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“When did the idea of a regional theater supporting a resident artistic company become quaint, outmoded and ultimately, insupportable? Somewhere along the line, we lost our belief (or maybe just our interest) in the notion that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. We don’t think of theater companies as teams of artists anymore. They are simply temporary homes for “hot” directors and “star” actors — and the shows they send to Broadway.”

Denver theatre watchers are wondering what kind of director Kent Thompson will be as he takes over the Denver Center Theatre. He’s got a reputation for championing American plays but also someone who can dish conservative fare. “One challenge is making sure you have programming that will appeal to 25-to-49-year-olds, and that material, I think, has to speak in a more contemporary voice. At the same time, though, you must continue cultivating that core audience in their 40s to 60s. So I suspect we will be thinking of ‘cutting edge’ here as cutting edge within a larger season.”

Washington, D.C. is experiencing a theatre building boom, and the designs reflect not only an impressive devotion to audience comfort, but a revolutionary new way of looking at the building process. “For the first time, many theater artists are sitting at the design table, shaping the spaces in which they’ll practice their craft.”

“Just at the moment when Hollywood North has moved into meltdown mode, with deep-pocketed U.S. movie and TV producers running away from Toronto instead of to Toronto, Broadway North also has become a vanishing act. With the early closing of The Producers and Hairspray, open-ended, long running $8-million or $10-million musicals have become an endangered species in this town… For now, Toronto has reverted to taking limited runs of big touring shows. Where there used to be four long-run musicals in town, now there is only one.”

The Twin Cities-based theatre company known as Outward Spiral has called a “town meeting” to discuss its future. At issue is not so much the cost of doing business – Spiral has always been a low-budget company – but whether there is still a place for a gay-themed troupe in an age when mainstream theatre regularly features gay characters and issue-themed plays. “It sounds scary and foreboding, but it’s a healthy conversation. Just as none of us is immortal, so does not every arts organization need to live forever. Art, like life, has cycles, and people who claim to have the perception and insight to produce art should be able to use those same skills to ascertain when an arts group has reached the end of its useful life.”