New Dramatists

Last night I had the honor of being a part of the New Dramatists new members welcome event that featured readings from each of the six new playwrights. My friend Qui Nguyen just got in and it was a great time. Saw a lot of old friends and colleagues and did a lot of catching up all around.

The excerpts I heard that night were mesmerizing and surprising in their own ways, mostly due to their brazen theatricality. The new frontier of theatre seems to be headed back into a physical, ritualistic use of the actor as an instrument of transportation. Each of the readings used the actors as true storytellers and used the full complement of the actor's skills to maximize expression, including dance and song. Even the minimalism of Richard Maxwell's actors served as an electrifying conduit to something profound and beautiful deep in the language (precisely because of it, I thought).

It was quite a night.