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This year there were three separate productions of Glengarry Glen Ross in the Bay Area meaning the play was running for four months straight: one production in San Francisco, one in Berkeley, and one in Alameda. I should say there was one ten day stretch where GGR wasn't playing, but there was also one ten day stretch wherein two were happening at the same time, 11 miles apart, so they sort of cancel each other out in my non-scientific mind. I wonder if both of those Ricky Romas were looking up at the same moon.

As part of the Playworks Program here at the International Thespian festival, students have the opportunity to audition and rehearse one of the plays being workshopped. The audition day was very intense. We sat through auditions from 9:00 am straight through to 12:45 and then we have half an hour to cast the roles between five plays. Students were put in groups and performed in scenes from the individual plays with monologues, duets or trios. Over the course of the morning, we say 185 students and that doesn't count the students we saw twice who were called back. By 11 am we were starting to feel the time crunch. Call backs were discouraged, repeat reads had to be culled down, we had to see the groups and move on if we were ever going to make sure every students got their moment.

"Below is American Theatre magazine's Top 10 Most-Produced Play list, as printed in AT's annual Season Preview issue in October, from 1994 to 2014. These numbers are as reported to TCG at press time by its member theatres nationwide."

Reading and watching William Shakespeare's plays shouldn't make you feel stupid. But the 400 years between when they were written and today have put up barriers of culture and language that make it hard to read or watch them clean. People (alive and dead) are always telling you what to think about these plays instead of just letting you engage them yourself.

As a young theatre company, Up In Arms has already traversed the best new writing stages with two plays written by their co-Artistic Director, Barney Norris. When I spoke to him, and his directorial partner Alice Hamilton, I wanted to find out how this small touring company, thrust into the spotlight for rural work about everyday lives, was evolving. Their first two plays - Visitors and Eventide - were firmly set in experiences around Salisbury Plain and therefore the 'home' lives of the company's directors (though both now live elsewhere). How would they tackle their new piece but old work - Robert Holman's German Skerries?

Equally comfortable playing romantic leads and action heroes, he has never been quite a force in theatre. This is partly a matter of choice. He has prioritised screen roles over stage opportunities. The last time he acted on stage was in 2009 in a popular West End production of Richard Greenberg's three-hander Three Days of Rain. In the mean time he has been taking a while to shake off the halo of urgent youth. He has tended to play callow characters more sinned against than sinning - the closest he's come to anything like villainy is as Idi Amin's morally compromised medic.

The culminating activity for collaboration in the drama classroom is to have your students work on a devising project. It will definitely show you how well your students work together! More on devising in the next blog post, but here's an exercise to get your students in the right frame of mind.

While I certainly believe in authorial intent and that a playwright's wishes should be followed, shutting down the discussion their work sparks, seems both petulant and elitist. While it's not a violation of First Amendment Rights, since Mr. Mamet is a private citizen, it doesn't do him any favors in an industry built on sharing ideas and discussion.

He told The Stage: "Probably the most interesting thing is the bird caller. Plays like Romeo and Juliet have several references to birdsong so it could well have been used as a theatrical prop to create special effects."

Use this free tool to play nature sounds on headphones while reading or meditating or just for fun.

An Edmonton theatre company has cancelled its production of Othello after controversy erupted over the casting of a white woman as the lead, traditionally a role filled by a person of colour.

Staged Play Filmed by Jasmine Castillo

I have conversations with studio heads and at some point when I'm passionately advocating using film they'll say 'at the end of the day doesn't storytelling trump everything?' I say 'no it doesn't, otherwise we'd be making radio plays, it would be a lot cheaper.'

"This sketch was performed on stage for an AIDS benefit concert directed by Stephen Fry on September 18, 1989. Rowan Atkinson's character is unnamed, but from the look of him, it seems he's a member of the Blackadder family. The other character, whom you will know, was played by Hugh Laurie."

This is a free service for playwrights and play readers.

"Soundplant turns your computer keyboard into a versatile, low latency sound trigger and playable instrument. Via drag-and-drop, easily assign sound files of any format and length onto 72 keyboard keys, creating custom soundboards that put hours of instantly-playing audio at your fingertips with no extra hardware needed."