My wife and I saw Peter and the Starcatcher tonight and we were amazed, cracked right open by it, and had a really great time.

What I want to say about the show is pretty much the highest compliment I can think to pay. Everything we loved most about the show (though certainly not everything we loved about it) was the product of a highly skilled ensemble working incredibly hard to create actual magic. And, obviously, they were guided and allowed to create a piece that was built on that kind of work by very skilled leaders.

There’s great design and great writing and great music as well, but all of those elements are integrated with – and rely on – moment by moment sweat equity. The cast is amazing and we’re so grateful for their efforts tonight.

Go support that show. It’s the right stuff.

Okay, this isn’t what I was hoping for when I clicked Google PLAY.

Dammit, Adam. I was totally gonna steal your “I Interview Playwrights” format and do this myself!

Adam Symkowicz has decided to follow-up his recent spat of 400+ Playwright Interviews by interviewing Artistic Directors. He kicks the series off by talking to Marc Masterson, currently of South Coast Rep, formerly of Actors Theatre of Louisville and Pittsburgh’s City Theatre.

CHECK IT OUT.

And in all seriousness, thank you, Adam, for doing this. Your series of Playwright Interviews already makes your blog one of the most revealing documents we have about the current state of our art, and I look forward to learning, cringing, and laughing throughout your new project.

Indie Theater Now is an online script repository and it’s exactly what theatre-makers like me have been waiting for since the birth of the internet.

WOW!

Thanks you, Dentons!

Thank you, Playgoer, for pointing us to Brian De Palma’s film of Richard Schechner’s landmark production Dionysus in 69 at the Performing Garage. You can watch it online for free.

Surely this is the most amazing artifact available on the web this week.

PLEASE NOTE: This film is Rated X for audience orgies.

I saw two plays in Chicago last week (on my way to and from Iowa City to work with Jennifer Fawcett on a project so secret I can’t tell you about it yet but it’s gonna be awesome). Those plays were Chinglish by David Henry Hwang at the Goodman and Middletown by Will Eno at Steppenwolf.

Some impressions …

- It really is nice to see shows occasionally where you can count on cool sets, above average acting, and a house full enough that’s it’s not depressing. Sorry indie theatre, but there it is, sometimes it’s almost worth paying the big bucks for those comforts. It’s the same comfort as cable television, I suppose. It usually won’t be great or transcendent, but at least you won’t be embarrassed for the performers. [Yeah, cable TV is probably the wrong analogy there. Oh well.] Not at the Goodman at Steppenwolf anyway.

- Chinglish had a lot of the same jokes that were in Anne Washburn’s The Internationalist. They got a totally different kind of laugh though, since this time you get see both sides of the conversation.

- It was interesting the way Hwang moved beyond getting laughs from Asian stereotypes to getting laughs from stereotypical American stereotyping of Asian people. They were the same kind of laughs you get from white people going to watch an African-American comedian do jokes about “black people dance like this, but white people dance like this.” Guilty laughs? Over-anxious? Do you feel like you’ve gotta either laugh or get defensive? Of course, it’s funny because it’s true.

- The acting in Chinglish was really, really good, though the leading man was the kind of nasally, wimpy leading man that seems to have taken over Broadway musicals. Sorry, dude. If it was the character, well done, you sold me on it.

- The acting in Middletown was uniformly great, except I didn’t care for the leading woman so much. Why? I don’t really have a good reason. Geez, she just didn’t seem to have much gravitas. I hadn’t seen Tracy Letts on-stage, that was cool. Tim Hopper didn’t have a huge role, but he was fantastic for every moment he was out there.

- The first act of Middletown was outrageously good, with a creative twist at the end of the act that made the play instantaneously twice as intriguing. I went out in the lobby and bought the program, thinking, “We might really have to produce this.” But the second act felt like someone was slowly letting the air out of the tires. It didn’t end so much as it just got too flat to roll anymore. Urgh. Mr. Eno? Mr. Waters? What happened?

- Steppenwolf had a lot of cool stuff in their program, some of which we’ll probably steal in some way.

- I didn’t write much more about Chinglish cause I didn’t give it that much more thought. I did like it. It was a pleasant evening out. Better than going to the movies. I would have been happier, in fact, if they hadn’t tried to wrap the play up by telling us what it was about. It’s like how Darabont ended The Green Mile by telling the audience what the movie they just watched meant. Gimme a break. It was a good story, a very good story. Trying to make more of it just made it seem like it wasn’t enough.

One of the biggest influences on my way of thinking over the past couple of years has been Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms. (In fact, a PhD student even wrote a paper comparing Available Light’s methods to the alternative farm movement. Cool!)

Here, from the Polyface Blog, are some thoughts on pricing that are worthwhile reading for theatre producers as well.

At Polyface, we go to great lengths to be frugal, to be efficient, and to be economical. But we do not apologize for the self-respect and personal pride in due compensation for a job well done. And model Polyface patrons envision a day when their farmers can drive cars like their patrons.

Read the whole entry here.

Bonus: Here’s one of my favorite Joel Salatin videos. It’s from the documentary Food Inc.