Author Archives: Sharyn

What Does Conservative Theatre Look Like?

Posted on November 7, 2017 by Sharyn

I am teaching an upper level elective, American Drama, this semester. My students are about to embark on their final projects, which are “play recovery” projects. The students had to find a lesser-known play they thought could be placed into … Continue reading →

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The Theft of Marsha P. Johnson

Posted on October 16, 2017 by Sharyn

Over the past few weeks, it has come to light that a new documentary about the legendary transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson was made in a highly unethical fashion. The still-developing story about The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson is a sad … Continue reading →

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Angels in America at the Actors Theatre

Posted on September 25, 2017 by Sharyn

This past weekend, I was fortunate enough to see Part 2, “Perestroika,” of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America at the Actors Theatre of Louisville. As I have mentioned several times in this blog, I teach Angels regularly as part of my 20th century … Continue reading →

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Pageants Used to be Theatrical

Posted on September 4, 2017 by Sharyn

Welcome Back! If you were able to take Labor Day off, I hope you relaxed and had a great day. If you weren’t able to take the day off, I hope you got paid extra for working on this day … Continue reading →

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Prison & Performance

Posted on August 28, 2017 by Sharyn

Welcome to the start of the brand new 2017-18 academic year! I am feeling sightly off-kilter still, since the ECLIPSE took up quite a bit of the first day of our semester, but I was happy our students got a … Continue reading →

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Learning is More Important Than Teaching

Posted on August 15, 2017 by Sharyn

Last week, I got to attend a teaching and learning conference and surprisingly, the keynote was wonderful. I say this because I have honestly been to so many conferences over the years for which the keynote was decidedly a snooze. … Continue reading →

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Teaching A Streetcar Named Desire

Posted on August 13, 2017 by Sharyn

I’m happy to share this post I wrote for the Theater Historiography website about multimodal approaches to teaching Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. I like to use the play text combined wth film, animation, and visual art sources in the classroom. … Continue reading →

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Alt, Schmalt

Posted on July 24, 2017 by Sharyn

You may have heard about the new show concept announced from the creative team behind the HBO hit Game of Thrones. The new show, to be produced for HBO, is called Confederate and is set in a “grisly dystopian future” in which the … Continue reading →

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Are You Ready for Some Rhetorical Analysis??

Posted on July 17, 2017 by Sharyn

American football is inescapable. And though it is the off season, I’ve been thinking about football and rhetoric quite a bit. This was brought on by watching the second season of Amazon Studios’ documentary-series, All or Nothing, which follows an NFL … Continue reading →

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Checking Out THE STREET

Posted on July 10, 2017 by Sharyn

I’ve been teaching Richard Wright’s Native Son for years in my American Literature since 1914 course. (See related posts under the tag for “Native Son”) But because the book has so many problematic components–rape, murder, violence against women, a really lagging … Continue reading →

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