Cocktails with the Canon is an interview-based podcast series hosted by colleagues and friends, the Globe’s Literary Manager and Dramaturg Danielle Mages Amato and Artistic Associate Lamar Perry. Through a series of informal but hard-hitting conversations, Amato and Perry will take audiences on a journey that investigates the “traditional” Western dramatic canon, along with the writers, groups, identities, and aesthetics that have historically been excluded. Over the course of the season, they will welcome to the podcast an acclaimed group of American playwrights to reflect on the forces that have historically shaped—and continue to shape—the American theatrical canon, and to discuss the works they consider canonical within their own communities. The hosts and guests will also dive into personal stories and share their dreams and action plans for the future of the American theatre. Ultimately the podcast hopes to ask the question: how can we expand the canon and create access for all? Listeners will walk away from Cocktails with the Canon feeling like they’ve just left a night at the theatre and a gathering with their community over drinks and food. Cheers!

Press Release

MEET THE HOSTS

Lamar Perry (Co-Host) (he/him/his) is a Queer Black director, producer, and writer originally from Connecticut. In addition to working as a freelance director and educator, he currently serves as Associate Producer at the Tony Award–winning theatre The Old Globe, having formerly served as Producing Associate at Classical Theatre of Harlem. Perry recently worked as the associate director on Shirley Graham Du Bois’s I Gotta Home (Roundabout Theatre Company’s The Refocus Project). He debuted his new class Queering the Canon, a workshop on approaching adaptation through the lens of cultural transposition, at UC San Diego this spring. Currently he is directing a workshop of Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop with the UC Irvine graduate acting program. His recent directing projects include Aurin Squire’s Run/Fire (Cygnet Theatre Company/The Finish Line commission), Dea Hurston’s In Sickness and in Health as a part of an An Evening with the San Diego Black Artist Collective (The Old Globe’s Powers New Voices Festival, which Perry also produced), and the audio plays Punchbowl Spaces and The Family Sound (Blindspot Collective/La Jolla Playhouse). Prior to shutdown he also served as assistant director, under longtime friend/mentor Steve H. Broadnax III, on the world premiere of Katori Hall’s The Hot Wing King (Signature Theatre). Perry is the creator, writer, producer, and co-host of both of the Globe’s podcasts Cocktails with the Canon and Gather Round!, which are available on Apple Podcasts, Google, and Spotify. Later this fall he will reprise his role as guest artist at UC San Diego, where he will return to teach and direct first year M.F.A. acting candidates in a devised-theatre class. He is a 2020–2021 Roundabout Directors Group member and a 2020 National Alliance for Musical Theatre Observer. Perry has developed, directed, or assisted on work at Diversionary Theatre’s Spark Festival, UC San Diego’s Wagner New Play Festival, Chautauqua Theater Company, San Diego Repertory Theatre, The Juilliard School, Classical Theatre of Harlem, and St. John’s University. Having recently been featured in American Theatre magazine’s “Roll Call: People to Watch,” he is an alumnus of Schusterman Family Foundation’s REALITY Storytellers program (2019) and is a member of For(bes) The Culture. Perry holds a bachelor of science from St. John’s University and is an alumnus of both The American Academy of Dramatic Arts and Public Allies Connecticut (AmeriCorps).

Danielle Mages Amato (Co-Host) holds an M.F.A. in Dramaturgy and a Ph.D. in Drama and Theatre from UC San Diego. She currently works as Literary Manager and Dramaturg at The Old Globe. She is a past president and board member of Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas. She spent four years as the dramaturg and literary manager of Studio Theatre in Washington DC. At the Globe, she has overseen eight years of the Powers New Voices Festival and has dramaturged world premieres of plays by Sam Hunter, JC Lee, Matthew Lopez, Itamar Moses, Anna Ziegler, and others. She is the author of The Hidden Memory of Objects, a novel published by Balzer+Bray/HarperCollins.

Follow The Old Globe on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @TheOldGlobe.

And follow @mrlamarperry and @daniellemamato on social media!