*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***

 *** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***

Ghostlight Theatre Ensemble (GTE) is excited to invite all playwrights to participate in its 2026 Festival 10 event. This is GTE’s fourth such festival. It will feature a variety of 10-minute plays, both published and unpublished, that are written, directed and performed by Bay Area thespians. You may submit up to three plays. Plays should meet the 10-minute length requirement and be able to be performed in a small stage setting.

***

The Bite Sized Theatrical Spooktacular 2025

We are looking for original short plays (or other theatrical pieces) that are 10 minutes or less. This production is on Halloween, and we encourage any submissions that may resonate thematically, whether they directly relate to Halloween or not.

While we will consider anything and everything, we especially want to see submissions that are comedic or spooky, as this fits best with the tone of the evening!

***

Playwrights First open for full-length plays

Overall, we look for:
magination and originality in both style and subject or point of view.
Characters that intrigue and move us.
A compelling action revealing the human condition.
Theatricality inherent in the above.​

Rules:
One, single full-length play per playwright in English from anywhere in the world.
Not produced full-scale prior to submission. Readings, workshops, and college productions are acceptable.
No joint authorships, adaptations, translations, musicals, or shorts.​

​Award: $1,000 first place.

*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***


*** PROOF ***

Ayo Edebiri and Don Cheadle will make their Broadway debuts next spring as a father and daughter united by math as well as mental health struggles in a revival of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Proof.”

The play, by David Auburn, previously ran on Broadway from October 2000 to January 2003 — an unusually long run for a serious drama. In 2001 it won not only the Pulitzer but also the Tony Award for best play.

Set in Chicago, “Proof” is about a young woman whose father, a well-known mathematician, has died; she is juggling complex relationships with her sister and with one of her father’s former students. And those relationships are upended by the discovery of a mathematical proof of uncertain authorship in her father’s office. Reviewing an Off Broadway production in 2000, the critic Bruce Weber, writing in The New York Times, deemed it “an exhilarating and assured new play” and said that it “turns the esoteric world of higher mathematics literally into a back porch drama, one that is as accessible and compelling as a detective story.”

More...
https://archive.ph/iTroL

***

‘Proof’ was captivating and thought provoking, a triumph of the writing (David Auburn), direction (Joseph Houston) and an impeccable lead (Lucy Jane Dixon). ‘Proof’ is the story of a woman who took care of her genius mathematician father (David Keller) for years, as he deteriorated due to mental illness. When he dies Catherine (Lucy Jane Dixon) is left wondering if she has inherited her father’s illness along with his academic prowess. She must deal with her returning older sister Clare (Angela Costello) who wants her to leave the family home and a pushy past student of her father’s, Hal (Samuel Holland) wanting to go through her father’s work.

Auburn’s writing is clever and fast pace, creating moments of wit, hilarity and pain with equal impact. His work is astonishing in its ability to create comedic and heart wrenching moments that feel realistic and not at all staged.

More...
https://mancunion.com/2018/11/30/review-proof-by-david-auburn/

***

London theatre has a thing about prime numbers at the moment. They feature prominently in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and they also pop up in this revival of David Auburn's Broadway play, first seen in London in 2002 in a production starring Gwyneth Paltrow – a role she reprised on screen.

Here, Mariah Gale plays Catherine, a spiky and fragile 25-year-old who has abandoned her university course to care for her ailing father, Robert (Matthew Marsh), a maths genius who revolutionised his field before he was 25, but has suffered severe mental breakdowns since. The action begins on the night before her father's funeral, when Catherine's bossy, competent sister, Claire (Emma Cunniffe) – a currency analyst who's been paying the bills while Catherine provides the care – flies in from New York.

At base, this is a hokey family drama, and the fact that it won the Pulitzer in 2001 makes you think it was a quiet year. Auburn clearly wants this to be a story in which mathematical and emotional equations, intellect and feeling, collide. So he throws everything at it: ghosts, flashbacks, sibling rivalry, guilt, even an ambitious grad student, Hal (Jamie Parker), who knows that if he can find something startling in Robert's notebooks his own career will be made.

