
Reverend Theobald Mathew - " Apostle of Temperance" 1790-1856 #Salem, originally uploaded by arthennessey.
So, at ten Boston theaters, we have 11 world premieres (out of more than 50 productions), though BPT skews the average a little. Of those 11 world premieres, 6 are by Boston writers (only 4 out of 10 theatres are producing work by local writers). If you take BPT out of the mix, since they exclusively produce new work by BU alums, that leaves us with 4 full-length plays written by Boston writers getting professional productions in town.
Given those numbers, you wouldn't know that we have a wealth of playwrights living in or near Boston, whose work has been widely produced.
To sum up: 24 professional theatres of various size in New England (not counting Boston) are staging 16 world premieres (by 11 theatres). Quite a few musicals. Only six of the writers are from New England. Not exactly great numbers if you're a New England playwright (okay, they're kind of depressing). It'd sure be nice to see an average of at least 1 new play per theatre, and a lot stronger commitment to New England writers. (I'm not sure about where the teams from Goodspeed are from, so there could be a few more New Englanders in the mix.)
If you add the Boston numbers from yesterday's post to the mix, you get 34 theatres staging 27 world premieres, by 12 local writers.
Received this in the mail... even phone service is caught up in partisan politics.
Those who follow this blog know that I spend October telling ghost stories and scaring people up in Salem, MA.
I wear this costume for the introduction to the current show I am in. I perform two to three monologues, manipulate puppets and control other effects - all in the span of twenty minutes.