THOUGHTS ON THEATRE, CULTURE & LIFE

Thinking Cap Theatre's Artistic Director Nicole Stodard talks with Stephen Burdman,  founder of New York Classical Theatre about producing and directoring Shakespeare's problematic play The Taming of the Shrew.

STEPHENS'S BIO

Stephen Burdman founded New York Classical Theatre in 2000 and is the vision behind the creation of Panoramic Theatre. Originally from Los Angeles, he earned a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and planned to become a doctor. During college, Stephen auditioned for a production of Hamlet, and discovered his passion for Shakespeare. That experience completely changed the course of his life. Stephen founded NY Classical to give all people the chance to discover classical masterpieces as he did.

Stephen has directed nearly half of Shakespeare canon. To date, he has directed 38 productions for NY Classical. Some of his favorites include: Cymbeline (performed by 7 actors), The Importance of Being Earnest (Two-Ways), Romeo & Juliet (6 actors), The Rivals, The Winter’s Tale, Measure for Measure, The Seagull, A {15-Min!} Christmas Carol, Playing Moliere, Henry V (in The Battery and, via ferry boat, Governors Island), Hamlet, King Lear, Misalliance, Mary Stuart, Scapin, and The Triumph of Love.

Stephen attended the National Theatre Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center and later received an MFA in Theatre Directing from the University of California, Irvine. In 1989, he was selected to participate in the first young theatre artist exchange with the (former) Soviet Union and has been a member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society since 1994.

Stephen received the 2022 Sidney Berger award from the Shakespeare Theatre Association for outstanding talent and commitment to the works of William Shakespeare. He has also been a panelist with the National Endowment for the Arts, the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, The Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York, and the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation.

He lives in Central Harlem with his wife, Adena, and son, Zeke.

Thinking Cap Theatre's Artistic Director Nicole Stodard talks with Carla Della Gatta PhD,  theatre historian and performance theorist on Shakespeare's problematic play The Taming of the Shrew.

CARLA'S BIO

Carla Della Gatta is a theatre historian and performance theorist whose research focuses on adaptation, ethnicity, and aurality. She is Associate Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at University of Maryland. Della Gatta is author of Latinx Shakespeares: Staging US Intracultural Theater (2023) and co-editor of Shakespeare and Latinidad (2021). In 2023, she launched the first archive of Latinx theatrical adaptation, LatinxShakespeares.Org. She has received grants and fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation (now Citizens and Scholars), Folger Shakespeare Library, the New York Public Library, and The Wallace Foundation (Project Lead and co-PI). She has served as a scholar for the theatre for Shakespeare Center Los Angeles, The Public Theater, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Victory Gardens, and more. She is on the Steering Committee for the Latinx Theatre Commons and a board member for the Arden series, Shakespeare and Social Justice, and the journal, Shakespeare Survey.

Thinking Cap Theatre's Artistic Director Nicole Stodard Ph.D talks with Matthew Sturgis, author of biography Oscar Wilde: A Life.

MATTHEW STURGIS BIO

Matthew Sturgis is an historian and biographer, the author of Acclaimed Lives of Aubrey Beardsley and Walter Sickert, as well as Passionate Attitudes, a history of the English Decadence of the 1890s. He has also written a study of Biblical archaeology – It Ain't Necessarily So – and a history of Hampton Court Palace to tie in with a Channel 4 series.

He has contributed to the TLS, Daily Telegraph and Independent on Sunday. He is a member of the Oscar Wilde Society and contributes reviews to their journal The Wildean.

His major biography of OSCAR WILDE was published by Head of Zeus in 2018.

ABOUT THE BOOK

The fullest, most textural, most accurate—most human—account of Oscar Wilde's unique and dazzling life—based on extensive new research and newly discovered materials, from Wilde's personal letters and transcripts of his first trial to newly uncovered papers of his early romantic (and dangerous) escapades and the two-year prison term that shattered his soul and his life.

"Simply the best modern biography of Wilde." —Evening Standard

Drawing on material that has come to light in the past thirty years, including newly discovered letters, documents, first draft notebooks, and the full transcript of the libel trial, Matthew Sturgis meticulously portrays the key events and influences that shaped Oscar Wilde's life, returning the man "to his times, and to the facts," giving us Wilde's own experience as he experienced it.

