Editor's Note
By Jim O'Quinn
A burnished barroom glow and an air of half- acknowledged alienation suffuse Mark Barton's photograph on this issue's cover. The understated, rich-hued image is from Elevator Repair Service's well-traveled five-hour work The Select (The Sun Also Rises), based on Ernest Hemingway's early novel about American expatriates making their way across post–World War I Europe. Visually, thematically and in terms of timeliness, it's a particularly appropriate emblem of this year's annual international issue, devoted to the topic "On Taking Work Abroad." ERS's engrossing production (I caught it at last year's Live Arts Festival in Philadelphia) is one of associate editor Eliza Bent's cases-in-point in "The Americans Are Coming," her info-packed survey of made-in-America works on the international circuit. The Select will be seen this month at the prestigious Vienna Festival, in the company of productions from 22 other countries.
Bent's piece and two companion essays appear in a special section introduced by managing editor Nicole Estvanik Taylor. Together, the stories attempt to chart the multiple challenges that confront artists when they seek to transport their work beyond our national borders—and to suggest some tactics for making that process more feasible and more rewarding.
This issue also harbors a wealth of material about up-to-the-minute developments in theatre here at home. Arts writer Jonathan Mandell, inspired by the imminent transfer of Broadway's Memphis to U.S. movie screens, analyzes the latest wrinkles in the conundrum of how to most effectively record live performance for broadcast. A garrulous pair of writers, playwright Jeff Whitty and novelist Armistead Maupin, inaugurate a new AT feature called Conversations as they jaw unreservedly about the much-anticipated musical based on Maupin's gay-lit classic Tales of the City. A pair of reports from the heartland, filed by associate editor Eliza Bent and Denver critic Juliet Wittman, cast a reflective eye on a bond-building Omaha conference and an increasingly influential Colorado playfest.
Two other articles—Carol Rocamora's lead feature interview with theatrical man-of-all-work Austin Pendleton and Stuart Miller's update on the similarly eclectic Michael Cristofer—take up some slack that this magazine is sometimes guilty of allowing. Like so much contemporary journalism, AT tends to set its sights on the spanking new, the emergent, the freshly hatched. Here, instead, are two veteran theatre artists with remarkable careers under their belts and much to impart in the way of life lessons and creative insight. Perhaps you'll be as surprised as I was to hear Cristofer, now in his sixties, and Pendleton, in his seventies, exult like youngsters about the latest twists in their long (and perpetually freshly hatched) lives in the theatre.
Whether you're going or staying, or doing some of both, these pages are for you.
—Jim O'Quinn
blog comments powered by DisqusView our comments policy