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Non-traditional Casting
by Jack Marshall
In transferring the drama to Alabama and casting the play
with African American actors, The American Century Theater
and director Ed Bishop are to some extent changing the
author's intent and veering from the company's usual
production practice of trying to stay as close to the
spirit of the original show as possible. This is the
still-controversial realm of non-traditional casting, and
That Championship Season
is an excellent case study of the
practice.
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The One Hit Wonders of 1960-1975
by Andrew White, PhD.
Pop quiz:
What do Tad Mosel, Howard Sackler, Charles Gordone, Paul
Zindel and Jason Miller have in common?
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essay
Making a New Play Out of Old Pieces
by Jack Marshall
Drama Under the Influence,
the latest addition to The American Century Theater's
"Reflections" series, demonstrates the stage director's
creative and substantive role in communicating ideas,
subtext, historical commentary and emotions that would not
register on the audience without his
efforts.
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Women, the Theatre, and the
Avant-garde
by Andrew White, PhD.
By the early 1900's, middle-class white women could adopt
the stage as a profession and enjoy respectable careers as
actors or playwrights. It was still a struggle, however,
for female playwrights to get their works produced. Some
of them simply shelved their plays; others responded by
creating their own small companies.
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"Save Eugene O'Neill!"
by Jack Marshall
On January 2,the Washington Post
reported that the Fairfax County library system was
dumping thousands of volumes that had not been checked out
in the last 24 months. Among the classics tossed to make
room for more novels by John Grisham and Tom Clancy, the
ghost-written autobiography of Hillary Clinton and the
fulminations of Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter:
Gibbon's Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire;
Voltaire's Candide, Hemingway's
For Whom the Bell Tolls, and
To Kill a Mockingbird.
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