Guest Blogger: Adam Brandner

This November, New Orleans is being taken over by a festival of fearless, fabulous, and original artists! In past years, this festival has been called The New Orleans Fringe Festival, but this year a new title has emerged: The Faux/Real Festival of Arts. The goal of the festival is to nurture emerging and established performing artists by presenting exciting, fearless, and affordable theatre to the community and also to create ties between artists from all around the world. Faux/Real allows artists the freedom to showcase their eccentric, wild, fresh, and original works adding to the electric culture that New Orleans is already offering. 

Halloween came early for all the Glamerts in Houston! American Idol alum and on again/off again QUEEN frontman Adam Lambert came to the Space City on Wednesday October 28th to show The Revention Music Center how to rock and roll.

Galactic Bay Publishing launches new website!

Broadway superstar and recording artist, Shoshana Bean, has joined forces with Todrick Hall to release their latest YouTube video: Spell Block Tango. The belting diva has taken on the role of Cruella De Vil in this hilarious and star-studded parody. Other stars that grace the small screen are Adam Lambert and Amber Riley from Glee. Bean plays the fashion-obsessed De Vil with a twist. In her rendition, De Vil is doing a little jail time for the murder of Horace and Jasper for failing to meet her fashion demands. They just didn't know their fabrics. De Vil wasn't having it.

Every fall, I like to get my students interested in the idea of writing. I start by introducing them to creative writing in the hope that they will fall in love with it. Some do, and some don't. But the process of learning creative writing can be fun nonetheless. One of the challenging lesson plans that I have created is called: Three Buttons. I have three bags each filled with buttons that students can draw from.

There are hundreds of plays that every theatre major should read. Plays from various genres that will shape who you are as an actor, designer, writer, director, etc…

Sometimes change can be good. Even a little break can be all you need sometimes to cure the monotony of your day to day routine. As actors, the rehearsal schedules can get grueling and even tedious and it's possible that even after all of your hard work teching a show, only your grandma and best friend show up to see it. In my experience, community theatre crowds can be very, very small. I've performed musicals in front of crowds less than twenty before. It's discouraging. What is to be done? Spend thousands on promotion? Call up Miley Cyrus for a twerking commercial spot that will most definitely fill your theatre's empty seats? No. For the most part, promotional budgets simply don't exist for community theatres. If they do, they don't pack enough punch to get the word out to those who aren't looking for your promotion already. In this article, I'd like to give a few suggestions for bringing theatrical awareness to your community and for breaking the monotony of a tough rehearsal schedule for your cast. I have a few ideas as to how you can make people aware of your show. Also, these suggestions just may be the change/break your cast may need to keep the energy alive and the seats packed.

"No man is an island." John Donne is famous for this adage but unfortunately Mr. Donne clearly wasn't a theatre teacher. Drama directors can most definitely be islands. Most theatre directors do not just simply direct. As the theatre director at my campus in Houston, I am a one-man department. My job as director quickly morphs into artistic director, producer, light/set/sound/costume/make-up designer, construction guru, stage manager, and bookkeeper to name a few sub titles. I am very fortunate to have a very supportive administration and teaching staff that is willing to help out whenever asked, but not everyone has that. It can be hard, then, to put on a show high in spectacle when there are only 24 hours in a day and 365 days in a year. I feel very schizophrenic when the designers in me dissect a script and start planning big and then another voice in my head (The Bookkeeper) pulls me back down to earth and shows me my budget. I am lucky to have a very nice budget, but I would need thousands upon thousands to pull off my best-case scenario. I have to make smart, economical choices when planning my annual one act play for competition. However, I've learned you can sprinkle a little spectacle in small doses here and there to pump up your program. In this article, I'd like to explore ways to give the illusion of a big budget when you are working with little to nothing. There are ways to "give 'em the old Razzle Dazzle" without breaking the bank.

You can go anywhere on the Internet and Google how to write a play. You will likely get generic answers like: Understand your theater space, write realistic dialogue, create characters the audience can relate to, write suspenseful stories with high stakes, and don't be afraid to rewrite and make edits. All of these simple statements are true, but they can turn off a beginning writer because they aren't specific enough. In this piece, I'd like to offer some unique perspective for a young writer that is just beginning. Here you will read about my personal tricks for developing characters and finding your individual voice as a writer.