Month: January 2014

  • Saturday, January 25, 2014

    • In Alliance world premiere, playwright happily digs into worlds of love and dysfunction : ‘I want to make people laugh’ | Encore Atlanta: Atlanta’s Performing Arts Publication

    In Alliance world premiere, playwright happily digs into worlds of love and dysfunction : ‘I want to make people laugh’ | Encore Atlanta: Atlanta’s Performing Arts Publication

    Playwriting is a solitary experience for most. Not so much for Love and Warcraft’s Madhuri Shekar.

    The winner of the Alliance Theatre’s 2013-14 Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Competition finds it tough to write a play if she hasn’t talked it out with someone first. Maybe because dialogue is her favorite part.

    “I like theater in general,” says Shekar (as in “shaker”). “That experience of sitting with other people, and everyone’s going through it together, and the people you are watching are not just people on a screen who’ve been edited and carefully orchestrated. They’re actual, real people in front of you, and they’re creating stories with their bodies and their voices, and they’re inviting us to use our imaginations to fill in that story with them.”

  • Friday, January 24, 2014

    • Avatars come to life in ‘In Love and Warcraft’

    Avatars come to life in ‘In Love and Warcraft’

    Dreaming up characters who become paladins, dwarves, warrior princesses and shamans when they go online is one thing, but actually bringing that fantasy world of Internet gaming onto the stage became an interesting challenge for costume designer Lex Liang, a video game neophyte.

    “Before I even finished the script for the first time, I immediately got on my computer and started researching all sorts of stuff about online gaming,” says Liang of LDC Design Associates in New York.

  • Friday, January 17, 2014

    • Anniversary

    Today was an especially delightful day in rehearsal with my director Laura Kepley and dramaturg Celise Kalke. Laura is the sweetest, just look.

    Guild Leader Guild Leader

    Going through my emails I just realized that it’s been exactly one year since Celise called to tell me that I’d won the Kendeda Playwriting Prize. It’s been a truly amazing year since, and right now I’m in the middle of the funnest month of my life, with more to come with ‘A Nice Indian Boy’ (directed by Snehal Desai) very soon. I’m so grateful to have these two months, with two productions of plays that mean so much to me, and getting to work with such talented and kind people. I’ve always been happiest when I get to do theatre, and so this has been one long extended period of joy. That’s all.

  • Wednesday, January 1, 2014

    • Hometown girl makes newspaper

    So my New Year’s Resolution (haha, haha, ha) is to blog once a week every week for the entire year. I’ll have to have at least 52 posts by the end of 2014. I need to start recording all the good things in my life! Because good things seem to happen to me every week.

    Like this one, which starts the New Year off on an amazing note.

    The Hindu MetroPlus has profiled me. I had an interview with Anusha Parthasarathy on Monday, and now it’s online! I’m in my hometown newspaper! The freaking Hindu!

    Talking with my hands

    Big deal.

    And I like the picture too.

    This is awesome. This is just really awesome.

    I’ll get to the 2013 update and round-up soon, I swear. (haha, haha, ha.)