Author: ATCA

Playwright Michele Lowe Wins $10,000 Francesca Primus Prize

Michele Lowe The Francesca Ronnie Primus Foundation and the American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) are pleased to announce that playwright Michele Lowe has been awarded the 2010 Francesca Primus Prize for her play Inana. Lowe will receive her award at an upcoming ATCA conference. The Primus Prize is...

ATCA at the O’Neill

Brooks Atkinson said the American theater started with Eugene O’Neill — but the mayor of New London asked what did he ever do for New London except write a couple of books. ATCA spent July 13-18 finding out what at this years’ annual conference. Following are some quick responses to our...

Drama Queen debates membership criteria

Springboarding off the ATCA/O’Neill panel on New Media for Critics in the Brave New World (or whatever we called it), Wendy Rosenfield  picked up the debate about criteria for ATCA membership. Take a look....

Engaging with ATCA

It’s hard to decide just which aspect of the ATCA conference was the highlight.  Certainly being at the O’Neill Theatre Center was a revelation, with the energy and constantly changing vibes of new plays, actors and playwrights. The panels were stimulating and informative. I was especially...

Awards are a natural part of any ATCA conference

Barbara Bannon (left) presents the Primus Prize plaque to playwright Jamie Pachino. At the ATCA/O’Neill conference “All Campus” panel on “The Theater Looks at Critics,” July 17, featuring an actor, director, designer, non-critic journalist, two producers and two playwrights (see below * for list; click here for a...

Rich rewards of the O’Neill

The rewards of this year’s ATCA convention based around the activities at the O’Neill Center are almost too numerous to name. Aside from the trying accommodations at the Radisson Hotel in New London, I and my wife LucyAnn, who teaches in the theater department at...

ATCA membership — elite, or rank and file?

The debate about the criteria for ATCA membersip that flared (by design) at ATCA/O’Neill is now going forward on Wendy Rosenfield’s Drama Queen blog. It’s her July 21 entry — take a look and click on Comments. Leonard Jacobs also comments on his Clyde Fitch Report, although so far mainly (negatively) about...

It ain’t over

The laundry is done; now the notebook gets unpacked. I filled the better part of a good-sized Moleskine over five days at the ATCA conference—notes I intend to turn into a widely read, much-talked-about feature this fall in Dramatics magazine, where I’m fortunate enough to have a full-time...

Musings on O’Neill

Friday morning we visited the Monte Cristo cottage where O’Neill spent his boyhood summers. Since my principal frame of reference is Long Day’s Journey into Night, I was pleasantly surprised by the house. I expected it to be dark and claustrophobic, but the rooms on the first...

A hymn to Goodspeed

Jay Handelman (left), Wendy Rosenfield, Goodspeed’s Dan McMahon and Barbara Gross encounter Domina’s bust from “Forum.” I review mostly dramas.  As some of my ATCA colleagues know, I’ve Jay Handelman (left), Wendy Rosenfield, Goodspeed’s Dan McMahon and Barbara Gross encounter Domina’s bust from “Forum.”never been a...