Most SITI Company members have heard me tell the “naked nun” joke far too many times. It goes something like this: soon after emerging from a hot bath, a nun, still naked, hears a knock on her… more

The new Prompts for Anne approach to the blog has provoked some eloquent writing and thinking from various readers.  A few of the prompts impelled me to respond and others are self-contained… more

Questions are the key tool of every theater artist.  Each worthwhile project is animated by curiosity, by questions, by a nagging itch that requires attention. Part of what makes a play endure… more

For the past several years my blogs on the SITI Company website have been fruitful and useful as I worked towards the completion of a new book of essays entitled What’s the Story. Thanks to the… more

I am writing today in West Fulton, New York in the heart of the Catskill Mountains. I am close to finishing a new book of essays entitled What’s the Story. The book is made up of eleven chapters,… more

Our capacity to tolerate error depends upon our capacity to tolerate emotion.(Irna Gadd) In 1974 I moved to New York City with the dream of making a life in the theater but first I had to find gainful… more

Successful theater requires a combination of technique, content and passion.  Like a three legged milking stool, if one of the legs is missing, the entire enterprise collapses.  No one cares about… more

I am late with this blog and I feel the pressure of time on my back.  I work on the blog in the five minutes before leaving for rehearsal or on a plane in an uncomfortable seat.  Afterwards of… more

The Buddhists propose that pain is caused by personal attachment to desire. Accordingly, I consciously and vigilantly police my own burning desires in order to live closer to and in harmony with the… more

The subject of the theater is, at its core, community. The nurturing substance of theater is not only the story that the play relates and the manner in which the story is expressed, but it is also the… more

At the Theater Communications Group Conference in Baltimore in 2009, “Generation Y” representative Nadira Hira bounded onto the stage and announced that she would not be using any PowerPoint in… more

Human beings are expectation machines. We are constructed physiologically and neurologically to anticipate what will happen next.  This human trait, which almost certainly originated in ancient… more

Election season is upon us. I watch HBO’s Bill Maher bang his head on the “Real Time” table in despair at the lack of communication that is possible between parties. We wade into a… more

Not long after the cataclysmic events of 9/11, I launched a series of one-on-one conversations between myself and various artists and theater people I admired. Open to the general public, the talks… more

We read and we write. We read the world and at times we write upon it. In order to write effectively we must learn to read well. It is impossible to write without reading first. Great writers are… more

Artists and inventors rarely create something out of nothing, but rather they use the components that exist already their environment to forge new territory. Innovation results from re-combining… more