After a busy month where I didn’t get to see a lot of theatre, last week I started catching up. I saw three shows last week, with another two shows planned for this week. Even then there will be more to see, but at least I’ll feel a little more caught up!

First I saw 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea at Strawdog in Hugen Hall. It was a great, imaginative, immersive piece of storytelling, and I was also so excited for my friend Lee who did a fantastic job in one of the lead roles. Next up was Titus Andronicus at Babes With Blades, with an all-female cast who were all balls-to-the-wall. The show was wholly un-apologetic about the violence and theatricality of the play, and it was fun to see such fierce women attack these roles, especially several of my friends in the show. Last was Endgame at The Hypocrites. The acting from all four performers was stellar, and there was a fascinating ambient design aesthetic in the audience that off-set the strictly-Beckett play on stage. I consistently love The Hypocrites’ work, especially because their gorgeous creative risk-taking is often beyond anything I could ever imagine.

It’s often hard for theatre artists to make it out to see other theatre, when we are so busy with creative projects of our own. But I love getting out into the audience to see other people’s work. Not only is it fun; not only is it important to support other artists; but also it is vital to my own ongoing creative development. It’s always valuable to see a diversity of work and think about what elements I like or dislike, what choices I might make differently (if any), or what wonderful things I could never have come up with on my own.