Author: ATCA

ATCA selects Chicago for 2012 conference

ASHLAND, OR—The American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) has selected Chicago as the site of its 39th annual conference, June 13-17, 2012. The ATCA annual conference will be co-hosted by the League of Chicago Theatres and the City of Chicago Office of Tourism and Culture. Rocco Landesman, Chair...

Round the clock in Ashland

Although it’s pretty mellow in beautiful Ashland, the home to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, this small mountain town has been the site for an energized ATCA conference.With the OSF’s provocatively contemporary productions of not only Shakespeare, but also Moliere and Gilbert & Sullivan, ATCA members are...

Playwright Caridad Svich wins ATCA’s 2011 Francesca Primus Prize

ASHLAND, OREGON, July 8, 2011 – At its annual conference, the American Theatre Critics Association today announced that playwright Caridad Svich has been awarded the $10,000 Francesca Primus Prize for The House of the Spirits. Svich will receive her check immediately and be celebrated at an upcoming ATCA conference. Jointly...

The Bowmer Beam, or, Bowmer in the Park

  Just experienced the remarkable first-ever opening of the Bowmer in the Park tent production of “August: Osage County” — yes, in a tent in Lithia Park adjacent to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, OR. Why is Bowmer in the Park? On June 15, a...

Legendary Nashville critic Clara Hieronymus approaching 98th birthday

A simple question about ATCA’s longtime secretary and distinguished Nashville critic Clara Hieronymus has generated an outpouring of affectionate tributes as she approaches her 98th birthday, July 25. It also reinforces the impact of social media and how we can embrace it. During an ATCA excom meeting, Jay Handelman contacted Evans Donnell via...

ATCA in Ashland

The 2011 ATCA ANNUAL CONFERENCE was be at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, July 6-10: there were eight plays to see (4 Shakespeare, 4 not), lively ATCA panels, companionship, a lovely small town full of good restaurants, and the top-notch Ashland Springs Hotel, just a few...

On the way to Ashland

Somewhere on the way westward from Pittsburgh on the multi-leg flight necessary to keep the price down, I saw a placard declaring this National Ice Cream Month. Actually, it’s always National Ice Cream Month for me. But on first encounter with Ashland, it seemed providential:...

Caldwell Titcomb, original ATCA member, erudite and courtly, dies age 84

Caldwell Titcomb, a familiar presence at many ATCA meetings for decades who had a long career at Brandeis and elsewhere in the Boston area as a critic, composer and professor of criticism and music, died June 13 of complications from leukemia and pneumonia. He was 84. One of...

Critic’s Notebook: My apprenticeship in the regional theater

”Regional theater wasn’t a big turn-on for me when I was a theater student in the late 1980s, early 1990s. Off-Broadway was cool; off-off-Broadway was cooler. Those subscription-based behemoths scattered around the country like giant shopping malls sounded dorky to me… . ” Charles McNulty, theater...

Jim O’Quinn to deliver Perspectives in Criticism talk at ATCA’s Ashland conference

Jim O’Quinn is the founding editor of American Theatre, now in its 26th year as the lively house organ of the American regional and not-for-profit theater universe. His articles and reviews have appeared elsewhere, he was a regular theatre reviewer for the now-defunct Manhattan weekly 7 Days, and he...