Editor's Note

By Jim O’Quinn

One of our favorite tasks on American Theatre’s publishing calendar falls in the waning weeks of summer—surveying colleagues across the country to find out what plays, what projects, what artists’ work people in the field are most excited about in the upcoming season. Once a theme for the survey has been agreed upon—in honor of the ’08 presidential campaign, this year’s is “What Gets Your Vote?”—the entire editorial staff (all five of us!) sends out a flurry of e-mails to folks we suspect may be harboring well-informed opinions about the coming theatrical year’s hottest, most substantial, most innovative, most talked-about, most just-plain-fun projects. What inevitably results is a treasure trove of educated recommendations, spanning genres, geography and a gamut of performance venues. Running like a ticker tape through this issue’s more than 2,400 season schedule listings, the survey is your ultimate insider’s guide to 2008–09 on stage.

Elsewhere in the issue, anticipation remains the watchword. Our handsome cover trio of playwrights, Sheila Callaghan, Quiara Alegría Hudes and Itamar Moses—photographed by Brennan Cavanaugh at the Old American Can Factory, a picturesque industrial space in Brooklyn that dates back to 1886 and is now a site for arts and cultural projects—will be busy this season with new plays and new productions at U.S. theatre companies large and small. We expect their accomplishments will give all three new prominence on the national theatrical radar.

In the back of the book, critic Misha Berson delves into the rewards and challenges of an endlessly fascinating Tennessee Williams classic that will be widely seen this season—including in a touring production from Australia’s Sydney Theatre Company, starring Cate Blanchett and directed by Liv Ullmann. Senior editor Randy Gener offers an insightful appreciation of an enduring team of artists who’ll also have multiple new works on view—the New York City–based Talking Band, one of the unsung staples of American experimental theatre.

And the anticipation factor grows exponentially when six moving forces behind the development of new work for U.S. stages—Kamilah Forbes, Mia Katigbak, Marc Masterson, Mabel Robinson, Mark Russell and Kent Thompson—share their ideas and aspirations in a panel discussion at Actors Theatre of Louisville. The far-flung festival programs these artists oversee will nourish not only the current season but ones stretching far into the future.

So you’re invited—to peruse the collected data that give form and substance to the ’08–09 season, and to relish the enthusiasms of dozens of folks with their fingers on America’s theatrical pulse.