Sustainability and the Artist

Lately I’ve been thinking about that “worthwhile strategy” in regards to making a living as a theatre artist. Too many of my colleagues can’t afford to get sick, and certainly can’t afford to start a family. An interview with Charlotte Ford (revealing she’s stepping away from theater to go back to school for speech pathology) seems to have sparked a vigorous public debate about how difficult it is to make a living as an artist, and what can be done about it.

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Philly Performing Artists Discuss their Untenable Careers: Video from the Philadelphia Artists Summit

Josh McIlvain’s interview with Charlotte Ford “The untenable career of a successful Philadelphia theater artist” sparked some soul-searching among Philadelphia performers. They met on June 23rd to discuss.

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Full House 2014 - Michael L Medvidik

Full House (Quince): You deserve a cabaret!

Downtown theater company Quince Productions – the punchy, LGBTQ-leaning bunch that puts on GayFest! every August – opens their sixth annual Full House cabaret series this Thursday in its ancestral home, the Red Room at the Society Hill Playhouse, and it’s looking as wicked, delightful and boozy as ever. (Boozy because your ticket includes the price of a drink.)

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Photo © Jacques-Jean Tiziou / www.jjtiziou.net.

Interview with Charlotte Ford: The untenable career of a successful Philadelphia theater artist

Philadelphia’s theater scene is better than ever—haven’t you heard? But so few of its practitioners can eke out a living wage from it. This interview Charlotte Ford takes a serious look at how poor the health of the theater industry is in this city.

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Peter Gaffney

THE FUTURE has arrived: Interview with Peter Gaffney, musical creator of BRAT’s latest production

In ALWAYS COMING SOON: THE FUTURE, BRAT Productions takes another look at what the future holds, and the auguries are not pretty: Derelict clowns, aggressive barkers, and obscene control culture. But THE FUTURE is funny and fun: It’s another of the entertaining rock cabarets which the company has launched in recent years,

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The fault, dear Brutus, Act III: Makoto Hirano interviews Lantern AD Charles McMahon about “Super Racist” Julius Caesar

Makoto Hirano asks Lantern artistic director Charles McMahon some tough questions about the “Super Racist” Julius Caesar. And a clearly contrite McMahon does his best to explain the process that lead to the company’s misguided choices.

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Ben Grinberg rehearsing COMMUNITAS at Penn Treaty Park. Photo credit Justin Rose

Communitas Organizer: Interview with Ben Grinberg about his dance circus theater

Together with collaborator Nick Gillette, Ben Grinberg founded Almanac Dance Circus Theatre to offer production of his unique brand of acrobatic theater. Almanac’s inaugural show, Communitas, launches this May 22-24 at Christ Church Neighborhood House. Phindie asked Ben a few questions about the show and his new company.

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Photo courtesy of National Water Dance

The National Water Dance

A typical concert dance performance does not usually conjure up thoughts of social justice and governmental reform. At first glance, dance and politics might not seem to go together. That is not to say that the art form is entirely apolitical – different genres of art can certainly serve as a persuasive medium for declaring political statements. From a historical perspective, analysis of the arts can be used to study social change and political reform, and dance is no exception to this.

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Photo by John Donges

John Donges Photographs THREE DAYS OF RAIN (Quince): A Double Assignment

In shooting Richard Greenberg’s THREE DAYS OF RAIN, my first photographic challenge was to capture the unique structure of the play: the first act is set in 1995 and involves a brother/sister and their old friend – the son of their father’s architecture partner and oldest friend. In Act II, the three actors play the parents of their Act I characters. So it was a dual challenge to photograph basically two casts instead of one, and to try and paint a visual portrait of what is both similar and different between each character and his/her parent, and to portray the look of two very different decades.

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