The Thaumaturgy Department

(It's dramaturgy, not thaumaturgy.)

Gavin
CENTERSTAGE
Baltimore
Maryland
USA

thaumaturg
Main Entry: thau·ma·turg
Pronunciation: \ˈthȯ-mə-ˌtərj\
Function: noun
Etymology: French, from New Latin thaumaturgus, from Greek thaumatourgos working miracles, from thaumat-, thauma miracle + ergon work — more at Theater, Work

2011-2012 Season:
The Second City: Charmed and Dangerous
The Rivals
American Buffalo
Jazz
A Skull in Connemara
Into the Woods
The Whipping Man
Play Labs
Cabarets

The official blog of the Dramaturgy Department at Baltimore's CENTERSTAGE. For posts related to our current and upcoming shows, click the links to the right. Alternatively, you could begin at the beginning, and explore our posts in chronological order.

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“ Water is 2 parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. What if someone says,’Well, that’s not how I choose to think about water.’?
All we can do is appeal to scientific values. If he doesn’t share those values, the conversation is over. If someone doesn’t value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic? - Sam Harris

Tags | CSEnemy | Enemy of the People | henrik ibsen | arthur miller | quote time | wisdom | science

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“ Of puns it has been said that those who most dislike them are those who are least able to utter them. ~Edgar Allan Poe, standing up for wordplay then and now.

Tags | POE | poe | edgar allan poe | quote time | wisdom | funny | words | language

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“ Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

~Mark Twain, reflecting on Henrik Ibsen/Arthur Miller An Enemy of the People. Well, not really, but could have been. #CSEnemy

clemens

Tags | enemy of the people | wisdom | quote time | politics | henrik ibsen | arthur miller | production dramaturgy | debate

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Martin Luther King, Jr. -- I've Been to the Mountaintop (April 3 1968)

Transcript and video/audio

Tags | MLK | Mountaintop | oratory | quote time | wisdom | america | american history | african american | social justice | rhetoric

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“ Children are not deceived by fairy-tales; they are often and gravely deceived by school-stories. Adults are not deceived by science-fiction; they can be deceived by the stories in the women’s magazines. C. S. Lewis on fantasy vs. fact, a timeless and timely reminder of the role of critical thinking in making sense of the stories we’re told. (via explore-blog)

(Source: , via egoetschius)

Tags | fairy tales | folk tales | children's literature | wisdom | quote time | c.s. lewis

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Kurt Vonnegut's 8 Tips on How to Write a Great Story

Including this vivid recommendation at #8:

Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Tips on How to Write a Great Story - Entertainment - The Atlantic

Tags | quote time | wisdom | story | literature | dramaturgy

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Extravagant Spirit

Happy Birthday, Maya Angelou.

In 1997 LIFE asked the writer and poet Maya Angelou if she would consider writing on the topic of heroes and heroism for the magazine. Below are the two concluding stanzas.

These mothers, fathers, pastors and priests,
These Rabbis, imams and gurus,
Teach us by their valor and mold us with their courage.

Without their fierce devotion
We are only forlorn and only fragile
Stumbling briefly, among the stars.

Maya Angelou, “Extravagant Spirits”

Tags | maya angelou | poetry | poet | poem | quote time | wisdom | courage

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Like a Venn Diagram for Shakespeare’s wonderful line from Winter’s Tale, “If this be magic, let it be an art lawful as eating.”

Like a Venn Diagram for Shakespeare’s wonderful line from Winter’s Tale, “If this be magic, let it be an art lawful as eating.”

(Source: thedaughterrisen, via rmgilby)

Tags | science | art | wonder | magic | shakespeare | quote time | wisdom | Venn

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Writers on reading.

(Source: designlookout, via natrosehillbilly)

Tags | read it and weep | quote time | wisdom | reading

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“ Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Can’t decide whether i want this as a t-shirt, or a disclaimer in any printed & online materials, or both. Thanks to @DanRodricks for the initial citation.

Tags | quote time | wisdom | funny | ralph waldo emerson

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“ I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, —that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,— and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.

~ from Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”

Essays: First Series/Self-Reliance - Wikisource

Tags | quote time | wisdom | ralph waldo emerson | self-reliance | to thine own self be true | trust | instincts | creativity | anxiety of influence | originality

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“I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow damned up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are hurt about it. Even in the helter-skelter skirmish of my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less. No, I do not weep at the world – I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.”
~Zora Neale Hurston, How It Feels to be Colored Me (1928) Photo: The Granger Collection, New York (via Project Mosaic)

“I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow damned up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are hurt about it. Even in the helter-skelter skirmish of my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less. No, I do not weep at the world – I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.”

~Zora Neale Hurston, How It Feels to be Colored Me (1928) Photo: The Granger Collection, New York (via Project Mosaic)

Tags | zora neale hurston | their eyes were watching god | gleam | african american | author | literature | quote time | wisdom

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“ I believe that the magic and power of a story can encourage and fascinate you. In prehistory, outside the cave it was dark, but inside they had a fire and somebody was good at telling stories. Every time I write, I think of the cave. We are one group, outside it’s dark and wolves are howling, but I have a story to tell.

-Haruki Murakami (via wasarahbi)

And AFTER THE QUAKE opens at Rorschach theatre in DC… Serendipitous syncronicity indeed.

(via tonytakitani)

Tags | beautiful | haruki murakami | quote time | wisdom | storytelling | magic of theater | after the quake

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“ A circulating library in a town is as an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge.

~Sir Anthony Absolute, The Rivals

For some context on this particular outlook, and Sheridan’s lampoon of it, see production dramaturg Whitney Eggers’ program article.

Tags | quote time | wisdom | rivals | whitney | program | dramaturgy | Bath | 18th Century | centerstage

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“ America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. ~Abraham Lincoln

Tags | abraham lincoln | LINCOLN | freedom | quote time | wisdom

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