Friday, December 31, 2010

not much left to the year...


While you're waiting for the sun to go down so you can get your party on, or for your plane to get de-iced, or for the liquor store to open (because the party starts when you say it starts):

Why take a few minutes to fill out our audience survey?

WE NEED DATA! DATA!!!!

Happy 2011. We're gonna be all up in yours.
--COItc

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

coitc.org back up


Hosanna! We're back online -- and all thanks to Managing Director of Stage (and web wizard) Leah Bonvissuto. Our eternal thanks to her.

It's a yuletide miracle.

[image via]

Monday, December 27, 2010

call for submissions [PCF]

Actors, Writers, Directors --

The Planet Connections Festivity is accepting submissions for its third year. If you've got some stuff to strut, read on:

The Planet Connections Theatre Festivity, New York's premiere eco-friendly/socially conscious, not-for-profit theatre festival, is currently accepting submissions for its 2011 season. The festivity accepts all topics and subject matters including but not limited to: new works, musicals, adaptations, one-acts, and solo shows. No time limits. We accept short and long formats. For details and an application, please visit www.planetconnectionsfestivity.com.


The deadline is February 1st. The festivity will take place in June 2011 at Robert Moss Theater (440 Lafayette Street), The Gene Frankel Theatre (24 Bond Street) and Bleecker Street Theater (45 Bleecker Street).


The Festivity is designed to utilize art to promote social consciousness, inspiring people to become involved in their community. Live theater can ignite social change. Through theatre, audiences view the world from a new perspective, exploring the unique connection of humanity.


Fostering a community of like-minded artists is fundamental to the success of the festivity as the relationships formed throughout allow talented artists to find new audiences and partner with new teams opening doors to creative outlets beyond their previous scope.


Executive Director, Glory Kadigan, is “looking forward to the third year of the festivity with eager anticipation. As I meet with the returning artists and new artists I am confident that this year will continue our tradition of coupling high-quality productions with vital philanthropy. The festival has been written up in the NY Times, Clyde Fitch Report, Broadway World, Theatre Is Easy, The Happiest Medium and featured on The Sundance Channel. Productions have received favorable reviews from Back Stage, Broadway World, NYtheatre.com, Fab Marquee and more.

Friday, December 24, 2010

it's not too late...


Need a break from your family this weekend?

Why take a few minutes to fill out our audience survey?

You'll be glad you did. Pour out some eggnog and pull up a chair!

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

asymmetric warfare

Gawker's takedown at the hands of (purportedly) 4chan's ill-meaning denizens reveals an interesting new front in internet conflagrations.

While the focus of current articles detailing the hacking have focused on the tit-for-tat rivalry that seems to spring wholly from a lack of respect for the hacker "community" in Gawker's editorial tone, what is striking is the wholly incompatible composition of the opposing corners: on one side, you have a media outlet, trying sell advertising space and turn a profit -- a digital state, if you will -- while on the other you have a loosely knit confederation of programmers and malcontents -- a network of some kind.

We know how well these confrontations work in the real world. Welcome to the new digital stalemate. (And change your passwords often.)

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Tickets Available for "Still On The Road"


We're happy to note that tickets are on sale for Sara Wolkowitz's documentary about The Acting Company:

What: "Still On The Road"
Where: Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center
When: Monday January 3rd at 8pm
Twelve actors travel across 28 US cities on a seven month journey to bring classical theater to America. The Acting Company, a classical touring ensemble founded by John Houseman and Margot Harley, started with members of the first graduating class of the drama division of the Julliard School. Kevin Kline recalls Houseman’s motivation being, “We couldn’t just let them go out there and do garbage.” In the Company’s 37th season, twelve actors spend seven months on a cramped bus, lose a leading man, play 71 roles, and learn to work in spaces that won’t hold their set. Throughout, they reconnect with their passion for performing, receive a great review in the New York Times, and teach high school and college students a new way to look at Shakespeare. As we follow the actors on tour and watch insightful conversations with Kevin Kline, Rainn Wilson and Harriet Harris, we learn that with the exception of Xbox and Wi-Fi on the bus, not much has changed – and that is just as it should be. 
Congrats to Sara on this spectacular achievement!

