Hello, Welcome!

I’ve been wanting, for awhile, to create a forum for an ongoing discussion of the theater, its merits and possibilities, its current state in my country (USA) and the world, its nuances, attractions and failings. I don't get to talk about the theater much where I live and when I do its usually an attempt to explain, without offending anyone, why I don't value very highly the work of Andrew Lloyd Webber or Stephen Sondheim. I almost never get to delve into questions asking after the heart of the theater, its usefulness or purpose, what it may be a vehicle for, or what constitutes success in it.

So, the basic purpose of this forum is to seek ideas, proposals, arguments and answers to questions about theater we rarely get to ask.

Everyone is welcome here – practitioners, students, fans, academics, etc.

I would like all of our contributions to be contextualized to some extent in a sense of the speaker. To that end, I ask that your first post be answers to a brief questionnaire. There are a thousand schools of performance and each has its own language. It should help us to know something about each of our speakers, although I hope that the questionnaire leaves a great deal of room for creative interpretation; I don't mind having to work to contextualize your posts. After the initial post, the conversation is open. 

I will turn off comments and ask you to do the same because I prefer to have all posts equalized and in-line. If you have a comment on someone else's post, make a new post with it. If you feel the need, title your post "Comment: TITLE OF POST YOUR COMMENTING ON." This may create an oddly flowing blog, but I find this idea attractive. What river runs straight, after all?

Welcome, friends and strangers! I hope this is the beginning of a very long discussion.