Episode 615. American Revolutions Onstage
Julie Felise Dubiner is associate director of Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s American Revolutions: The United States History Cycle, a multi-decade program of commissioning and developing 37 new plays sprung from moments of change in United States history. On my recent trip to Ashland, I was able to meet and chat with Julie about OSF’s program and the wonderful plays that have already come out of it, a couple of which — Lynn Nottage’s Sweat and Paula Vogel’s Indecent — appear on this season’s list of Most Produced Plays in the US compiled by American Theatre magazine. Featuring the question of what it means to be American, dramatizing moments of change and the problem with tying those moments to US presidents, watching the first run-thru of this generation’s Death of a Salesman, overcoming one’s shameful past in improvisation, fueling comedy with rage, how a sense of humor might save us, and the importance of writing the history of your people on to the stage. (Length 22:49)
Podcast: Download (Duration: 22:49 — 26.5MB)