In the hands of a playwright such as Tom Stoppard, this might have been a fascinating and multi-layered piece. But the questions it poses (is the lack of prominent women in maths down to gender or prejudice? Are genius and madness really aligned?) never entirely add up, and most often it simply skims over the issues. Hidebound by its form and without much intellectual daring, Auburn's play lacks elegance, unlike the maths proofs it describes.

More...
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/mar/21/proof-review

***

John Madden’s “Proof” is an extraordinary thriller about matters of scholarship and the heart, about the true authorship of a mathematical proof and the passions that coil around it. It is a rare movie that gets the tone of a university campus exactly right, and at the same time communicates so easily that you don’t need to know the slightest thing about math to understand it. Take it from me.

The film centers on two remarkable performances, by Gwyneth Paltrow and Hope Davis, as Catherine and Claire, the daughters of a mathematician so brilliant that his work transformed the field and has not yet been surpassed. But his work was done years ago, and at the age of 26 or 27, he began to “get sick,” is the way the family puts it. This man, named Robert and played by Anthony Hopkins, still has occasional moments of lucidity, but he lives mostly in delusion, filling up one notebook after another with meaningless scribbles. Yet he remains on the University of Chicago faculty, where he has already made a lifetime’s contribution; his presence and rare remissions are inspiring. Recently he had a year when he was “better.”

More...
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/proof-2005

***

''Proof,'' an exhilarating and assured new play by David Auburn, turns the esoteric world of higher mathematics literally into a back porch drama, one that is as accessible and compelling as a detective story. The play is fundamentally a mystery about the authorship of a particularly important proof, a mystery that is solved in the end; it is also, however, about the unravelable enigma of genius, and the toll it can take on those who are beset with it, aspire to it or merely live in its vicinity.

In that service, the play takes great pains to depict the study of mathematics as a painful joy, not as the geek-making obsession of stereotype but as human labor, both ennobling and humbling, and in so doing makes the argument that mathematics is a business for the common heart as well as the uncommon brain.

As directed by Daniel Sullivan and performed by an exemplary cast, ''Proof'' has the pace of a psychological thriller, and if its resolution tilts toward the sentimental, the characters deserve to be hopeful.

More...
https://archive.ph/e5pIV

***

David Auburn's ''Proof'' at the Manhattan Theater Club is a family play of ideas. With intricate twists and turns, it takes a dramatic and comic ride through the lives of a brilliant, deranged mathematician and his two daughters, one of whom has devoted herself to taking care of her father.

Although this is not Mr. Auburn's first play, it is his first major production and it has been a heady experience for the 30-year-old playwright. ''Proof'' opened last week starring Mary-Louise Parker and directed by Daniel Sullivan. For the author, the sequence of events was quick and stunning: from page to stage in less than two years, and then surrounded by praise from critics and theatergoers.

In his first extended interview, Mr. Auburn spoke modestly about his accomplishment. He said that he had written the first draft of the play very quickly and, accepting suggestions from his agent and friends, he painstakingly revised it. Then he submitted it to the Manhattan Theater Club. Last April the company had a reading with Ms. Parker playing the central role.
''She nailed it,'' he said. ''With no prompting and no direction, she surpassed all my expectations and was unafraid to be scary'' and to stress the critical edginess of her character.

More...
https://archive.ph/l05t8

***

PROOF Audiobook
10-minute preview - Anne Heche, Robert Foxworth,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_n7B7QLfuE

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*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***

*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***

The Richard Rodgers Awards were created and endowed in 1978 by composer and member Richard Rodgers (1902–1979) for the development of new works of musical theater. These awards, created and endowed by Richard Rodgers in 1978 for the development of the musical theater, subsidize full productions, studio productions, and staged readings by nonprofit theaters in New York City of works by composers and writers who are not already established in this field. The winners are selected by a jury of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

***

Women’s Work Project open for submissions
WOMEN'S WORK is an award-winning program comprised of two separate, dramaturgically-driven Labs: 1) The Short Play LAB (SPL) selects 6 emerging women playwrights each year and leads them through a rigorous, step-by-step process to create original 15-30 minute scripts in six-months, written to an assigned theme. The plays are then produced in an annual festival; 2) the Full-Length LAB is for selected alumnae of the SPL to develop longer works over an extended period, with the same guidance and production goals.

