Simplifying, complicating, simplifying again. This has been a year of expanding and paring involvement on professional boards and projects, resuming old roles and assuming new ones. I continue into 2018 on the […]
2017: excavation review themes
An Experimental Argument: Ethan’s Lipton’s Outer Space Odyssey Toward a Sustainable Life
[article originally published in HowlRound, September 8, 2017.] Ethan Lipton has assembled a creative family of musicians and designers who have worked with him on a series of projects in New York and around […]
A Collective Call Against Critical Bias
[image caption: Playwrights Lucas Hnath, Lynn Nottage, Paula Vogel , and J.T. Rogers nominated for Best Play Tony Award 2016-2017. Photo by Marc J. Franklin.] I am one voice among two dozen signatories […]
2016: excavation review themes
After six annual marathons captured in “what Martha has seen” lists of theater and film adventuring (2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016), I’ve learned a few things. I’ve learned that sometimes theater […]
Stretching the Canvas in Ethan Lipton’s Tumacho
[article originally published in HowlRound, September 6, 2016.] Playwright and lyricist Ethan Lipton creates fun theatrical worlds and lyric-driven music about socially-relevant topics. In Red Handed Otter, for example, produced by The Playwrights Realm […]
Shared Vocabulary and Puppetry in Ramesh Meyyappan’s Butterfly
[article originally published in HowlRound, June 21, 2016.] Theatremaker Ramesh Meyyappan has opinions about the cultural position of “deaf” or “signed” theatre and its role in his own art including his most recent […]
Barriers, Needs, and Next Steps: A Convening on the State of Deaf Theatre-Making
[article originally published at HowlRound April 6, 2016.] Several dozen artists, administrators, academics, funders, and advocates assembled on the afternoon of January 20, 2016 in the BareBones Studio of the Lark Play […]
Subversively Smart and Turning the Tide: Lauren Gunderson’s Women Heroes
[article originally published in HowlRound March 15, 2016.] I and You, which recently closed a well-received co-production from Merrimack Repertory Theatre (MRT) in Lowell, Massachusetts and Richard Winker at 59E59 in Manhattan, is not […]
History, Legacy, and Light: The Consciously-Embodied Art of Erica Fae
[article originally published in HowlRound March 12, 2016.] Erica Fae, barely into her forties, has been making theatre for over three decades. You can see her on television as a nude psychiatric asylum inmate […]
Theatre and Social Justice: Everything Has to Come Out of Session
[article originally published in HowlRound, January 16, 2016.] Theatre and Social Justice Crafted out of Session to Engage Audience The Actors Studio is known for creating socially relevant material but not for creating […]
