“Show Me: Acts of Transfer, or that time I met the members of the Suzuki Company of Toga”
By Megan Hanley
This summer, after studying their work and training with SITI Company for the past 7 and a half years, I finally had the chance to meet the Suzuki Company of Toga (SCOT).
“Discover Love”
by Ellenor Riley-Condit
In September of 2009 I was spending time in my hometown of DC waiting to head back to college. My boyfriend at the time had an internship at one of my favorite theaters, giving me even more of a reason to hang around. I had just turned 20 and had a crazy summer traveling and working on plays. I may have been an emotional train wreck, but I had a renewed sense of purpose as a theater person. I felt I understood how to make plays and why. I was hopeful and energized, due in no small part to having close to zero responsibilities, living on my parents’ dime, and spending most of my evenings watching theater. An exhausting life of privilege, to be sure.
“Now What”
by Alanna Coby
“I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence.” – Toni Morrison
On November 9th, 2016 I woke up feeling like I didn’t know how to act in the world any more. I was sucker-punched, gobsmacked, furious, devastated. I didn’t know how to get anything done. But grant application deadlines don’t disappear just because America is having a midlife crisis. So I sat down at my desk to write an artist statement.
“Movement Never Lies”
by Ellenor Riley-Condit
…in which I draw inspiration from an article written in a language I can not read.
My partner and I once joked about how I should introduce myself: “I’m a theater artist,” I said. And we went back and forth saying “theater artist” with different inflections and emphasis, seeing which pronunciation would make us giggle and roll our eyes the most. While I do say it out loud from time to time to just to make myself laugh, I also very seriously puzzle over what it means when I am about to answer one of those dreaded pleasantries brought up in a theater setting: “What do you do?” “What are you working on?” Here are just a few of the answers I have given in the past year:
by Megan Hanley
Just over a month ago, The Syndicate performed CIVILITY! in a beautiful, sweltering theater in the middle of August. The AC and the light board couldn’t function simultaneously, so on opening night, our intrepid stage manager Sarah Stark cut the AC 10 minutes before curtain, while director Emily Spalding hid some bottles of water in the wings. We in the cast looked at each other with more than a little trepidation, took a few deep breaths, and walked together onto a stage that must have been 90 degrees at top of show.
On Sunday night, after waking up to the news that the largest mass shooting in (contemporary) American history happened at a queer bar on Latin Night in Orlando, I watched the Tony Awards from start to finish. Every musical number, intro, acceptance speech, and interstitial comedy bit. I haven’t done that in a long time – not because I don’t love a musical or find things to love about Broadway, but often the kind of theater that most excites me isn’t represented there. But in the face of shock and grief and anger and fear, I did the gayest things I could on Sunday: had a coffee with my ex, ate tofu hot dogs, drank rosé, and watched the Tony Awards.
Continue reading “In the dark times will there also be singing?”
Dreaming Out Loud
By Janouke Goosen
Where do we go from here? No, not the song from the movie Evita. I want to talk about the actual question. A question that Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a book about in 1967. This is an important, but very complex question. Important, because it forces us to think about the future. Complex because when we think about the future, do we think about things that we hope will happen, or about what we fear what might happen? And does thinking about the future influence the future itself?
Saturn Return
Looking back on it, starting a theatre company with a group of people knee deep in their Saturn Return or just heading into it might have been a terrible idea. Attacking the straight forward task of creating a mission statement for instance was quite the struggle when so many of us were already grappling with the question, “Why theatre?”
– by Andrea Tzvetkov
This time we wanted to share an Ugly Comix by Company Member Alanna Coby with you.
Want to see more of Ugly Comix?: Go here: http://uglycomix.tumblr.com