***

Go Try Play Write August 2025
There will be one winner each month. Scripts will be submitted to the judges anonymously. Winners will receive $100 and a subscription to Bamboo Ridge Press. The prompt for August 2025 is:
A Pinocchio prompt. Write a ten-page maximum scene or an eight-page maximum monologue of a public figure who lies and whose body part either grows or shrinks with each lie. This is an ideal world where all lies are obvious to the public. Go big with your scenes… or small.

*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***


*** PLAYWRITING AS THERAPY ***

Steve noted that AA, therapy, novels, and plays all break down isolation and enhance connections with others. In important ways, for both of us, our work in all arenas is largely about breaking down isolation. But the ways that therapists aim to do this seems to me to contrast in important respects to the ways that playwrights and novelists do. To begin with, whether individual therapists like it or not, psychotherapy operates in a context of pathologizing, focusing on which individuals are "sick" and need to be "fixed."

Most therapists can tell you that no matter how much they try to persuade the client that they do not consider them mentally ill, it is extremely hard to succeed in that effort. That, of course, does not arise for the reader of a novel or an audience member at a play. Too often these days, there is a chasm between therapist and patient because of the emphasis on classifying the latter's alleged pathology and focusing on that, on how the therapist presumably differs from the patient rather than on the commonalities between them. Some therapists even today consider a therapist who cares much about a patient or sees their commonalities to be inadequately professional, to have "countertransference" that is inappropriate or dangerous, to have "weak ego boundaries."

Related to this, therapy as too often practiced is not much focused on breaking down isolation and enhancing human connections, because in this culture, emotional maturity is likely to be defined as involving independence, autonomy, and separation without an equally important emphasis on connection. And then if, as is increasingly the case, the "therapy" consists primarily of psychiatric drugs, most people who take them will describe them as blunting emotions and making them feel more distant from others than before. Novels and plays are usually aimed to connect with readers/theatergoers; otherwise, it's too easy to put down the book or leave the theatre.

More...
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/science-isnt-golden/201106/why-psychotherapists-write-novels-and-plays

***

The songs I was writing thematically overlapped with Why I Can’t Get Work. So I started working with a director friend to put those songs into the monologue. The monologue turned into a one-man show called Fast Food Town. I performed the show for a small audience at Ars Nova, a venue featuring new talent in New York City, in 2006 or 2007. Maybe twenty people showed up; two people walked out. I was still a stage ant. I kept picking the piece up and putting it down over the years. Sometimes the show got better, and sometimes it got worse. Life happened. I had a racist sexual encounter with a white man in Inwood. I got rejected by a Black man in Inwood. I saw a Craigslist M4M ad that read, “Inwood Daddy sucking cock all Saturday morning,” and set it to music on the spot. I worked horrible day jobs, including ushering on Broadway. My mother had a series of serious health events. I started doing Gestalt therapy. After several months I had a breakthrough in which I realized that despite my many years of self-loathing, nothing was wrong with me. Every week my therapist would have me beat a rhythm on various chakras on my body and declare that I “completely and totally accept myself ” despite whatever problems were plaguing me. She would also make me identify where I tended to hold my emotions when feeling stress. Through this process I was able to recognize my body as a container for thoughts that were capable of changing, and as a result I could stop punishing myself so much.

That personal shift also turned into an artistic one: suddenly I knew what the protagonist of A Strange Loop wanted. He wanted to change. He wanted to change the same way I had always wanted to change, because I thought something was wrong with me. Because I thought I was an unlovable fat Black gay boy. Because I felt as though even if I wasn’t going to be killed by the police, I was still just a stage ant consigned by fate to carry objects from one side of the stage to the other until I died, when in truth my only real obstacle was myself. I realized that no matter what was going in the world, it was my own perceptions of reality that would hold me back or propel me forward. It was the way that I met my tangible or perceived obstacles that made me who I was.

