once lived across and down the street from Katz’s Delicatessen (http://www.katzdeli.com/). Two of the three of these are Caffe Cino Fellowship winners. All three of them generate work at a fast and furious level. Granted, Vampire Cowboys produce in Manhattan, but their Battle Ranch houses Saloons and rehearsal space for some of the greatest OOB theatre artists, including Taylor Mac. Fresh artists like Reggie Watts, Thomas Bradshaw, Crystal Skillman and Qui Nguyen throw down in the BK. These homes allow artists to explore, create and, most importantly, have fun. These companies have proven you don’t need to be in Manhattan to be cool, and people will trek a few stops into Brooklyn to experience new and exciting theatre.
We are a sentimental bunch, theatre people. We laugh hard, love hard and we lose hard. We will go kicking and screaming before someone takes what’s “ours”. Theatre people don’t have much, and when we get something – anything at all – we cling to it for dear life. I’m suggesting that we learn to let go. There was a wise old dude who explained why we all suffer – it’s because we cling to things. Let it go, and you no longer suffer. The less we suffer, the clearer our minds will be to move forward and generate great theatre.
It all ebbs and flows, and we need to focus on now. If a venue is endangered, of course we should fight for it. More importantly, though, we should focus on the OOB theaters that are succeeding. Why are they succeeding? Did they go to Brooklyn and find cheaper rent? Did they get sharp managers who wish to treat fellow artists with respect? Do they keep their season manageable, not overloading, double booking, and writing checks their butts can’t cash? Too often we roll our eyes and allow poorly run theater spaces to continue abusing and hurting the very community it purports to support. It seems we should focus on those doing it well to figure out how to get better.
The landscape of OOB has drastically changed over the past 17 years. When I arrived in New York, there was no organization like the Innovative Theatre Awards. The League of Independent Theatre hadn’t even been imagined. Hell, the word “blog” didn’t even exist, and now we have a place to put our thoughts and share with each other. As we entered the 21st Century, our gathering spaces may have changed, but they’ve become more organized and more global. Now, we congregate on Twitter and Facebook, sharing links with people from other countries, growing our understanding of theatrical greatness. If we embrace all that works and let go of that which doesn’t, we will grow by learning from the past.
What are some venues you think are doing a great job and why?
This week is my 17th anniversary of living in New York City. I, like so many before me, came here to study acting. I attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and shortly thereafter, I was cast in my first play. The play came and went, and the venue, One Dream in TriBeCa, disappeared, too, like so many of the other Off-Off Broadway spaces in downtown New York. I went on to perform at Nada on Ludlow, cut my teeth writing at Collective:Unconscious , and I experienced some of my favorite avant-garde work at Surf Reality and The Theatorium. All are gone, except the names and memories. Trav S.D. gave a great obituary for some of these venues in a 2003 The Village Voice article, examining a shift in the theatrical landscape of the Lower East Side. Recently, our beloved Ohio Theatre lost its space, and this season, 3LD (who recently overcame their own real estate woes) will help keep The Ohio floating on their ship for the time being. When we’re in the thick of it, it feels like the creative joy will never end. But it does end. Everything always does.
I don’t want to lament the loss of downtown theaters. Too often, our community focuses on loss of “great theaters” that cultivated life from their petri dishes of downtown awesomeness. Some truly are victims of inflation, real estate vampires and lack of funding. Some people, however, do not know how to manage spaces and let venues run to near ruins because egos stand in the way of allowing those more knowledgeable help them improve or change bad business practices. There are great moments in OOB, but there are horrors, too. The loss of some theaters may not be a bad thing. I even suggest the loss of some theaters have created opportunity where many OOB theatre artists would have never imagined 15 years ago. That opportunity is Brooklyn.
What I’m sharing isn’t new. The Brick, Chez Bushwick and Vampire Cowboys are the shit. They are the new homes to displaced downtowners who once lived across and down the street from Katz’s Delicatessen (http://www.katzdeli.com/). Two of the three of these are Caffe Cino Fellowship winners. All three of them generate work at a fast and furious level. Granted, Vampire Cowboys produce in Manhattan, but their Battle Ranch houses Saloons and rehearsal space for some of the greatest OOB theatre artists, including Taylor Mac. Fresh artists like Reggie Watts, Thomas Bradshaw, Crystal Skillman and Qui Nguyen throw down in the BK. These homes allow artists to explore, create and, most importantly, have fun. These companies have proven you don’t need to be in Manhattan to be cool, and people will trek a few stops into Brooklyn to experience new and exciting theatre.
We are a sentimental bunch, theatre people. We laugh hard, love hard and we lose hard. We will go kicking and screaming before someone takes what’s “ours”. Theatre people don’t have much, and when we get something – anything at all – we cling to it for dear life. I’m suggesting that we learn to let go. There was a wise old dude who explained why we all suffer – it’s because we cling to things. Let it go, and you no longer suffer. The less we suffer, the clearer our minds will be to move forward and generate great theatre.
