Hello Fellow Bloggers!

If you want to have a successful blog, it is important to be active yourself in the blogging world.  Just as important as it is for you to keep your readers interested, your peers what to know that you find their works appealing as well.  Here are a couple of blogs that I came across and some of my responses to posts that each blogger wrote.  Engaging in conversations with fellow bloggers can be fun and you open a new forum to expand your knowledge! 

1. The Playgoer

This idea of theater groups merging with one another is both appealing as well as a bit concerning.  These groups clearly have the ability to stand on their own, as they have done so for a number of years, so the fact that they are now pulling their resources together to create one sort of mega-theater is incredible.  There will be a greater pool of experienced actors to pull from, thus creating even more memorable performances.

I wonder, however, if this is of some concern to you as well?  I have recently been made aware of a term known as: anti-theatrical bias.  If you are not familiar with this term, it suggests that there is a prejudice or some sort of dislike/distrust of the genre of theater and performance.  I wonder if this movement has any affect on these theaters desire to merge together.  Do you think that the public is slowly losing interest in the genre and these theaters have to merge because they are not sustaining a large enough fan base to stand on their own?

I certainly hope that the merger is merely to tactic to expand the empire, as opposed to a reaction based on the negative reactions of an anit-theater society!

2. Blogway Baby  

I am not a playwright, but I am very interested in the genre of theater and am currently in a course that is allowing me to expand my knowledge on the genre.  Currently, we are discussing the impact of the modernist movement on the theater, specifically how the theater transformed to a more realistic vision, where the playwright’s focus was to reveal a truth about society to his audience.

In developing the story of Ginger Rogers, did you find yourself focusing on this realist tactic?  I guess most specifically, did you find yourself wanting to embellish Roger’s story to make it more appealing to an audience, or was your focus solely on offering the truths?

I have also recently been exposed to the genre of the musical and have fallen in love.  I am an English major and therefore my focus in my study has been on hard texts, but in studying the musical it has been fun using music and dance as the core texts to reveal similar stories.  I wonder if your process of creating a musical based around someone’s life was more or less difficult than simply writing a biography on the person.  How do you choose the right music to characterize a person correctly? I feel I have a long way to go before I begin writing my own musicals, but I applaud your innovation!