Editor's Note

By Jim O’Quinn

After chewing through documentation, testimonials and personal experience in an effort to encapsulate TCG’s 2009 National Conference into the manageable dimensions of a magazine article (“You Can Get There from Here”)—an exercise in futility, take it from this reporter—the meeting’s title sticks in the mind. This auspiciously alliterative, potentially facile formulation, “Roots, Renaissance, Revolution,” took on solid form and substance as the Baltimore event unfolded—so much so that by its closing session, in a conversation between auteur director Anne Bogart and ground-breaking choreographer Bill T. Jones, the phrase could be used with exhilarating clarity to simultaneously evoke the arc of a single artist’s creative process and the American theatre’s collective journey over the past half-century or more.

The temptation, in introducing this post-conference issue of American Theatre, is to stick with those R-words. Roots: They’re everywhere in these pages, from the ancient Yoruban myths that inform the contemporary works of acclaimed young playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney, to the enduring spirit of rebellion that has fueled the San Francisco Mime Troupe for 50 (yes, 50!) years, to the psychological and literary revelations freshly brought to light in the correspondence of playwrights Noël Coward and Thornton Wilder.

Renaissance: Witness how the standard operating model of the American regional theatre has been re-envisioned by double-duty artistic director Charles Fee, in the business and artistic partnership he has forged between Idaho Shakespeare Festival and Great Lakes Theater Festival of Ohio. Take heart from the imminent expansion of one of the nation’s model theatre programs for urban youth, New York City’s 52nd Street Project.

Revolution: What will American audiences make of the Dutch invasion this month of Governors Island in New York Harbor, when works like the site-specific instillation Wind Nomads stretch theatre’s very definition? As animatronics and digital technology transform the art of puppetry, insider Brian Henson talks about the Jim Henson Company’s secret weapon: its anchor in live performance. 

So you might say that this eclectic issue attempts not only to highlight the energy and excitement of the Baltimore conference but to propel its signature themes far and wide. The fourth R is for Read.
—Jim O’Quinn