Editor's Note

By Jim O'Quinn

The advent of American Theatre's oversized October Season Preview issue signals that the nation's new theatre season has shifted into high gear. For us personally—the magazine's five-member editorial staff and equally minimal production and advertising team—it's time to take a deep breath and pat each other on the back for making it over a major annual hurdle. We've knuckled down at our desks through the dog days of summer and into early September—those weeks when most people make a last-ditch dash for the beach or the open road—and you're holding the product of our seasonal labors in your hands.

One thing we've been busy with is the informal but oh-so-enlightening survey of U.S. theatre professionals that threads its way through the nearly-50-page Season Schedules insert (page 57). "Clue us in," we asked dozens of folks from across the country, "to what in-the-know people should know" about plays or productions or individual artists or innovative companies that are sure to be standouts in 2010-11. As usual, the responses are wildly diverse and addictively informative: Who knew that Avenue Q's Jeff Whitty and Jason Moore are turning Armistead Maupin's already-much-adapted Tales of the City into a musical? (Maybe, like Louis G. Spisto, you did; I didn't.) Aren't Cleveland Play House and Round House Theatre of Maryland savvy to program an African-American version of Horton Foote's The Trip to Bountiful, a play ideally suited to cross-racial casting? (Terrence Spivey thinks so.)

Lots of info pours across American Theatre's doorstep, so not all the survey respondents' shout-outs were a surprise to me. I've never met playwright Bianca Bagatourian or the awesomely accomplished actor Michael Cerveris, but I couldn't agree more with their respective endorsements of Taylor Mac's drag epic The Lily's Revenge and the New Orleans-spawned cri de coeur Loup Garou, both wildly creative site-specific productions that aspire to environmental consciousness-raising. I have spent time with playwrights Bathsheba Doran and John Patrick Shanley, and both their picks—the return of the acclaimed British production War Horse, with its ground-breaking puppetry, and Stephen Adly Guirgis's nastily-titled new play (Shanley calls it "the play about the *&%$# hat")—are on my must-see list, with or without them as theatregoing companions.

The survey entries brim with the pleasures of anticipation. The feature articles that precede them, in our "What's So Funny?" special section, take the enjoyment one step further, into occasional hilarity. Our concept—to view the coming season through the lens of comedy—is accomplished, as senior editor Randy Gener notes in his introduction to the section, by "spotlighting some of the strongest comic voices in our community." (Case in point: California-based actor Danny Sheie, who's "marvellous hairy about the face" in Kevin Berne's sensual, unsettling Midsummer cover photo, and whose high-spirited performances regularly send audiences into gales of laughter.) Blend these featured artists' voices—antic and edgy and occasionally laced with unexpected gravitas—with those of the survey respondents and this issue's main message rings clear: A new theatrical season is off and running.

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