26 stories by "Noreply@blogger.com (scott Walters)"
Over the weekend, I had my very first Moonpie thanks to Lisa Mount, the producer and director of Headwaters: A Goodly Portion of Our Songs & Stories, and the wonderful pe…
I would like to draw my readers' attention to an excellent series at the Createquity blog. It is called "Arts Policy Library," and the Createquity bloggers are summarizing and discussing a v…
"Theatre, like all other forms of cultural expression, used to be ordinary people singing, dancing, telling stories. This is the way a living community recorded and celebrated its victories,…
So apparently WolfBrown is doing a study on participatory arts -- Ian at Createquity has the details, but WolfBrown defines what they mean: "In this case, "active" means that the participant…
In a section entitled "Participation" in And Then, You Act: Making Art in an Unpredictable World, Anne Bogart writes:
In our present climate, it is more useful to look for participants rathe…
Over at A Poor Player, my friend Tom Loughlin describes his sense of being "theatrically depressed" (not personally depressed), and of struggling to stay afloat in the sea of Entertainment, …
As my readers know, I am not crazy about the theatre's reliance on subsidy, but London Guardian critic Michael Billington makes a persuasive argument for it when reviewing the success of War…
Back in March, I wrote a series of posts to a now-graduated theatre major about finding your "why." Maryo Gard Ewell, noted community-arts leader, describes another approach that you could d…
"I make my living now as a screenwriter! Which I'm surprised and horrified to find myself saying, but I don't think I can support myself as a playwright at this point. I don't think anybody …
I regularly teach a course on the history of the Harlem Renaissance, and early in that course we read an essay by Beverly Tatum that comes from her book Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting To…
Last night and this morning, I posted some number crunching of the latest theatre grants given by the NEA. I'd like to do more, and maybe I will, but the next step -- examining the populatio…
Number of grants per state
NY 39
CA 32
IL 10
MN 7
PA 6
TX 5
GA 4
MA 4
DC 3
KY 3
MO 3
TN 3
VT 3
AZ 2
CT 2
FL 2
ME 2
MD 2
MI 2
MT 2
NM 2
NC 2
OH 2
OR 2
VA 2
WA 2
AR 1
CO 1
ID 1
IN 1
KS 1
LA 1…
So the NEA just announced a new round of grants, and Stage Directions published it. Let's take a look at the "Access to Excellence" category for Theatre (not including Musical Theatre, which…
On Twitter, a few people have responded positively to my previous post, "Educating Artists." Mostly, they agree with #2 and #4: "Entrepreneurial Skills" and "Community Organizational Skills.…
I was only able to stay for the morning sessions of TEDxMichiganAvenue, because my son was graduating from Illinois State that evening. But I've followed the Twitter hashtag, and read some o…
As my blogging nickname, The Prof, suggests, I am a theatre professor. I teach theatre history, play analysis, directing and dramatic literature at a small liberal arts university (Universit…
After having been interviewed last week on Studio 360 (in an unfortunately-named episode called "Too Much Theatre?") discussing the #supplydemand "controversy," I wanted to follow up with a …
My recent interview with Kurt Andersen on Public Radio International's Studio 360 is now available.
I hope you enjoy the show, and feel free to leave comments as always.
Jess Hutchison gives a kick in the pants: "Do the Work."
Last week, I wrote a series of posts addressed to a theatre major getting ready to graduate about "finding your why." Let me take a moment to state the obvious: finding your "why" is critica…
I've spent a few days talking about the importance of "finding your why," finding the reason you get out of bed in the morning, the thing that drives you to not only do theatre, but do anyth…
I'm not certain I can write coherently about this, because I am so angry. It might be better to just read this blog post on "Blog for Rural America" entitled "What are the rural subsidied th…
Dear Abby/Scott/Scoot,
I feel like I am forever asking your advice- and here I am again. I hope you'll forgive me, but it's difficult to talk big life decisions (about things like theatre c…
In the comments of yesterday's post, "Advice to a Theatre Major About to Graduate from College (Part 2)," a commenter, The Waltzing Belgian, who has experience with my approach to play analy…
I received the following email from a former student of mine in response to the "Advice to a Theatere Major" series of the past couple days. She adds a little different twist. I will also be…