[Film Society at Lincoln Center]

Monday, December 20, 2010

Thursday, December 16, 2010

am I a jerk that this makes me feel kinda *better*?

well, crap.
Only half as many online teens work on their own blog as did in 2006, and Millennial generation adults ages 18-33 have also seen a modest decline-a development that may be related to the quickly-growing popularity of social network sites. At the same time, however, blogging's popularity increased among most older generations, and as a result the rate of blogging for all online adults rose slightly overall from 11% in late 2008 to 14% in 2010.
Everyone's always ragging on me for acting like an old man, I just didn't think that would reach, you know, this.

[pew internet via gawker]

Monday, December 13, 2010

coitc.org down


So, just in time for the holidays, COI's main website is down. This is because our host -- and the payment service they use -- are both terrible. This probably wont be resolved before the new year, and for whatever reason, it's proving to be terribly vexing. It's the digital equivalent of having your fly down, and for a theater company without a physical presence, a broken homepage is strangely shaming.

If we didn't have a regularly updating blog and podcast, our complete lack of a digital presence would be really embarrassing.

Wait, we haven't updated the blog since when?

And we haven't updated the podcast since when?

poop.

Friday, December 10, 2010

ugh

The Times today has an appraisal of Ed Schmidt's farewell to theater, "My Last Play." While the conceit -- a playwright ends his career in a monologue performed in his actual home, marking the earnestness of his declaration by allowing audience members to depart with one tome from his library at the end -- might be somewhat affecting, the self-reverence of the enterprise is decidedly not.

Two years ago Ed Schmidt, a New York playwright, got word that his father was near death in upstate New York. He bundled his family into the car and drove north, explaining to his young children on the way the sad fact that Grandpa might not recognize them when they got there. As it happened, they arrived minutes too late; Willie Schmidt, a former history teacher and camp director, had died, probably as they were parking the car.

That night, seeking solace, the younger Mr. Schmidt read the final act of his favorite American play, Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.” That’s the one in which Emily Webb, a woman who has died far too young, revisits her family kitchen on the morning of her 10th birthday and discovers the agonizing truth about how little value people place on the quotidian moments of their lives.

Mr. Schmidt, a sturdy, pleasant-looking man of 48, explains all this near the start of his new play, a solo piece that he is performing for 12 theatergoers at a time in the living room of his ground-floor apartment in the Carroll Gardens section of Brooklyn. “Our Town” failed him, however, he says. He felt no better, and that’s when he made the leap: If great theater is no use to him in a moment of crisis, then it’s not worth spending his life trying to create it.
The death of Schmidt's father is, of course, an event most deserving of empathy. His decision that theater has ultimately as a significant art form, however, is one that is only his business and no one else's. And then there's this:
After a recent performance one exiting theatergoer, evidently distressed and irritated, worried aloud that Mr. Schmidt was woefully depressed.

“He shouldn’t be telling this to us,” she said. “He should be telling it to a therapist.”
For years I have reduced my theory of how theater, personal experience, and especially identity politics fit together to one phrase: theater isn't therapy. While I usually have to do some bending of a particular work to apply this critique, I have yet to encounter a work that so completely embodies the example. Until now.

Mr. Schmidt, I'm sorry for your loss. I'm sorry that you feel theater failed you in your moment of need. But for the love of all that is holy, to charge people money for your therapy session is insulting, and confirms the worst suspicions people outside the form have of those who practice it.

You do make a fair trade of a book of your library for their ticket. There's that. But here's hoping your title is indeed a promise.

[NYTimes, My Last Play]

[UPDATE: Within the first three paragraphs on the play's website, he compares himself to both Shakespeare and Moliere. Never mind -- he's a self-important blowhard who deserves obscurity. Good riddance to bad rubbish.]