More...
https://yalereview.org/article/michael-jackson-becoming-playwright-storytelling

***

Graduate students in drama therapy may participate in one or more productions in our therapeutic theatre series. Therapeutic theatre is the intentional use of performance to address psychological, physical, and social concerns and promote health and wellbeing. It is one approach used by drama therapists to support goals such as reminiscence, recovery, rehabilitation, and advocacy.  Every year, we collaborate with community organizations and mental health clinics who want to bring their stories to the stage. We co-create theatre with real people about their real lives.

More...
https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/programs/drama-therapy/student-experience

***

The ancient Greeks used drama for catharsis. As anyone who has acted knows, theater can tap into emotions, build self esteem, and reduce feelings of isolation.

But drama therapy takes those emotional gains to another level. It uses drama and theater processes intentionally  to achieve therapeutic goals. These can include symptom relief, emotional and physical integration, improvement of interpersonal skills and relationships, and personal growth.

According to the National Association of Drama Therapy (NADT), the modality is active and experiential. It provides a context for participants to tell their stories, set goals, solve problems, express feelings, or achieve catharsis. The NADT was incorporated in 1979 to establish and uphold standards of professional competence for drama therapists and set requirements for qualifying as a Registered Drama Therapist (RDT).

 With older adults, for example, drama therapy can maximize cognitive and communication skills, build community, and strengthen self-esteem. With addicted clients, this creative arts modality helps them express emotions more openly and envision a drug-free future. Because it’s active, drama therapy allows clients to act out negative behaviors—without consequence—while facing them directly and truthfully.

More...
https://www.socialworker.com/feature-articles/practice/Theater_Processes_Therapeutic_in_Drama_Therapy/

***

It was a crisp December day in New York City. Nancy Hasty, who had written an off-Broadway play that was soon to be produced in London, sat at a long, oblong table in the posh Waldorf Astoria Hotel and related how she had come to write plays.

Some 30 psychoanalysts sat around the table, rapt. They had come there to better understand how the creative mind, especially the mind of a playwright, ticks. In fact, three other playwrights besides Hasty had been invited for this brain-picking session, which was part of the December 2000 meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association.

Indeed, one of the major revelations to emerge from the session was that playwrights view the world in a singular way. Another major disclosure was that their urge to document their observations in writing starts early in life.

Eric Nuetzel, M.D., believes that analysts and playwrights have many common characteristics. For instance, Hasty reported, she had been a quiet child, curious, a peeping Tom, an eavesdropper, if you will. And when people walked into the room she found them larger than life, fascinating. She also came from a Southern family that told a lot of stories connected with the past, and she remembers thinking as a child, “I too am a storyteller and I too want to preserve what I see and hear!”

David Lindsay-Abaire, another playwright invited to participate in the session, reported that for him, too, certain people had made a gargantuan impression on him when he was young. He said that this especially happened after he, the son of a Boston factory worker, got a scholarship to “a tony prep school in the suburbs.” So many of the new people he met seemed larger than life. He felt as if he was an outsider, looking in. And like Hasty, he too wanted to record what he observed. In fact, he had already written some plays as a youth.

More...
https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/pn.36.3.0019

***

“Grief is so specific: I wanted to write something that contained a wide spectrum of experiences, so audience members could hopefully find something to connect with,” says Feraud. The characters are dealing with the pain of loss in different ways. Thom is mourning the wife he deeply adored and he has also began to date. Evelyn was devastated by her mother’s death, even though her mother abused her. Lily doesn’t want to go on living without her mom, who she worshiped. “Grief isn't one-size fits all,” says Feraud of the characters who try to take a measuring stick to their pain and out-grieve each other. “And that's something I very much wanted to explore with this play.”

Also, having Someone Spectacular exist in a group therapy session was a unique way to mine from the characters as they remain in one place. Then add to that not having the anchor of the therapist to set the rules.

