Theatre is Territory

Good news
Praxis Theatre Co-Artistic Director Simon Rice has resurrected his widely beloved U.S. politics journal The Rice Report.

A Rice Report primer
The Rice Report started back in 2004 – a reaction to Simon’s growing distress with the state of American politics and its questionable foreign policies. His Rice Report newsletter series used the 2004 U.S. presidential election as a springboard to foster rigorous (and informed) discussion of an increasingly compromised democratic process.

His weekly reports became wildly popular among a small group of followers – and included a live play-by-play “performance” of the controversial Kerry-Bush showdown on election night: Tuesday, November 11, 2004.

A new blog
We are thrilled to welcome Mr. Rice to the blogosphere and announce the return of The Rice Report. Among the topics he’s promising will be in the cards:

Who’s running? From Hilary to Huckabee, the A-Z on 2008!
2004 Aftermath – Was the general election stolen?
The Hidden History of 9/11 – A weekly crash course for beginners and/or skeptics.

And if you’re wondering what any of this has to do with theatre, check Simon’s response to one of our 10 questions:

6) How has your interest in American politics influenced your ideas about theatre?
American politics have all the great elements of drama – farce, tragedy, absurdity, heroes, villains, clowns – the stakes are always high and although much focus has been put on the circus-like atmosphere of modern American politics, we all want to know what the next Act will bring. The Bush administration has felt like the usurping power in one of Shakespeare’s histories. With Donald “Rummy” Rumsfeld emerging as chief rhetorician, uttering such poetic lines as, “The absence of evidence, is not evidence of absence,” when no WMDs were found in Iraq. That’s a beautiful line!

I guess what I’m saying is that my passion for American politics deepens my understanding of theatre, and vice-versa.