A dependable haven for artists in isolation, Theater Resources Unlimited (TRU) is celebrating its fifth year of non-stop weekly Community Gatherings this Friday, having offered to date over 250 conversations and unlimited camaraderie since April 17, 2020. TRU hosts these Community Gatherings every Friday at 5pm ET via Zoom, originally presented to explore the creation of art and theater in the time of COVID-19, and now to ensure that these crucial conversations continue going forward.

5/30 – Balancing Act: The Many Sides of Robert Cuccioli. In the room: Robert Cuccioli, an actor equally adept with musicals and classic plays. On Broadway, he debuted as Javert in Les Miserables, got a Tony nomination for Jekyll and Hyde and brought his split-personality expertise to Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark as Norman Osborne/Green Goblin. Off-Broadway shows included And the World Goes Round, The Rothschilds and Enter the Guardsman, as well as distinctly non-musicals Antony and Cleopatra and A Touch of the Poet. He has made frequent appearances with Shakespeare Theatre of NJ, and also loves to direct. We’ll talk about how he chooses his roles, and whether he approaches the classics any differently than he approaches musicals. And yes, we will touch on the current environment of the arts, and theater, in America. Click here to register and receive the zoom link.

UPCOMING:

6/6 – Will We Ever Learn the Lesson? The Importance of Arts and Education. In the room: Kimberly Olsen, executive director of Arts in Education Roundtable; and Lucy Sexton, executive director of New Yorkers for Arts and Education. The importance of Arts and Education cannot be stressed enough. There is a crucial need to offer young people the option of discovering the arts for the purpose of self-enrichment as well as to develop the audiences and artists of tomorrow. They show us who we are and how we got here, and they suggest paths forward. They offer a window into being human. We’ll consider how the US stacks up against many other countries that often seem to respect the arts more than we do, or at least prioritize them both in schools and in society itself. What impact might the current administration have, or is already having, on arts programs in schools? What are the implications of restricting conversations in classrooms and banning books in our libraries? Click here to register and receive the zoom link.

6/13 – From Page to Stage to Hybrid to Film: How a Writer Adapts. In the room: playwright Alex Goldberg, whose play Guellen, Kansas was part of our 2023 “TRUSpeak: Hear Our Voices!” evening of short plays filmed for zoom. Alex embraced the process of rethinking a stage play for the film medium and successfully collaborated with director Jordan Richards to create a work that was cinematic enough to be submitted to film festivals. That experience gave him the motivation and the knowledge to adapt another of his plays, Broad Daylight, into a film that he himself directed and shopped to festivals, and has screened at nine film festivals so far, including Santa Fe International Film Festival and Sedona Film Festival. What are the essential differences between stage and film scripts? What does a writer need to know to make the transition? The TRUSpeak evening was conceived as a hybrid, a filmed play. In Broad Daylight Alex took the leap to totally rethinking his piece as a film. And then he took another leap: he completed a paid training program at Netflix to be an adapter of dubbed foreign content. Click here to register and receive the zoom link.

More information about upcoming interviews is available at: truonline.org/tru-community-gathering.

To receive the Zoom invitation for weekly meetings, email TRUnltd@aol.com with “Zoom Me” in the subject header. These gatherings are free for TRU members, non-members are asked to make an optional tax-deductible donation or consider joining TRU at truonline.org/membership to support the organization’s ongoing service to the community.

Videos of past Community Gatherings may be viewed on TRU’s YouTube channel at youtube.com/channel/UC43rsChi4fA23dNLeloaF_A/. And a podcast series, TRU Talks About Theater, featuring 2023 Community Gathering conversations, is now available wherever you get your podcasts; or tune in at ElectraCast: https://electracast.com/?s=Theater+Resources

Theater Resources Unlimited (TRU) is the leading network for developing theater professionals, a thirty-two-year-old 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization created to help producers produce, emerging theater companies to emerge healthily and all theater professionals to understand and navigate the business of the arts. Membership includes self-producing artists as well as career producers and theater companies.

TRU publishes an email community newsletter of services, opportunities and productions; presents weekly Community Gatherings about the arts and monthly Town Halls about current social issues; offers a Producer Development & Mentorship Program taught by prominent producers and general managers in New York theater, and also presents Producer Boot Camp workshops to help aspirants develop business skills. TRU serves writers through the TRU Voices Play Reading Series, TRUSpeak: Hear Our Voices evening of short plays about social issues, Writer-Producer Speed Date, a Practical Playwriting Workshop, How to Write a Musical That Works and a Director-Writer Communications Lab.

Programs of Theater Resources Unlimited are supported in part by the Montage Foundation, The Storyline Project and the Leibowitz Greenway Foundation; and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

For more information about TRU membership and programs, visit www.truonline.org.

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