“Group therapy without the therapist felt particularly dangerous, exciting and theatrical,” says Feraud. “It raises the stakes of this particular session, and strips the characters of any politeness they might otherwise possess. Without a referee, things quickly become messy, and that was especially intriguing to me here because grief is messy. These characters are waiting for someone who is never going to come, and in some ways, isn't that what grief is?”

More...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jerylbrunner/2024/08/30/she-found-her-power-writing-a-play-about-grief-loss-and-someone-spectacular/


***

It was not easily recognizable as therapy, these two women screaming at each other, their faces inches apart, during a rehearsal in a basement space in Greenwich Village.

The patient, a blond woman with spiky hair and spiky heels: Jill Powell, 49, an actress who had fallen on hard times. The other woman, more reserved in dress and demeanor, was Cecilia Dintino, 56, a clinical psychologist.

But this particular scene had a twist; Ms. Dintino is an actual psychologist and Ms. Powell is one of her actual patients.

The therapist and the patient were rehearsing a show called “Borderline,” which features the two women playing themselves and dealing with Ms. Powell’s lifelong struggle with borderline personality disorder.

More...
https://archive.ph/wkt8i

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“Consanguineous”

 “Consanguineous” originated from the Latin “consanguineus,” meaning “of the same blood,” which is a combination of the words “con” (“together”) and “sanguis” (“blood”).

*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***

 

Troy Foundry Theatre is now accepting submissions for the 2025 Half-Baked Festival celebrating works-in-development and the presentation of in-process creative projects which will be presented September 18 - 28, 2025 in Troy, NY.

We seek projects that wrestle with the absurdity of our time – politics, climate change, capitalism, digital dissonance, identity, and societal transformation. We're drawn to projects that are unhinged, hilarious, desperate, or beautifully broken in their honesty.

***

Meanwhile Park is a small, private park in Salt Lake City, UT. The Park hosted its first performing arts evening in 2022. Since 2023, Meanwhile Park has produced and presented a new, one-act play chosen through our Playwright Prize competition. Submissions for the 2026 (and possibly 2027.) Entries into the MPPP should consider the following:

• Plays should run between 30 minutes and one hour including any required or desired breaks.

• The “cast” should be limited to no more than six people. Cast can include actors, musicians, or other artists required to tell the story directly to the audience.

***

The Winters Theatre Company will welcome submissions of original scripts for consideration in our 2026 10-minute play festival. We will only accept original submissions (all submissions must come directly from the original playwright/author) for the festival. You must be 18 years of age or older to submit an application, and there is a limit of 1 submission per author. Every play must be 10-minutes or less. There is no specific theme for the festival so all 10-minute scripts are welcome.

*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***


*** WORTHWHILE CANADIAN INTIAITIVE ***

Back in 1986 The New Republic challenged its readers to come up with a headline more boring than “Worthwhile Canadian Initiative,” the title of a New York Times op-ed by Flora Lewis. They couldn’t. Canada, you see, was considered inherently boring.

As I wrote a couple of months ago, economists have never considered Canada boring: It has often been a laboratory for distinctive policies. But now it’s definitely not boring: Canada, which will hold a snap election next month, seems poised to deliver a huge setback to Donald Trump’s foreign ambitions, one that may inspire much of the world — including many people in the United States — to stand up to the MAGA power grab.

So this seems like a good time to look north and see what we can learn. Here are three observations inspired by Canada that seem highly relevant to the United States.

Other countries are real

I don’t know what set Trump off on Canada, what made him think that it would be a good idea to start talking about annexation. Presumably, though, he expected Canadians to act like, say, university presidents, and immediately submit to his threats.

What he actually did was to rally Canadians against MAGA.

More..
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/worthwhile-canadian-observations

***

Not even Spokane’s visiting production of Hamilton escaped Canadian backlash after President Donald Trump started to talk about annexing the country as the “51st state” earlier this year.

