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By
John Del Signore
Published Nov 10, 2006
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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By
John Del Signore
Published Nov 10, 2006
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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Blogs aren’t just for socially-awkward shut-ins anymore and we’ve got proof: many successful, outgoing theater types maintain weblogs. While they don't get as much glory (or contempt) as their influential music-blog counterparts, they do have their dignity. And there's sometimes drama!
Here’s a small sampling of some theater blogs that keep us busy at work.
If you like James Urbaniak the actor, you’ll want to know James Urbaniak the blogger. At Voucher Ankles, the man who mesmerized us in Thom Pain and holds up NBC’s Kidnapped shares stories about falling off a Vespa on Hal Hartley’s set in Istanbul, badly poking himself in the eye during a production of Merchant of Venice, and his blogging, er, 'problem': “This thing started a year ago as a lark. It became a hobby. It is now an addiction. Help me.” We really would like to help but we're having too much fun enabling the poor bastard.
Richard Foreman, whose hypnotic goth-vaudevillian dreamscapes have haunted New York for decades, recently started a behind-the-scenes blog about his new production, which opens in January. Wake Up Mr. Sleepy offers a sometimes funny, sometimes baffling peek into Foreman’s rehearsal process, with entries by cast members, crew and “Maestro” himself. (You can even watch Wednesday rehearsals in real time.) Other highlights include tantalizing rehearsal photos and a quirky interview with Foreman in which he admits that he prefers the beach to a tanning bed, though he has “some problems with the beach."
Obscene Jester keeps a keen eye trained on the performance art scene. It’s run by two irreverent theater-nerd types: T. Nikki Cesare and Steve Luber. (When not blogging, the former is working toward her PhD in Performance studies, the latter is a performer and doctoral candidate at CUNY. Not exactly lightweights.) But their heady posts are typically leavened with breezy humor, as their ‘mission statement’ indicates: “To use this weblog as an allegory for the chaotic interface of performance and art criticism, to write along the contradictory line between documentation and impermanence. To score free tickets in the process.”
Playwright and theater critic George Hunka posts incisive and erudite essays, reviews and interviews on his indispensable blog Superfluities. It’s a great resource for staying up to speed on the New York theater world. Hunka’s recent play, In Public, was well received last month, though the Times killed a finished review of the production. (Read about that controversy at Isaac Butler’s blog Parabasis; Butler directed In Public.)
For some colorful, cryptic fun, disappear down the Radiohole blog, The Road to Utopia. In case you didn't know, Radiohole is the little theater troupe that could – mess with your mind. Since before the turn of the century they’ve been strapping spectators into their delirious merry-go-rounds of absurdity and spinning them at top speed. (Free beer, too.) Their nascent blog offers a glimpse into rehearsals for their upcoming January production, background on Archimedes and eerie photos from Vermont.
Hip us to your theater blog of choice in the comments.
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John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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