Last week, I wrote about over whether or not high school theatre awards actually help or hurt high school theatre departments. Reaction to the piece was mixed with some sharing their positive experiences and others who had quite the opposite.

In the past few days, an uproar in Pittsburgh regarding their high school theatre awards proves how these types of awards can create issues and cause students and parents to lose focus on what's really important when it comes to the performing arts. 

I would be lying if I said I was familiar with Theatre Under the Stars in Houston, TX. But their audition notice for their upcoming production of The Wiz has caught many performers' attention for its...well...character descriptions and the type of performers they're seeking for these roles. 

A while back I went to see a show my friend was performing in. I'm going to be honest with you when I say that the show was horrible. I can count on two fingers the number of shows I've left during intermission due to their quality and had my friend not been in it, this would have been the third. 

After the show, we went out for coffee. I knew the question was coming but I was really hoping it wasn't. Finally, after our first cups she said,

"So what did you think?"

During my second year studying undergraduate theatre, my class watched a documentary called Every Little Step. This film details the story of the musical Chorus Line and follows the casting process of the 2006 Broadway revival. Although it is a truly fascinating film I would recommend to all theatre fanatics, one moment stuck with me most of all. One of the actresses cast in the revival said of dancing and showbiz, “If you have something to fall back on, you’ll fall back.” My fellow classmates seemed to think this was wise advice to keep in mind as we began our careers as actors, but to me something seemed wrong with the picture.

When I was 15 years old, I shimmied into a sequined leotard and balanced a feathered headpiece on my head for my high school production of George M! I distinctly recall claiming a private changing space in our closet-sized dressing room during our first dress rehearsal, only to have it dawn on me that there was no point in being modest: I’d be wearing virtually nothing onstage, so why bother hiding now?

Over the past couple of months, I've heard from more than one person that they are concerned that the over-commercialization of Broadway will mean that less "artistic" and original musicals will be recognized by the Tony Awards.

While I think they're overreacting, I don't think their concerns are completely unfounded. After all, this past year, there wasn't a single musical that wasn't based on a movie or TV show or that wasn't a jukebox collection.

I was at a disaster training when it happened again. The irony of being in a disaster training but without protocol for....that other disaster. The one, you know it. That feeling that comes on when you are out of place, but shouldn't be. The moment when every sign on earth points to you being the center, placing you right at the right time but the worst place. I was a theatre kid in a theatre scenario with non-theatre people. 

Last year it was announced that the venerable Oregon Shakespeare Festival would be putting an interesting spin on their upcoming production of "Oklahoma" by making the couplings of Laurey/Curly and Will/Ado Annie, same sex rather than the traditional heterosexual pairing. 

The announcement was met with praise but also with some skepticism. Would a recasting like this make sense? Would it work within the context of the piece? 

Well, at least according to local critics who have seen the show since its opening on April 22nd, it's worked perfectly. 

Melodrama.

When the term comes up, many people tend to think of the old melodramas that theatergoers were accustomed to in the 19th century. Perhaps if they know enough about the history of theatre, they might think of plays such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Corsican Brothers and The Octoroon.

However, all of this overlooks what the term actually refers to: the usage of exaggerated aspects of performance and storytelling, whether it may be referring to the events in the plot or the emotions of the characters.

Recently, I have attended several productions ranging from Spamalot to Into the Woods.  As I am a person who is often curious, and I usually arrive fairly early, I started looking around at the audience.  Except for Into the Woods, which was a high school show, most of the audiences were in the 40-senior range.   So, it begs the question, is theater relevant in a modern world of technology?

Audrey Cardwell is currently starring in the National Tour of Bright Star where she is playing the central role of Alice Murphy. She has also appeared in the national tours of Cinderella (Ella), Anything Goes and Elf and has been seen regionally at The Old Globe, Asolo Repertory Theatre, The Muny, North Shore Music Theatre, Houston Theatre Under the Stars, Dallas Summer Musicals and Pennsylvania Centre Stage. She’s also an alum of Penn State University.

While my first priority was always seeing whatever shows I had come to see that particular trip, early visits to New York City were also consumed by my eagerness to take it all in. Not the city; Broadway, specifically the fabled theatres. Long before thousands of pictures from a single day could be stored effortlessly on one's mobile phone, my dad would, fortunately, pack enough film (long, black, shiny plastic-y stuff with chemicals that fixed themselves into images when exposed first to light and then to other chemicals) to get pictures of me in front of every Broadway marquee we could find. With no idea what most of the shows were, and absolutely no idea who the theatres were named after, I collected Broadway marquees in a camera. It was really quite innocent if I do say so myself.

Now, I'm old and I know things, and things that used to be pure fun are borderline offensive to me. Watching a television report on a new Broadway show recently, I found myself asking, "What business does that show have in that theatre with that namesake?" It was an irrational response to an ultimately harmless coincidence that I realized I have felt several times over the past few years at least, and something I thought worth exploring. Why is it jarring to see certain Broadway marquees?