The popular show failed to sell out after many Canadian theatergoers, who can account for up to 10% of ticket sales for Spokane’s annual “Best of Broadway” series, declined to cross the border, requesting refunds. In fact, Spokane boosters are bracing for a summer tourist season potentially dampened by fewer Canadian visitors due to U.S. political rhetoric, threats of tariffs and fears of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

More...
https://www.cascadepbs.org/politics/2025/07/citing-trumps-rhetoric-canadians-skip-spokane-theater-shows/

***

Just before Canada Day, a musical near and dear to Canada’s heart got its own shot at experiencing what St. Louis locals call “Muny magic”: a fully staged production set against the breathtaking sunsets of Forest Park.

In a city all but defined by its equivocal history, Come From Away at the Muny captured yet another tension: the fractured relationship between the U.S. and Canada, spurred by U.S. President Donald Trump’s continuing trade war and past remarks about annexing the country.

Artistically speaking, Come From Away’s Muny premiere signals a new era for the musical. The Mirvish production of the show, which ran for seven years with a medley of co-producers, just two months ago played its final performance at Toronto’s Royal Alexandra Theatre. Come From Away’s parallel tour, as well, came to a close this spring.

But as June faded into July – at a time when the relationship between the U.S. and Canada was decidedly fraught – Irene Sankoff and David Hein’s musical about kindness, empathy and finding light in dark times played a weeklong run in the outdoor Missouri amphitheatre, a gathering space so large it could have accommodated every single one of the 7,000 or so passengers who were diverted to Newfoundland on Sept. 11, 2001.

More...
https://archive.ph/GN9aL#selection-2671.0-2711.333

***

Theatre Kingston: Trump's Tariffs go into effect today, so why not come to our truly CANADIAN production? Playwright GEORGE F. WALKER is a CANADIAN TREASURE! So are our CAST Shannon Donnelly, Emily Elliott and Tony Babcock. Directed by Ian Malcolm. So ignore the American Movies and see LIVE CANADIANS! https://www.kingstongrand.ca/events/parents-night  #IAMCANADIAN #YGK #THEATRE #GFWALKER #TARIFFS (and for all you Americans,  who need a break from the white house press releases why not come to CANADA  for a mini-break (Say you are going to a show!) :)

https://www.instagram.com/p/DGx6CApz4sV/

***

If you’re hitting pause on future travel to the United States, you’re not alone. In March, 32 per cent fewer Canadians drove across the American border compared with the same period last year, and the tourism industry shows no signs of recovery as U.S. President Donald Trump continues to wage his unpredictable trade war.

It’s too soon to tell if many of the approximately 3.8 per cent of Broadway tickets sales attributed to Canadians will go unsold this year. Ordinarily, I’d be heading to New York myself right around now, to catch up on recent Broadway hits as well as the rash of Canadian work geared to play the Big Apple this summer.

But like many Canadians, I’m sitting out this year’s southern travel plans.

This April, however, I had the chance to catch a few shows on London’s West End, and I hardly missed my usual springtime jaunt to the Great White Way. If you’re planning a trip to England – and maybe missing out on a planned excursion to the Great White Way – here’s what to see (and skip) in three of the country’s most storied theatres.

More...
https://archive.ph/ol2LX#selection-2409.0-2433.148

***

One thing the U.S. learned early: Trump’s belligerence has driven Canadians to look elsewhere to spend their tourism dollars. By April there were American headlines about Canadians staying away, reports that this year 32% fewer Canadians had driven across the border compared to the same time frame last year, and even Canadian critics offering West End recommendations to readers who have decided to skip Broadway this year and head to London instead.

Just last week NYC Tourism + Conventions reported that foreign tourism to New York City is now expected to plummet by as much as 14% this year, translating to a loss of up to $4 billion in direct spending. In past years, Canadians have been the second-largest demographic of international visitors to the city (after travellers hailing from the U.K.); of the 13 million foreign tourists that came to New York in 2024, ~1 million of them were Canadian. If there is indeed a significant decline this year, it’ll leave a mark at the Broadway box office: In past years nearly 4% of Broadway ticket sales have been attributed to Canadians.

