superstruct!

i'm on the advisory board of jane mcgonigal's new game, superstruct. check out this preview article from discover magazine. and then come play.

brava.

please read jill dolan's assessment of this particular elephant in the room:

>>I continue to believe that university theatre programs should push at the envelope of cultural expectations about the arts. If we defy conventional beauty and body image standards; if we routinely commit to color-blind or cross-race cast our productions; if we teach students to critique representations of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, ability, and other identity markers in our own and mainstream productions, along with their aesthetic and ideological values; and if we teach students to reach outside conventional theatre to form their own companies and to create their own plays and performances, then we’ve truly added something to the national dialogue not just about the arts, but about citizenship and democracy. Supporting the status quo is untenable.<<

if i aspire to nothing else, it's making a little bit of difference for a small number of students in exactly this way.

the performance series to which no one is invited.

i love that he sends a postcard every month telling the mayor not to come.

it's a big box, inside which a performance occurs, outside of which nothing is known of the performance. it's not really the performance that gets me, but the advertising--the posters this guy prints up and distributes telling people not to show up:

>>Every month he finds a performer and spends about $500 of his own money on the theater rental and for posters and advertising disinviting everyone (the project is recalibrating his relationship with his own money). Artists are loving the privacy and formality of STRIKETHROUGH—the chance to create, rehearse, and produce without the restraint of an audience.

"I really, really needed this," said Marya Sea Kaminski, an actor who was transitioning from performing in a group to producing a one-woman show when she wrote June's STRIKETHROUGH. "I totally rehearsed. I made costumes and a soundtrack. Confronting the fact that it was just for me and just for a theater space actually challenged me not to half-ass it.<<

i actualy performed in this space a few times (the theatre, not the box). it's a nice spot for something like this: in a bar, sort of plush-velvet old school but the opposite of self-important. i'd wander by with a beer in my hand. you bet i would.

mccain/palin: leaving room for the holy ghost.

political snark aside, i was interested in the times' take on ticket intimacy. apparently chaste hugs are the new handshake when it comes to "mixed-sex major-party presidential ticket[s]." the article leads off with a handy guide to discerning your candidate's number two from his wife when there are two women on stage:

"For now, the rule is simple: Hug your running mate, kiss your wife."

thank god someone clued me in.