Theatre Of The Unimpressed

How dull plays are killing theatre and what we can do about it. Had I become disenchanted with the form I had once fallen so madly in love with as a pubescent, pimple-faced suburban homo with braces? Maybe theatre was like an all-consuming high school infatuation that now, ten years later, I saw as the closeted balding guy with a beer gut he’d become. There were of course those rare moments of transcendencethat kept me coming back. But why did they come so few and far between? A lot of plays are dull. And one dull play, it seems, can turn us off theatre for good. Playwright and theatre director Jordan Tannahill takes in the spectrum of English-language drama – from the flashiest of Broadway spectacles to productions mounted in scrappy storefront theatres – to consider where lifeless plays come from and why they persist. Having travelled the globe talking to theatre artists, critics, passionate patrons and the theatrically disillusioned, Tannahill addresses what he considers the culture of ‘risk aversion’ paralyzing the form. Theatre of the Unimpressed is Tannahill’s wry and revelatory personal reckoning with the discipline he’s dedicated his life to, and a roadmap for a vital twenty-first-century theatre – one that apprehends the value of ‘liveness’ in our mediated age and the necessity for artistic risk and its attendant failures. In considering dramaturgy, programming and alternative models for producing, Tannahill aims to turn theatre from an obligation to a destination. ‘[Tannahill is] the poster child of a new generation of (theatre? film? dance?) artists for whom "interdisciplinary" is not a buzzword, but a way of life.’ —J. Kelly Nestruck, Globe and Mail ‘Jordan is one of the most talented and exciting playwrights in the country, and he will be a force to be reckoned with for years to come.’ —Nicolas Billon, Governor General's Award–winning playwright (Fault Lines)

This is a pressed bruise. This is Greta Garbo's smile. This is the smell of Windex. Declarations is an imperfect chronicle of a life lived; a body pulled through time, encountering meteorological phenomenon, mythology, political calamity, pop culture, and everyday happenstance along the way. Written in the wake of his mother's terminal cancer diagnosis, Tannahill's Declarations is a staggering archive of sensations, memories, and voices asserting that here lived, for a time, a woman. Jordan Tannahill is an Ottawa-born, London UK–based playwright and filmmaker. His work has been presented at major theaters and festivals across Canada and internationally.

William H. Pinnell first issues an "invitation to investigate the magic of perspective and explore its wondrous surround," then escorts the beginning as well as the advanced student through the complex process of artistically conveying scene designs via the scenographic drawing. Step by step, he illustrates the principles of perspective that apply to stage design. Starting with a brief history of perspective, he furnishes all of the information designers will need to transform a blank surface into a unique expression of theatrical space. As Pinnell makes clear, a stage setting must be fully planned far in advance of its actual construction. Each designer must have a picture of how the setting will appear when it is ready for opening night. The scenic designer must then be able to render that picture, to communicate his or her ideas through a series of initial sketches that, combined with directorial consultation, eventually evolve into an approved plan for the actual setting. Many of these plans take the form of working drawings--floor plans, elevations, and the related schematics necessary for the shop staff to construct the design. Pinnell insists that as closely as possible, the model--the graphic and tangible rendering of the designer's vision--must reflect what the actual stage set will look like when the audience sees it in the performance. His concern is to show how one faithfully and accurately represents the actual, finished stage design through theatrical rendering. Pinnell achieves this goal through an introduction and six chapters. He provides the historical background in a chapter titled "The Perspective Phenomenon," which covers preclassical Greece, Greek and Roman notions of perspective, and the concepts of the Italian Renaissance. "The Perspective Grid: Learning the Basics" deals with drafting tools, drawing the perspective grid, and the basics of measuring on the perspective grid. "The Perspective Grid: Expanding the Basics" discusses transferring a simple interior setting, plotting curves, and creating levels. "The Perspective Grid: Variations" analyzes the thrust stage, the raked stage, and the two-point perspective grid. "Coloration and Form" explains varied backgrounds, color media, and rendering with gouache. Finally, "Presentation" explains protection, framing, duplication, and the portfolio. Except for the intricacies of the human anatomy, there is nothing a designer must draw scenically that is not covered in this book.

From award-winning playwright and filmmaker Jordan Tannahill comes a masterful and moving novel in the tradition of Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station and Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be. At 11:04 a.m. on January 21st, 2017, Jordan opens the door to his mother’s bedroom. As his eyes adjust to the half-light, he finds her lying in bed, eyes closed and mouth agape. In that instant he cannot tell whether she is asleep or dead. The sight of his mother's body, caught between these two possibilities, causes Jordan to plunge headlong into the uncertain depths of consciousness itself. From androids to cannibals to sex clubs, an unforgettable personal odyssey emerges, populated by a cast of sublime outsiders in search for the ever-elusive nature of self. Part ontological thriller, part millennial saga, Liminal is a riotous and moving portrait of a young man in volatile times, a generation caught in suspended animation, and a son’s enduring love for his mother.

