“I can’t believe I get to go to work with this amazing group of people. They’re like family and they push Art-Reach further every day.” - John Orr, Executive Director, Art-Reach

ABOUT ART-REACH

Founded in 1986, Art-Reach was born out of an equal desire to fill theater and performance spaces to capacity and increase participation in the arts for people with disabilities. Art-Reach set out to make unfulfilled tickets available to people who never had the opportunity to see a play, dance performance or go to a museum. A wide gap existed between the disability community and the cultural engagement sector. Art-Reach was founded to bridge this gap.

Eppchez!, who plays Max in Simpatico Theatre Company's production of Taylor Mac's Hir, is a nonbinary transgender Latinx performer who brings a wealth of talents to Philadelphia.

An Amherst, Massachusetts, native, Eppchez! (who uses the pronouns ey and eir) has worked with Pig Iron Theatre Company, the Mediums, and other groups with a focus on devising new work. Ey studied theater and writing at Wesleyan University. A playwright, choreographer, director, designer, puppeteer, songwriter, and vocalist, ey is also artistic director/conductor of Alma’s Engine, a process-focused creative ministry and self-producing platform for realizing eir work in music and theater. Among eir works is the album Self-Realized-Nation; A Song Cycle of the Occupation (2013), the original plays Junk Redemption (2012) and They Extract! (2014 and 2016), and a site-specific musical staged in Bartram’s Garden, Train-ing: A Duet (2017).

To read Wendy Rosenfield's review of Hir, click here.

On May 15, 2017, Broad Street Review, in cooperation with the University of the Arts' Corzo Center for the Creative Economy and with support from the Philadelphia Cultural Fund, hosted a panel discussion titled Arts Funding: Who Should Pay? Initially, the discussion was supposed to examine funding in light of impending cuts to the federal arts budget; surprisingly, those cuts didn't happen. Even more surprising, our panelists mostly looked at the NEA as a nice bonus, but nothing to hang their shingles on.

Different disciplines, similar issues

Listen in as moderator and Broad Street Review editor-in-chief Wendy Rosenfield, Art Sanctuary executive director Valerie Gay, PHIT Comedy founder Greg Maughan, Art-Reach executive director John Orr, Headlong Dance Theater co-founder and co-director Amy Smith, and WRTI host, composer, and frequent BSR contributor Kile Smith discuss the challenges and opportunities that come with running an arts-focused business and watching its bottom line.

If you enjoy what you hear and read here at BSR, why not help us meet our arts funding challenges and make a donation or become a Friends of BSR member? Donate here.

On this podcast, on a beautiful night in Old City, I caught up with playwright, director, teacher, and actor James Ijames, whose latest play, WHITE, is enjoying a critically acclaimed world-premiere production at Norristown's Theatre Horizon. Meanwhile, this Barrymore and F. Otto Haas Emerging Artist Award winner's The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington opened at the Ally Theatre in Washington, D.C., on April 30, 2017; another, Kill Move Paradise,opens at New York's National Black Theatre on May 31, 2017. Ijames also recently won the $50,000 Whiting Award for "emerging writers who exhibit great promise."

"A jazz guy"

Philadelphia audiences already know he's delivered on that promise. Here we discuss the creative process and how Ijames's work was enhanced after development at PlayPenn's new-play conference. We also touch on provocation in art, a playwright's responsibility to their audience, and the Whitney Biennial's Emmett Till controversy. While WHITE traverses some rocky territory, it's very funny. Ijames explains, "I'm a jazz guy, not a blues guy." So what play does Ijames really adore? The answer may surprise you.

For Wendy Rosenfield's review of WHITE, click here.