HowlRound Theatre Commons' Podcasts

By David Dower. This call is with Geoff Sobelle and Trey Lyford of rainpan 43 . We're focused on The Elephant Room , a piece they created with Steve Cuiffo that Paul Lazar is directing. It opens this week at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City. The project developed over a long time and in very unusual ways. I had the real privilege of being close to the project for a lot of that time. I wanted the guys to walk Friday Phone Call listeners through the process and to hear their takes on the innovations in structure that it prompted. We also talk about the impact of "context" for audiences and for artists and the perils of trying to create a work on a regional theater scale that you hope will tour on the presenting circuit. There's a lot of information in here for people trying to move between the two...

By David Dower, Trey Lyford, Geoff Sobelle. Listen to weekly podcasts hosted by David Dower as he interviews theater artists from around the country to highlight #newplay bright spots.

By David Dower. Listen to weekly podcasts hosted by David Dower as he interviews theater artists from around the country to highlight #newplay bright spots. This week: Richard Newman, co-director of The Hinterland Ensemble.

By David Dower. Today I talk with Richard Newman, co-director with Liza Bielby of The Hinterlands Ensemble in Detroit. One of the things I love about this series is how it gives a mic to different ideas, aesthetic and geographic communities, and aspects of local and national infrastructure. This call goes in all of those directions and more. Richard was willing to talk to me at a very early hour, and I love the careful, considered way he connects his specific answers to my bigger picture questions. There has always been something unsettling to me about the broader brush with which the "creative class" conversation often paints. And my own generalized sense of what it means to speak of artists' impact on Detroit. Richard paints in micro-brush strokes—the specifics of his actual experience, and his actual neighborhood, and his actual company. It starts to create important detail and nuance to something many of...

By David Dower, Richard Newman. Listen to weekly podcasts hosted by David Dower as he interviews theater artists from around the country to highlight #newplay bright spots.

By David Dower. Today I talk with Paula Kerger, the President and CEO of PBS . As you listen to the things she and PBS are pulling off, you will be able to hear the tremendous energy and passion she's brought to the role, and in particular to her advocacy for the arts in public broadcasting. We are very, very fortunate to have such a smart and committed supporter in this role. We are also lucky that she's a triathlete, because the pace of what she's involved with has got to be grueling! There is just a ton of stuff going on at PBS that relates to our field, and the call is full of shout-outs and bright spots. She and I spoke in what was the final week of programming of the Summer Arts Festival . And then, upcoming is the series " Broadway or Bust " that focuses on the Jimmy...

By David Dower. Listen to weekly podcasts hosted by David Dower as he interviews theater artists from around the country to highlight #newplay bright spots. This week: Paula Kerger of PBS.

By David Dower, Paula Kerger. Listen to weekly podcasts hosted by David Dower as he interviews theater artists from around the country to highlight #newplay bright spots. This week: Paula Kerger of PBS.

By David Dower. Today I talk with Linda Essig, who is Founding Director of the School of Theatre and Film in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University and the director of ASU's Arts Entrepreneurship program, PAVE . I've been following her work via the great blog Creative Infrastructure and on Twitter via @lindainphoenix , and as you'll hear, it's really a lot of fun for me to get her on the phone. We go all over the road—talking about creative infrastructure, arts entrepreneurship, our "day jobs" and what they meant to our career and personal development early on, and even touch on creative placemaking and artist-critics. She's in the home stretch of publishing the first edition of Artivate , a peer-reviewed journal that looks at the intersection of theory and practice in arts entrepreneurship—it looks like it is going to be hot! We go a little long,...

By David Dower. Listen to weekly podcasts hosted by David Dower as he interviews theater artists from around the country to highlight #newplay bright spots. This week: Linda Essig of Arizona State University.

By David Dower, Linda Essig. Listen to weekly podcasts hosted by David Dower as he interviews theater artists from around the country to highlight #newplay bright spots. This week: Linda Essig of Arizona State University.

By David Dower, Diane Rodriguez. Listen to weekly podcasts hosted by David Dower as he interviews theatre artists from around the country to highlight #newplay bright spots. This week: Diane Rodriguez of Center Theater Group.

By David Dower. Today I get to talk to Diane Rodriguez, an Associate Producer and Director of New Play Production at Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles. This is a big conversation about how one of the largest regional theaters in the country is rethinking and realigning its support of artists, their projects, and the form. Listen to the way she talks about CTG's sense of "ownership", for instance. Or the way they are using their Douglas Plus series. But it's also about how an individual, with a solid set of values that are rooted in community, can impact an enormous institution. Or the ways in which they are rethinking the relationship of the CTG to the field itself. Whether it is Diane herself or Michael Ritchie or any of the other people she speaks of, they are each proceeding from a core value that privileges a sense of citizenship of a larger...

By David Dower. Listen to weekly podcasts hosted by David Dower as he interviews theater artists from around the country to highlight #newplay bright spots. This week: Diane Rodriguez of Center Theater Group.

By David Dower, Leah Wilks. Listen to weekly podcasts hosted by David Dower as he interviews theater artists from around the country to highlight #newplay bright spots. This week: Leah Wilks of Leah Wilks Dance.