A ten-minute play is a streak of theatrical lightning. It doesn't last long, but its power can stand your hair on end. This splendid anthology contains enough wattage to light up a small city. For in its pages, thirty-two of our finest playwrights hone their skills on a form that has been called the haiku of the American stage. The plays that Nina Shengold and Eric Lane have collected in this volume range from monologues to an eight-character farce. Eminently producible, ideally suited for the classroom and audition, Take Ten is a marvelous resource for teachers and students of drama, as well as a stimulating read for lovers of the theatre. Contributors include: John Augustine, Cathy Celesia, Laura Cunningham, Joe Pintauro, Mary Sue Price, Megan Terry, Jose Rivera, Romulus Linney, David Mamet, Jane Martin, David Ives, and many others.

Every major airport has a three-letter code from the International Air Transport Association. In perhaps history's greatest-ever feat of armchair travel, Nasser Hussain has written a collection of poetry entirely from those codes. In a dazzling aeronautic feat of constraint-based writing, SKY WRI TEI NGS explores the relationship between language and place in a global context. Watch as words jet-set across the map, leaving a poetic flight path. See letters take flight (and leave their baggage behind).

It was love at first scene: the West Coast's innovative Theatre SKAM and Sean Dixon were a match made in heaven. AWOL offers up for the first time three of the fruits of their three-year-and-counting union. In Aerwacol, a couple flees personal tragedy on a manual railroad car headed across the prairies, meeting odd characters along the way. Billy Nothin' is an existentialist cowboy play inwhich horse trainer Billy None loses the 'cowboy way' so entirely that his best friends don't even recognize him any more. And dystopian romance District of Centuries tells the story of a suburban type seeking his long-lost brother in a downtown housing project designed to crumble so fast that inhabitants come to believe they're hundreds of years old.

Real Life Drama is the classic history of the remarkable group that revitalized American theater in the 1930s by engaging urgent social and moral issues that still resonate today. Born in the turbulent decade of the Depression, the Group Theatre revolutionized American arts. Wendy Smith's dramatic narrative brings the influential troupe and its founders to life once again, capturing their joys and pains, their triumphs and defeats. Filled with fresh insights into the towering personalities of Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg, Cheryl Crawford, Elia Kazan, Clifford Odets, Stella and Luther Adler, Karl Malden, and Lee J. Cobb, among many others, Real Life Drama chronicles a passionate community of idealists as they opened a new frontier in theater.

From the critically acclaimed author of Be Safe I Love You comes a haunting novel of love, friendship, and survival set in the red light district of Athens in the 1980s that New York magazine calls “a gauzy portrait of youthful longing, sticky romance, and regret.” Running follows the lives of three friends and lovers: queer English poet Milo Rollack, prep school dropout Jasper Lethe, and seventeen-year-old Bridey Sullivan, an American with a fascination for fire. Barely out of childhood, squatting in a crumbling hotel on the outskirts of Athens in the late 1980s, the three slip in and out of homelessness, heavy drinking, and underground jobs. While working as runners for the hotel—convincing tourists to stay there for a commission and free board—they are befriended by an IRA fugitive and become inextricably linked to an act of terrorism that will mark each of them for life. Bridey, the consummate survivor, abandons Jasper and Milo, planning to return when the dust has settled. But no one has fared well in her absence. And then a mysterious death drives her to seek an impossible absolution that will take her from the streets of the red-light district to the remote island cliff houses of the southern Mediterranean. Twenty-five years later, Milo, now a successful writer and professor in Manhattan, struggles to live ethically in a world he knows is corrupt, coping with a secret that makes him a stranger to those closest to him. “Beautiful and atmospheric…original and deeply sad” (Kirkus Reviews), Running is a sweeping and fearless story of friendship and survival from Cara Hoffman, an author who “writes like a dream—a disturbing, emotionally charged dream” (The Wall Street Journal).

From Ian Williams, author of Reproduction, winner of the Giller Prize and a June 2020 Indie Next Great Read Frustrated by how tough the issues of our time are to solve – racial inequality, our pernicious depression, the troubled relationships we have with other people – Ian Williams revisits the seemingly simple questions of grade school for inspiration: if Billy has five nickels and Jane has three dimes, how many Black men will be murdered by police? He finds no satisfaction, realizing that maybe there are no easy answers to ineffable questions. Williams uses his characteristic inventiveness to find not just new answers but new questions, reconsidering what poetry can be, using math and grammar lessons to shape poems that invite us to participate. Two long poems cut through the text like vibrating basenotes, curiosities circle endlessly, and microaggressions spin into lyric. And all done with a light touch and a joyful sense of humour.