I started writing this article as a retrospective of Baltimore theatre in 2011. But I couldn’t help thinking a little bit about what Baltimore is looking at in 2012. In Baltimore, thanks to the Orioles, (and in DC, thanks to the Nationals), we’re sick of hearing that next year Could Be the Year. But things are changing fast. It’s the year of the Apocalypse, true enough. But even so, before doomsday arrives (early Spring) Baltimore is going to be making a serious play to become a nexus for theatre in the DC region.   [Read more...]

Nathan Cooper, the artistic director and actor for Baltimore’s Single Carrot Theatre, recently returned from the Festival for Independent Performing Arts in Sofia, where he spent four days with Lola Pierson (playwright and founding member of Baltimore’s UnSaddest Factory Theatre Company) on a grant from the Trust for Mutual Understanding. [Read more...]

The City of Baltimore has recently found itself under the harsh gaze of the Russia Today: in a 500 word piece, shaped by an hour or so of immersion in Baltimore’s one-block red zone, and many hours evidently spent watching “The Wire,” a Russian reporter dutifully described Baltimore as a war zone of economic imbalance. A few days later, Russia Today parroted a Baltimore Sun piece describing Baltimore’s homeless problem. [Read more...]

“We do Bar Mitzvahs.”

In the benefit production Portrait of Poe, that’s about as close to optimism as Edgar Allan Poe, gets on October 8, 2011, at Area 405. And the show hasn’t even begun. Having revealed his freelancer roots – anything for money! – Poe (in the body of Baltimore actor and writer Mark S. Sanders) disappears backstage. [Read more...]