North of the border, international travel is also down, with American traffic significantly lower than last year while domestic tourism is on the rise as Canadians opt to stay in the country rather than go Stateside. It remains to be seen what those shifts will mean to Toronto’s theaters: Mirvish Productions, the city’s major commercial player, estimates that Americans make up just 4-5% of its audience, according to the company’s sales and marketing director, John Karastamatis.

So far, the international tensions seem to have had a muted effect on attendance at Canada’s two biggest theater festivals. The Stratford Festival in Ontario reports that 18-20% of its audiences this year are American, not quite as high as the 25% pre-COVID high, but not too far off either. In a recent piece in Maclean’s, Tim Jennings, the executive director of the Shaw Festival (right over the U.S. border in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario), notes that this year “4% of Shaw’s U.S.-based audience has been reluctant to commit to bookings, even if those who do are staying an average of a day longer.”

The Toronto theatermakers I’ve spoken to this summer tell me that so far, Trump’s talk of tariffs and trade disputes haven’t yet had a significant impact on Canadian production costs—even for the producers who rely on American vendors for some sets, lights, and other assets. But the general atmosphere of economic uncertainty has prompted an overall drop in consumer spending that’s having an identifiable effect on the theater business.

“Canadians are uncertain about the future and worried about the economy,” says Karastamatis, who estimates that such worries have lately prompted a decline in attendance of about 15% at Mirvish shows. “But it’s a really recent thing, and we don’t know how long it will go on.”

More...
https://gordoncox.substack.com/p/toronto-candada-theater-industry-trump-elbows-up

***

The Canadian “elbows up” attitude was showing. Driving through the countryside from Toronto, we noticed it everywhere, in the nicest northerly way. Maple leaf flaglets fluttering from car windows. “True North Strong” yard signs. Banners suggesting, as if in code, “Never 51.”

But once we arrived at the Stratford Festival, situated among the rolling plains of southwestern Ontario, the gloves came off. Though the season was planned well before the 2024 U.S. presidential election, this year’s productions at the country’s (and likely the continent’s) largest nonprofit theater seemed to be sending a message. The message was clearest in the three gripping Shakespeare productions I saw during a six-day, seven-show visit. But “Annie,” no less than Lady Macbeth, had something to say to Canada’s neighbor to the south.

Until experiencing those Shakespeares in quick succession here, I had never deeply absorbed how so many of the canonical plays are set in motion by the same chaotic figure: a man temperamentally unsuited to the wise use of great power. In “Macbeth” he is the quick-rising warrior whose wobbly personality (and overcompensating wife) bring on a blood bath of internecine carnage.

More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/theater/canada-stratford-theater-festival.html

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I love words

  

"Stalwart" originated in Late Middle English as a Scots variant of the obsolete word "stalworth," a combination of the Old English words "stǣl" ("place") and "weorth" ("worth"). Its original but now dated usage applied

 

Adjudicate, which is usually used to mean “to make an official decision about who is right in a dispute,” is one of several terms that give testimony to the influence of jus, the Latin word for “law,” on our legal language. Others include judgment, judicial, prejudice, jury, justice, injury, and perjury. 

Lobbyists

 

The legend in the District is that the term ‘lobbyist’ originated at the Willard Hotel when Ulysses S. Grant was in office (1869-1877). Apparently President Grant would frequent the Willard Hotel to enjoy brandy and a cigar, and while he was there, he’d be hounded by petitioners asking for legislative favors or jobs. It is said that President Grant coined the term by referring to the petitioners as “those damn lobbyists.” The legend has been forwarded by the Washington Post, The Hill, the American Society of News Editors, and, of course, the PR director of the Willard Hotel.

It’s a fun story to tell tourists, and it makes the Willard Hotel even more of a landmark, but the legend is just not true. The verb ‘to lobby’ first appeared in print in the United States in the 1830′s, at least thirty years before Ulysses S. Grant came to Washington. The term is believed to have originated in British Parliament, and referred to the lobbies outside the chambers where wheeling and dealing took place. “Lobbyist” was in common usage in Britain in the 1840′s.

