I saw As You Like It at the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre over the weekend, and it was fine. A nice little show, most everybody did a good job, and what do you expect from As You Like It? Frankly, I’m beginning to suspect that Shakespeare just wasn’t really a top-notch comedian. But anyway, there’s a [...]
Archive for the ‘braak’ Category
On Shakespeare, and As You Like It
Posted: April 25, 2011 in braak, CriticismTags: as you like it, braak, shakespeare, theater, theatre
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Untitled Theater Company 61′s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Posted: December 6, 2010 in braak, CriticismTags: blade runner, braak, do androids dream of electric sheep, philip k. dick, reviews
My review at io9.com: Adapting Dick’s seminal novel is guaranteed to be a difficult process, and would have been even if Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner weren’t already a 30-year-old SF classic. Untitled Theater Company #61 took on the ambitious challenge. And mostly, it worked. I think that “mostly it worked” was actually an edit; the [...]
I put this up for about ten seconds last time, then I took it down and sold it to someone. Now, I am linking to it instead! My original title: Naturalism–A Bad Form of Theater? Or the Worst Form of Theater? was not approved.
Verisimilitude Again
Posted: October 21, 2010 in braak, CriticismTags: Paranormal activity, verisimilitude
Cross-posted from Threat Quality: Jesus, when am I going to stop with this? Okay, so, Holland wrote his bit about Paranormal Activity, and he’s right in a lot of important ways. But I think there’s actually even more to be mined from a discussion of the subject, and since that’s basically all I do (talk about [...]
On the Power of Livestreaming
Posted: August 2, 2010 in braak, Productions!, Projects, ScratchpadTags: braak, empress of the moon, livestreaming, theater, theatre
ANNOUNCEMENT: in concert with the science and speculative fiction site WWW.IO9.COM, the SOE will be livestreaming the opening night performance of Empress of the Moon. As long as you go to io9 between the hours of 8:00 PM Eastern/Standard and…whenever the show is over (I think it’ll be around 10:00 PM), you will be able [...]
Staged Readings: What Is the Point of Them?
Posted: July 28, 2010 in braak, ScratchpadTags: braak, theater
I was a hair’s-breadth from using all of my (completely imaginary, entirely assumed) authority from flat-out issuing a moratorium on staged readings. They are a pain in the ass, mostly, a lot of times they just feel like a scam, and, in my own, personal experience, they rarely provide any kind of useful feedback. But, [...]
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 [...]
The Tyranny of Verisimilitude
Posted: July 3, 2010 in braak, ScratchpadTags: aesthetics, theater, 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 [...]
Empress of the Moon: the Lives of Aphra Behn
Posted: June 16, 2010 in braak, Projects, ScratchpadTags: aphra behn, braak, feminism, theater
(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 [...]
