TAGGED WITH COLIN MITCHELL
My Top Ten Goals as Host of the First Annual Valley Theatre Awards on May 31st
I know you’ve all been wondering what I’m hoping to achieve by hosting the First Annual Valley Theatre Awards, which is why I’m sure you all will be stampeding to attend the event which takes place on Sunday, May 31st, 2015, at 8pm at the Acme Theatre on Lankershim.So being the professional provocateur that I am, I offer this elixir of enticement to titilate your tired tertiary tract into a veritable frenzy of fallopial fanaticism that is sure to agitate your essence into an existent...
Just Because...
Hey it just came in. And now I’m sharing.Me hosting the Valley Theater Awards last weekend in all of my Celtic finery....
A Few Things You May Not Know about Steven Leigh Morris
On Monday, grand old man of LA theater critics Steven Leigh Morris published a screed in the LA Weekly damning Bitter Lemons, one of the websites for which I write criticism. Steven Leigh Morris had some harsh words for our policy, known as the Bitter Lemons Imperative, of charging productions to review their work. It may be that Steven Leigh Morris found last week’s equivocal LA Times article insufficiently condemnatory, or it may be that Steven Leigh Morris is actually so incensed that he has to do his ...
The Bitter Lemons' Family
These are not my children, nor is this my wife or the mother of my children. Though I’d be honored and most privileged if they were, but no, I’m a single dad and I have a six year old son named Max. He is not pictured.This photo was taken at the Fringe Awards last night and in a moment that is still bringing me to tears with laughter as I write this, when we were introduced to come to the stage to deliver our award, Enci Box (the woman in the picture and co-founder and publisher of Bitter Lemons) de...
Shameless Self Promotion: My play "Madness! Murder! Mayhem!" Opens Friday, July 3rd at Zombie Joe's Underground
Why? Because I can. Start your own site and you too can occasionally self-promote. Nyah.Here’s the scoop:Wrote a trio of re-imagined classic Grand Guignol plays, they are called, At the Break of Day, Natasha and Orgy in the Lighthouse, we’re calling the whole show, Madness! Murder! Mayhem! Zombie Joe is producing, Jana Wimer directing, I’m in one of the pieces, the other actors include Ken MacFarlane, Alex Walters, Dale Sandlin, Jessica Madelaine, Roland De Leon, Vincent Cusimano, Jonica Patella an...
Devil's Advocate: Shakespeare 2.0? - by Robert Toombs
A few weeks ago the Oregon Shakespeare Festival announced a new program called “Play On!,” in which 36 playwrights will tackle the unenviable task of “translat[ing] 39 plays attributed to Shakespeare into contemporary modern English.” One such translation, Kenneth Cavender’s take on Timon of Athens, already premiered at Alabama Shakespeare Festival last year. But reactions to the overall program were swift and, predictably, all over the map. In the New York Times, Co...
The Saturday Saying(s): The Jubilee Edition
“You cannot call your attempts at creating parity and diversity in American Theatre and in your community inclusive when the very language of your pledge explicitly excludes a portion of that community.”-Colin Mitchell – in response to the ridiculously wrongheaded Jubilee pledge sponsored by Howlround“In order to address parity in the American Theatre and in my community I promise to support a vision of every theatre in the United States of America producing only work by women, people of...
How I Got an Interview for the Executive Director Position at LA Stage Alliance
Hint: It wasn’t my extensive experience as a fundraiser or my many years working as an administrator in the non-profit world.Because I have neither of those things.It was all about a letter I wrote.At least I think it was. They still haven’t gotten back to me on whether or not I got the job.Bad form, people!But we’ll get to that in a minute, because first I want to once again offer a sincere and heartfelt congratulations to LA Stage Alliance and Steven Leigh Morris. Major kudos to Un...
Never Cry "Critic"
A week ago, for the first time in over a year, I requested and received a pair of tickets from press rep David Elzer. Not that I wouldn’t have reviewed Theatre of NOTE’s Rio Hondo next week without Elzer’s good offices; every production I have asked has courteously provided me with tickets for the purpose, even after Elzer stopped supplying to Stage and Cinema on the grounds that editor Tony Frankel’s critics are “vicious,” and that “with Stage and Cinema […] more than...