 Jesse Sheidlower, editor-at-large for the Oxford English Dictionary, believes the term was used as early as 1640 in England to describe the lobbies that were open to constituents to interact with their representatives.

Holden and the Central Park Carousel

 

 Holden and the Central Park Carousel

When JD Salinger (Who grew up in the 1930s across the street from Central Park) wrote about the parks Carousel in his 1951 novel Catcher in the Rye, the ride was relatively new to the park.

That is to say, it was the latest installation of the ride. Four other carousels versions had stood exact on the site since 1871, although the 1951 version was the only one built within a covered structure.

Actually, Salinger was probably referring to the carousel, one of the largest in the US, of his childhood since he had started writing the novel in the late 1930s. That version of the ride burned down in 1950 as did the prior version in 1924.

Today’s version of the ride was made by Solomon Stein and Harry Goldstein in 1908. It was originally installed in the trolley terminal on Coney Island in Brooklyn, where it operated until the 1940s.

Over 250,000 people ride the carousel every year.

 

Excerpted from Catcher in the Rye

 After we left the bears, we left the zoo and crossed over this little street in the park, and then we went through one of those little tunnels that always smell from somebody's taking a leak. It was on the way to the carrousel.

Old Phoebe still wouldn't talk to me or anything, but she was sort of walking next to me now. I took a hold of the belt at the back of her coat, just for the hell of it, but she wouldn't let me. She said, "Keep your hands to yourself, if you don't mind." She was still sore at me. But not as sore as she was before. Anyway, we kept getting closer and closer to the carrousel and you could start to hear that nutty music it always plays. It was playing "Oh, Marie!" It played that same song about fifty years ago when I was a little kid. That's one nice thing about carrousels, they always play the same songs.

"I thought the carrousel was closed in the wintertime," old Phoebe said. It was the first time she practically said anything. She probably forgot she was supposed to be sore at me.

"Maybe because it's around Christmas," I said.

She didn't say anything when I said that. She probably remembered she was supposed to be sore at me.

"Do you want to go for a ride on it?" I said. I knew she probably did. When she was a tiny little kid, and Allie and D.B. and I used to go to the park with her, she was mad about the carrousel. You couldn't get her off the goddam thing.

"I'm too big." she said. I thought she wasn't going to answer me, but she did.

"No, you're not. Go on. I'll wait for ya. Go on," I said. We were right there then. There were a few kids riding on it, mostly very little kids, and a few parents were waiting around outside, sitting on the benches and all. What I did was, I went up to the window where they sell the tickets and bought old Phoebe a ticket. Then I gave it to her. She was standing right next to me. "Here," I said. "Wait a second--take the rest of your dough, too." I started giving her the rest of the dough she'd lent me.

"You keep it. Keep it for me," she said. Then she said right afterward--"Please."

That's depressing, when somebody says "please" to you. I mean if it's Phoebe or somebody. That depressed the hell out of me. But I put the dough back in my pocket.

"Aren't you gonna ride, too?" she asked me. She was looking at me sort of funny. You could tell she wasn't too sore at me anymore.

"Maybe I will the next time. I'll watch ya," I said. "Got your ticket?"

"Yes."

"Go ahead, then--I'll be on this bench right over here. I'll watch ya." I went over and sat down on this bench, and she went and got on the carrousel. She walked all around it. I mean she walked once all the way around it. Then she sat down on this big, brown, beat-up-looking old horse.

Then the carrousel started, and I watched her go around and around. There were only about five or six other kids on the ride, and the song the carrousel was playing was "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." It was playing it very jazzy and funny. All the kids kept trying to grab for the gold ring, and so was old Phoebe, and I was sort of afraid she'd fall off the goddam horse, but I didn't say anything or do anything. The thing with kids is, if they want to grab the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off they fall off, but it's bad if you say anything to them.

When the ride was over she got off her horse and came over to me. "You ride once, too, this time," she said.

"No, I'll just watch ya. I think I'll just watch," I said. I gave her some more of her dough. "Here. Get some more tickets."