Hanging out with “Uncle Tony” at OKTC’s production of Lucky Stiff!

• Ten Things Theaters Need to Do Right Now to Save Themselves (In No Particular Order), including producing MORE plays (but not Shakespeare) and including alcohol and childcare.  Thoughts?
• Twin Cities actors bail out for better gigs: Imagine that you’re cast in a show, then you’re offered a role in another, better show — do you stick with the one you’re already committed to, or take the new role?
• Things I Wish I Had Been Told In Theater School.  “You’d be surprised how few people are willing to pay for theatre tickets when they aren’t your friends and family and have no personal connection to you whatsoever.”  TRUE.
• The Reason Nobody Will See Your Fringe Show.  This has tons of great tips for publicizing, promoting and marketing your Fringe show!  I love it!
• Just Say NO! and its followup, Saying “YES!” — when and why you shouldn’t give away your work/art/talent for free, and ideas about when you could.  This is a touchy subject for me, and I totally agree with the first article.
• And another article on the broader economic implications of donating your art.

Artists, please stop giving your work away. In the long run you hurt yourself and your whole community.

And arts organizations, lets rethink the current paradigm. Instead of cannibalizing your livelihood at these artist centric auctions, change what you offer. Instead of letting these organizations sell your artwork donations you could:

• offer a loan of the work,
• offer a class,
• a museum tour
• a studio visit
• a dinner with a couple artist in a private gallery showing offer up a visit to your private collection
• allow a patron to leaf through your flat files or look through your sketchbooks.
• if the sponsoring organization will reimburse your expenses, at the most, offer a printed edition of your work, something that more closely aligns with the value of the actual work and what people are paying for it.

Patrons: if you want to participate in a rich arts cultural life in Seattle [Kerry’s note: or any other city!], support the artists.

• 6 Things to Keep In Mind When Creating Actor’s Headshots, written and photographed by the uber-talented Jessica Lutz, and featuring beautiful photos of my friends Heather May, Kelsea Meredith and Chris Albert.
• 30 Things to Stop Doing to Yourself.  SO GOOD.
• 28 Reasons Fred and George Weasley Are The Best Characters in the Harry Potter Series
• 10 Ridiculous Things That Happen at Small Town High Schools.  Every single one is true, especially Grade 8 Graduation, parties in “the woods,” and line dancing in Phys.Ed classes.  And really, at a population of 30,000+ and the hometown of Justin Bieber, Stratford really isn’t that small.
• Possible spoiler alert!  Beautiful Death features fan art from Game of Thrones, and the art is unbelievable.
• Daft Punk + Strong Bad = AWESOMESAUCE.
• I’ve recently become obsessed with Pentatonix (especially the bass singer, Avi) — check out this awesomeness: