Daniella Ignacio

1 week ago | americantheatre.org | Daniella Ignacio

In a nation where the arts and education are under attack, it’s more than vital ever for young people to have opportunities to explore the arts with organizations that offer after-school learning, especially low-income and diverse populations that may not have the opportunity otherwise.

3 weeks ago | americantheatre.org | Daniella Ignacio

The New York Theatre Workshop production of Celine Song’s debut play Endlings closed on March 12, 2020—a casualty of Covid-19 lockdowns. Five years later, Song’s play about three elderly Haenyeos (sea women) is making a comeback with a regional premiere at Philly’s Hedgerow Theatre through June 1, where the production has acquired fresh topicality as well as a new approach to its movement design for a piece that dives deeply into immigration and assimilation.

3 weeks ago | dctheaterarts.org | Daniella Ignacio

“To be an artist means never to avert one’s eyes.” — Akira KurosawaIf I were Julia Izumi thinking of a question to ask fellow actors in a meta-theatrical play, I’d want to ask one that’s been on my mind a lot recently: Do you think theater can be transformative? What can it really do when the world is on fire? Subversive art may be a weird way of communicating comfort. Yet it also makes sense to my brain, which likes things to be complicated and analyzable, even when the world could be simple.

3 weeks ago | americantheatre.org | Daniella Ignacio

Summer stock—the time-honored tradition of professional theatres that primarily operate from early through late summer, with repertory companies that rehearse and perform simultaneously—is still very much a thing.

1 month ago | americantheatre.org | Daniella Ignacio |Rob Weinert-Kendt

Call it a Friday night massacre: On the evening of May 2—just hours after the Trump administration released a proposed budget that would entirely eliminate the both the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), among dozens of other federal agencies—hundreds of arts organizations of all sizes and kinds across the U.S. received emails from the NEA withdrawing pending grants and terminating existing ones, in amounts ranging from $10,000 to...