By Ernest Hooper, Metro Columnist
In Print: Thursday, July 15, 2010
President Barack Obama will soon receive a poster of a wall-sized mural painted by kids at Community Stepping Stones, an upstart art school in Tampa’s Sulphur Springs neighborhood.
The mural reflects the dichotomy between the beautiful blue gulf before the oil spill and the dark, despair-filled nature [...]

BALANCING A SENSIBLE WAY FORWARD:
Weighing the Steps Theatres Can Take vs.

the Steps Theatres Must Take
Imagine my surprise when, upon researching reviews of our latest production, I ran into a June blog from Mike Daisy wondering why I had dropped out of our recent conversation about “how theatre failed America”…or, as I prefer to think of [...]

“Not just in wartime but especially in wartime, and not just in hard economic times but especially in hard economic times, the arts get dismissed as ’sissy.’ Dance gets dismissed as craft, creativity gets dismissed as inessential, to the detriment of our country. And so when we fight for dance, when we buy art that’s [...]

“We believe strongly that the arts aren’t somehow an ‘extra’ part of our national life, but instead we feel that the arts are at the heart of our national life. It is through our music, our literature, our art, drama and dance that we tell the story of our past and we express our hopes [...]

Washington, DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007. The man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time approximately 2 thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After 3 minutes a middle aged man noticed there was a musician [...]

This is the hardest period I can ever remember for professional theatres. This past week alone 2 more theatres have closed their doors. Milwaukee Shakespeare had to fold after 9 seasons after having lost their funding from a single foundation “due to the current economic situation.” Stamford Theatre Works in Connecticut dissolved mid-way through their [...]

When I was a student at the American Repertory Theatre conservatory at Harvard, we had the opportunity to take a couple classes with David Mamet. Frankly we were terrified. He’s opinionated, blunt, harsh, direct, and intimidating to work in front of. Actors engaged in scene work as 30 of us watched on, wondering what he [...]