Perpetually Curious

I totally forgot to mention I wrote an article back in December, '15 for the Triangle's Indyweek newspaper . It was supposed to be a response to their choices of Indy Arts Awards winners , none of whom were theater-related. At first, I was mad about that, because I get irate every time theater is left out of a discussion. But the more I sat with the madness, the more I realized, dammit, they were right.  So, here, then, is my response . I received the usual portions of praise and criticism.

, And I'm in the throes of an "do I or don't I" quandary. Decisions are easier to follow when they're somebody else's responsibility to make. Perfection paralysis. Second guessing all the possible outcomes. Each answer has a catalog of additional questions that go along with it. If you're lucky, if you've cultivated the right relationships with people you trust with your decision, you can ask for advice. But if you're the one-in-charge, it's still your decision. You can take input, you can build trees, you can create iterations, but the decision is still yours to make. "How to be" productive or successful articles talk all the time about removing low-level decisions--what to wear, what to eat for breakfast--so that you open your decision-making bandwidth to the high-level, change-the-world decisions. Be commercial and take investors or stay nonprofit and cultivate donors. Give your product away versus charging all the mark...

Every shaded county had both a community college and a Visiting Artist. So, on the one hand, I am totally in awe of the Visiting Artist Program, which ran from 1971 to 1995 here in North Carolina. The program was a collaboration between the fledgling NC Arts Council and the Community College System, then under the Department of Public Instruction. With a lot of moxie and limited resources, these groups were able to place over 330 world-class artists from all disciplines into each of the 58 community colleges across the state at the time. Since the goal of the community college system was to make an "affordable, excellent post-secondary education available within commuting distance of every North Carolinian," the Visiting Artist Program--with its inherent stipulations of community service and continued artistic growth--meant that "each citizen in the state was also within commuting distance of a professional artist (and vice versa) and free, open-door arts progra...

We moved over the course of May & June to coastal NC. I'm also working on a new website and trying to find a paying gig. All of that to say, pardon the blog-radio silence at the moment. You can always find me on the social networks (all under my real name) for the latest doings/beings/thoughts/goings-on in the Theater & Relationship worlds. I've finished literal unpacking, but I'm still working on the metaphorical unpacking. There's more baggage there.

#the100dayproject 20/ 100

From Flickr: Coconino National Forest. Nobody  necessarily wants a fire, but they're actually important to the forest's health.  When studying animal or botanical health, researchers generally talk about the health of the "ecosystem". Dictionary .com offers two definitions:  1. a system, or a group of interconnected elements, formed by the interaction of a community of organisms with their environment; 2. any system or network of interconnecting parts, as in a business. "Ecosystem" is a relatively recent word, only dating to the 1930s. Before that, everything was just a "system": "an assemblage or combination of things or parts forming a complex or unitary whole." Seeing an ecosystem-- interconnected elements/parts/organisms-- is challenging. In recent arts attendance research, barriers to attendance are discussed, but there is little evidence that any changes are being made by organizations with this new knowledge. The few ...

I got the unexpected chance to catch up with my college chums Jared Axelrod and JR Blackwell when they were back in NC for a weekend visit in Greensboro.  Jared holds his comic book  "The Adventures of Comrade Cockroach" Jared and JR, in addition to being some of the coolest people ever and a very dynamic couple, are both professional artists. By professional, I mean they are earning a living from their art.* They were in Greensboro to talk about building artistic careers after graduating from college. They had 4 main points, all of which I heartily agree with. They work for any artist regardless of discipline (JR is a photographer, Jared is a writer and comic book artist). 1. Don't be afraid of 30. There is only way to gain experience in life: living it. Every year or decade brings with it innumerable opportunities to learn. Building a body of work takes time. JR quoted a colleague who said, "It takes 10 years of working and putting your art out ...