Here, fully and richly portrayed, is Wilde's Irish childhood; a dreamy, aloof boy; a stellar classicist at boarding school; a born entertainer with a talent for comedy and a need for an audience; his years at Oxford, a brilliant undergraduate punctuated by his reckless disregard for authority . . . his arrival in London, in 1878, "already noticeable everywhere" . . . his ten-year marriage to Constance Lloyd, the father of two boys; Constance unwittingly welcoming young men into the household who became Oscar's lovers, and dying in exile at the age of thirty-nine . . . Wilde's development as a playwright. . . becoming the high priest of the aesthetic movement; his successes . . . his celebrity. . . and in later years, his irresistible pull toward another—double—life, in flagrant defiance and disregard of England's strict sodomy laws ("the blackmailer's charter"); the tragic story of his fall that sent him to prison for two years at hard labor, destroying his life and shattering his soul.

Thinking Cap Theatre's Artistic Director Nicole Stodard Ph.D talks with Neil Mckenna, author of The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde.  

NEIL MCKENNA BIO

Neil Mckenna is a journalist, author and activist. He was born in Manchester but now lives in Norfolk wit his husband, Robert and their cat, Lupin.

ABOUT THE BOOK

In The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde, Neil McKenna provides stunning new insight into the tumultuous sexual and psychological worlds of this brilliant and tormented figure. McKenna charts Wilde's astonishing odyssey through London's sexual underworld, and provides explosive new evidence of the political machinations behind Wilde's trials for sodomy. Dazzlingly written and meticulously researched, The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde offers a vividly original portrait of a troubled genius who chose to martyr himself for the cause of love between men.

Thinking Cap Theatre's Artistic Director Nicole Stodard PhD talks with Vanessa Garcia a Miami-based multidisciplinary writer and creator working as a screenwriter, novelist, playwright, and journalist.

VANESSA GARCIA'S BIO

Vanessa Garcia is a multidisciplinary writer and creator working as a screenwriter, novelist, playwright, and journalist. She has written for Sesame Street, Caillou, and is a consultant on Dora the Explorer.

Her debut novel, White Light, was published in 2015, to critical acclaim. Named one of the Best Books of 2015 by NPR, it also won an International Latino Book Award.

Her plays have been produced in Edinburgh, Miami, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, New York, and other cities around the world. These include the immersive hit, Amparo(“Miami’s Hottest Ticket,” according to People en Español); The Cuban Spring (a full-length Carbonell Award nominee for Best New Play, 2015), The Crocodile’s Bite (a short included in numerous anthologies such as Smith & Kraus’ Best Ten Minute Plays of 2016; the City Theatre Anthology 2015; and the Writer’s Digest Annual Award Anthology, 2015), and Freek!,a short play for Young Adults (anthologized in The Applause Acting Series’ 5 Minute Plays For Teens).

As a journalist, feature writer, and essayist, her pieces have appeared in The LA Times, The Miami Herald, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Narrative.ly, American Theatre Magazine, The Huffington Post, ESPN, and numerous other publications.

She holds a PhD from the University of California Irvine in English (with a focus in Creative Nonfiction), an MFA from the University of Miami (in fiction), and a BA from Barnard College, Columbia University (English and Art History).

Her newly commissioned and autobiographical radio play, Ich Bin Ein Berliner about the fall of the Berlin Wall and her relationship to Cuba premiers in April of 2021

Thinking Cap Theatre's Artistic Director Nicole Stodard PhD talks with Migdalia Cruz master playwright and mentee of Maria Irene Fornes.

MIGDALIA CRUZ's BIO

MIGDALIA CRUZ is a Bronx-born, award-winning, multi-platform, playwright, lyricist, translator, and librettist of more than 60 works for stage, radio, film, TV, and podcast, performed in 150 venues in 40 cities in 12 countries.

An alumna of New Dramatists, her awards include: NEA, McKnight, NYSCA, TCG/Pew, and she was named the 2013 Helen Merrill Distinguished Playwright. María Irene Fornés nurtured her at INTAR and Latino Chicago gave her a home as their playwright-in residence. She is a master teacher of playwriting with the Fornés Institute and various universities and colleges. She is co-chair of the DGF Playwriting Fellows 2020-21; mentors the NYC Latinx Playwrights Circle; and was recently commissioned by Clubbed Thumb, The Flea, INTAR, and Kitchen Dog (Dallas).

2011-22 productions: Dinner With Dee @Kitchen Dog (Dallas), June 2022; a PlayOnShakespeare translation of Macbeth (Sunderland, England) @TheatreSpaceNorthEast, Aug 2021, and in 2022@USD/Old Globe (San Diego), and is now a podcast @Next Chapter Podcasts; YORICK’S LAST LAUGH @Shakespeare Dallas, 2021. Her translations of Macbeth & Richard III were published by ACMRS Press. Migdalia was featured in “Fifty Key Figures in LatinX and Latin American Theatre,” published by Routledge, February 2022.

