Dog Ear

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Way before the movie “Planet of the Apes” showed us the Statue of Liberty half buried in the sand, I have felt the need to experience cultures which grew, fell into decadence and vanished. These are probably cautionary tales even beyond their aesthetic marvel.

Edward Albee took a trip to Easter Island, and wrote about it in the New York Times.

Mickey Birnbaum

It was truly a dog fete dog night Friday night as the majority of the group rolled out to see Katy Hickman’s splendid Bright Boy: The Passion of Rober McNamara, produced by Ensemble Studio Theatre at the Electric Lodge in Venice. It was truly gratifying to see a play that we had all read and reread make it to the stage, and wonderful to see Katy’s passion brought to life. Mickey Birnbaum even rolled from Kansas - escaping tornadoes (it’s a twister!)- where he’s been doing the Inge residency. You can read all about his ruby slipper life on his dogearblog: IT IS IN THE BREWING LUMINOUS.

In other Dog news, Joy and I were featured in a Backstage West article on women playwrights: Sisters on Stage. And feel free to FIB on my blog — To Be Determined….(and what’s a fib, you might ask…click the link).

That’s the dog-doings that I know.

jennifer maisel

What do we want these days from the theater? Increasingly, or so audiences as much as dictate, stories that come to a handy, even cozy conclusion, where life’s knots aren’t so much sentimentally unraveled as they are re- assembled in a nice, neat bow. So the London stage deserves credit this, and virtually every, season for proffering plays that take the harder, more circuitous path, leaving open-ended the fates of characters whom lesser writers would lead to the sort of preordained conclusion that leaves spectators happy but isn’t necessarily true to life.

Matt Wolf ponders the messier side of London’s playwriting world in yesterday’s International Herald Tribune. Read the rest of the article here. Then reflect on how pioneering American playwrights — and audiences — have left the English in the dust when it comes to taking chances.

Mickey Birnbaum

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You’re thinking about writing a new play. You sift through your list of ideas. You look around and see what’s being done–especially all the zippy productions at places like Louiville, or profiled in American Theatre, or even the Cornerstone As You Like It at Pasadena Playhouse, for God’s sake. You ask, am I up to this? (Maybe.) Am I hip enough? (No.) Will it make the world a better place? (Decidedly no.) So is it really, really worth it? (Still thinking.) Then you read this. You sigh a deep sigh of relief. Gratitude wells up in your heart like a broken sprinkler. You go on.

Wayne Peter Liebman