Birds chirping. Children playing. Sun. Grass. Epic theatre?
Yep.
In case you’ve never listened to the podcast (or met me), I love Brecht’s work. And I love performances that are out in the open, and free to the public.
In my humble opinion, today’s guest, director Aimee Todoroff, is right—Brecht is indeed perfect for being done outside. Free & open to the public.
…and no purchased seats posing as “subscriber tickets,” taking seats away from the actual “public” (yes, I’m looking at you, oh-other-producer-of-plays-in-Central-Park).
For their first ever Brecht in the Park performance, Elephant Run District presents three of the master’s short plays—The Elephant Calf, In Search of Justice, and The Exception and the Rule—all of which have very strong connections to our current state of affairs.
Listen in as Aimee talks about her inspiration—text-wise & space-wise—for bringing Brecht to Central Park, what’s next for Elephant Run District, and how these plays written in Weimar-era Germany are eerily resonant with New York, NY, USA in 2013.
“How can we put the audience’s experience first, and make them have an experience that they’re going to talk about for the rest of the day?”
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aMios
While we here in NYC might think of ourselves as the center of the theatre universe, there’s lots of great stuff happening outside of the five boroughs. When it’s not being done in a small house within the city limits, the kind of theatre that gets labelled “off-off-Broadway” here is often called “community theatre,” which all-too-often has negative connotations. An excellent example of why “community theatre” does not have to be deadly (in the Peter Brook sense) can be found just a short train ride from our fair city, in the state capital of Albany, with 
A powerful crime boss. A crusading District Attorney. A tough-as-nails madame. The corruption of a small-town girl. Stool pigeons. Vice. Drag. Dames.
I love seeing people I recognize onstage.
The term “avant-garde” gets thrown around a lot, but as you’ll hear playwright Ming Peiffer recount in this episode, it started as a military term before it was used to describe the artists changing forms, and pushing art forward.
For the second episode in a row, GSAS! heads to the nation of Colombia (via the magic of theatre, of course), this time with Ugly Rhino’s What It Means to Disappear Here.