Thinking Cap Theatre's Artistic Director Nicole Stodard Ph.D talks with Brian Herrera, Associate Professor of Theatre at the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, and Anne Garcia-Romero, Associate Professor of Theatre in the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame.

BRIAN HERERRA's BIO
Brian Herrera is, by turns, a writer, teacher and scholar - presently based in New Jersey, but forever rooted in New Mexico. Brian's work, whether academic or artistic, examines the history of gender, sexuality and race within and through U.S. popular performance. He is author of The Latina/o Theatre Commons 2013 National Convening: A Narrative Report (HowlRound, 2015). His book Latin Numbers: Playing Latino in Twentieth-Century U.S. Popular Performance (Michigan, 2015) was awarded the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism and received an Honorable Mention for the John W. Frick Book Award from the American Theatre and Drama Society. With Stephanie Batiste and Robin Bernstein, Brian serves as co-editor of “Performances and American Cultures” series at NYU Press. Also a performer, Brian's autobiographical storywork performances (including I Was the Voice of Democracy and TouchTones) have been presented in venues large and small across the United States, as well as Beirut and Abu Dhabi. Brian is a longstanding contributor to the Fornés Institute, a project committed to preserving and amplifying the legacy of María Irene Fornés. He has also worked closely with ArtEquity, an organization committed to creating and sustaining a culture of equity and inclusion through the arts; with Theatrical Intimacy Education, a group researching, developing, and teaching best practices for staging theatrical intimacy; and with The Sol Project, an initiative dedicated to producing the work of Latinx playwrights in New York City and beyond. He serves on the Director's Council of the DramaLeague and on the boards of Clubbed Thumb and Bard at the Gate. Brian is presently at work on several scholarly book projects: Next! A Brief History of Casting, a historical study of the material practices of casting in US popular performance; Starring Miss Virginia Calhoun, a narrative portrait of a deservedly obscure early 20th century actress/writer/producer; and Fornés in Context, an anthology (co-edited with Anne García Romero and under contract with Cambridge University Press) documenting the life, work and legacy of playwright María Irene Fornés. He also publishes the #TheatreClique Newsletter. 

ANNE GARCIA-ROMERO'S BIO
Anne García-Romero’s plays include: Staging the Daffy Dame, Lorca in New York, Mary Domingo, Provenance, Paloma, Earthquake Chica, Mary Peabody in Cuba, Desert Longing, Juanita's Statue, Girlus Equinus and Santa Concepción.

Her plays have been developed and produced most notably at the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theatre, the Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, The Goodman Theatre, Denver Center Theatre, The Mark Taper Forum, Hartford Stage, Borderlands Theater, National Hispanic Cultural Center, Nevada Repertory Company, Los Angeles Theatre Center, Kitchen Theatre, and South Coast Repertory. She has also written for Peninsula Films, Elysian Films and Disney Creative Entertainment. Her translation of The Gröholm Method by Jordi Galcerán has been produced in Los Angeles and London.

She's been a Jerome Fellow at the Playwrights Center of Minneapolis as well as a MacDowell Colony fellow. She is an alumna of Chicago Dramatists and of New Dramatists in New York City. She is a founding member of the Latinx Theatre Commons, where she contributes to The María Irene Fornés Institute.

Thinking Cap Theatre's Artistic Director Nicole Stodard Ph.D talks with Gwendolyn Alker Associate Arts Professor and Director of Theatre Studies in the Department of Drama, Tisch/NYU about Fornes' legacy, identity politics, feminism, the landmark play Fefu and Her Friends and Alker's latest work on Fornes' Evelyn Brown.

GWENDOLYN ALKER'S BIO
Gwendolyn Alker is an Associate Arts Professor and Director of Theatre Studies in the Department of Drama, Tisch/NYU. She is the former Editor of Theatre Topics and the former managing editor of Women & Performance. As a scholar and dramaturg, she has taught and advocated for the work of María Irene Fornés over the last two decades. Dramaturgical credits include the New York Fornés Festival (2010), which she curated and organized, the award-winning documentary The Rest I Make Up by Michelle Memran (2018), and JoAnne Akalaitis’ Maria Irene Fornes Marathon at The Public Theatre (2018). Publications on Fornés include “Teaching Fornes: Preserving Fornesian Techiques in Critical Context” published in Theatre Topics in 2009, as well as “Fornesian Animality: María Irene Fornés’ Challenge to a Politics of Identity” published in the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism (2020). Most recently, she dramaturged and re-assembled the Fornés lost great work, Evelyn Brown (A Diary) as part of Princeton’s Atelier series during the Fall of 2021. Evelyn Brown will be debuted as part of La Mama’s Spring 2023 season.