It all ebbs and flows, and we need to focus on now. If a venue is endangered, of course we should fight for it. More importantly, though, we should focus on the OOB theaters that are succeeding. Why are they succeeding? Did they go to Brooklyn and find cheaper rent? Did they get sharp managers who wish to treat fellow artists with respect? Do they keep their season manageable, not overloading, double booking, and writing checks their butts can’t cash? Too often we roll our eyes and allow poorly run theater spaces to continue abusing and hurting the very community it purports to support. It seems we should focus on those doing it well to figure out how to get better.
The landscape of OOB has drastically changed over the past 17 years. When I arrived in New York, there was no organization like the Innovative Theatre Awards. The League of Independent Theatre hadn’t even been imagined. Hell, the word “blog” didn’t even exist, and now we have a place to put our thoughts and share with each other. As we entered the 21st Century, our gathering spaces may have changed, but they’ve become more organized and more global. Now, we congregate on Twitter and Facebook, sharing links with people from other countries, growing our understanding of theatrical greatness. If we embrace all that works and let go of that which doesn’t, we will grow by learning from the past.
What are some venues you think are doing a great job and why?
Guest Blogger of the Week: James Carter
Thanks very much to last week's blogger, Neal J. Freeman!
We're happy to announce this week's blogger - James Carter!
James Carter is a dramatist and producer. Full length plays include: Reaching Outpost (commissioned by Kaneland High School, Elburn, IL), Baby Steps (The Lion, Theatre Row), FEEDER: A Love Story (Center Stage, NY – terraNOVA’s 3rd Annual Solo Arts Festival & Collective: Unconscious’ undergroundzero Festival 2008), and Family Wayward (terraNOVA’s Groundbreakers Reading Series). One acts include: “Billy’s Bad Behavior” (part 1) and “Number Four” (part 2) with Impetuous Theater Group’s 2006 47:59 Festival; “The Christmas Card” for Center Stage, NY’s ‘Open 24 Hours’ hosted by John Patrick Shanley. Producer - Artists’ Night, dancelikeforever (CSNY), Baby Steps, Buck Fever (Blue Heron Arts Center), Lead Curator on terraNOVA’s soloNOVA Arts Festival (2004-2010 – DR2 Theatre & D-Lounge, Performance Space 122, Mo Pitkin’s, Center Stage, NY and People’s Improv Theater), Curator and Producer on SUBTERRANEAN, a monthly performance party (D-Lounge). James also served as Season Producer for The Ensemble Studio Theatre’s 2007/2008 season, including: Going to the River 2007, Lucy (William Carden, dir.), and On The Way To Timbuktu (written & performed by Petronia Paley; Talvin Wilks, dir.), Thicker Than Water 2008 (Youngblood), Marathon 2008 (playwrights – Auburn, Black, LaBute, Mac, Rivera), Close Ties (Pamela Berlin, dir). James is the Associate Artistic Director for terraNOVA Collective. http://www.terranovacollective.org
We're happy to announce this week's blogger - James Carter!
James Carter is a dramatist and producer. Full length plays include: Reaching Outpost (commissioned by Kaneland High School, Elburn, IL), Baby Steps (The Lion, Theatre Row), FEEDER: A Love Story (Center Stage, NY – terraNOVA’s 3rd Annual Solo Arts Festival & Collective: Unconscious’ undergroundzero Festival 2008), and Family Wayward (terraNOVA’s Groundbreakers Reading Series). One acts include: “Billy’s Bad Behavior” (part 1) and “Number Four” (part 2) with Impetuous Theater Group’s 2006 47:59 Festival; “The Christmas Card” for Center Stage, NY’s ‘Open 24 Hours’ hosted by John Patrick Shanley. Producer - Artists’ Night, dancelikeforever (CSNY), Baby Steps, Buck Fever (Blue Heron Arts Center), Lead Curator on terraNOVA’s soloNOVA Arts Festival (2004-2010 – DR2 Theatre & D-Lounge, Performance Space 122, Mo Pitkin’s, Center Stage, NY and People’s Improv Theater), Curator and Producer on SUBTERRANEAN, a monthly performance party (D-Lounge). James also served as Season Producer for The Ensemble Studio Theatre’s 2007/2008 season, including: Going to the River 2007, Lucy (William Carden, dir.), and On The Way To Timbuktu (written & performed by Petronia Paley; Talvin Wilks, dir.), Thicker Than Water 2008 (Youngblood), Marathon 2008 (playwrights – Auburn, Black, LaBute, Mac, Rivera), Close Ties (Pamela Berlin, dir). James is the Associate Artistic Director for terraNOVA Collective. http://www.
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