Category: theatre

Joe Boling likes theatre. And he goes. “In 2002, Boling attended 427 theatrical productions, 8.2 per week. He routinely sees four shows on Saturdays. “You can do five, actually,” he said, counting on his fingers. “A touring children’s show at noon, a two o’clock matinee, a show at the Children’s Theater at 5:30, a regular production at eight, then a late-night show.” He writes reviews about almost everything he sees, posting them on the TPS website. Boling calls his theater writing “commentary,” not criticism.

After 15 years as artistic director of the Dallas Theater Center, Richard Hamburger is calling it quits. “I’ve been running theaters for 20 years. It has been an incredible gift, but it’s 24/7. Coming to the end of a contract, it was time to assess moving on. I feel like I need some breathing room.”

More letters of complaint and a spirited defense by Chicago Sun-Times critic Hedy Weiss’ negative reviews of a workshop project: “Reviewing of this showcase has been standard practice for a number of years; the proof is in the archives. In addition, I heard not a peep from the Stages staff after publication of my review of last year’s showcase. Perhaps that was because the ‘mixed to positive’ reviews were more acceptable to them. In fact, I would bet that a copy of my review was submitted as supporting evidence for many grants, etc., that the Musical Theatre Writers’ Workshop made to funding organizations this season. You simply cannot have it both ways.”

Chicago Sun-Times theatre critic Hedy Weiss is defending herself against criticisms from the Dramatists Guild over reviews of workshop performances she wrote. “Ms. Weiss said that she had reviewed the festival in the past without objection and no one had told her she could not review it this time. She also said the festival was a public event, with an advertising campaign and tickets. (A ticket to one performance cost $15.) ‘If you are given a press kit and if you are given pictures, what are you supposed to do with them’?”

Simon Callow was 29 years old and a struggling actor when the script for Peter Shafer’s “Amadeus” landed on his doorstep and the role of Mozart offered. Not a bad way to make a career…

The Philadelphia Inquirer got a new theatre critic – Toby Zinman – this year. Some in the city’s theatre community have grown to hate her work, so they set up a blog to air compaints. ‘We Love Toby! The Blog’ is an ascerbic rebuttal to reviews the bloggers don’t like. The blog is sometimes savage, but Zinman says she doesn’t read it…

“U.S. tourism to Canada fell by 5 per cent in 2005 and will have dropped another 1.6 per cent by the end of this year, the Conference Board of Canada predicts. That leaves the Shaw and Stratford festivals struggling to balance budgets in which as much as 40 per cent of box-office dollars come from across the border, and weighing the economic and political reasons that Americans still aren’t travelling.”

“Ashland, Ore., the home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, is a small town with a population of around 20,000. The theaters are full, and the audiences — the majority of whom are from California, Oregon, and Washington — enthusiastic. But Ashland is definitely off the radar of New York casting agents. Working here isn’t like doing a stint at the Williamstown or Berkshire Theatre Festivals, where well-known New York actors regularly do shows in the summer. What Ashland offers, however, is significant: a warm, supportive community, a chance to play an unusual variety of roles, and, not least, a degree of job security almost unknown in the theater world.”

“Arts-minded visitors to the Berkshire Hills in western Massachusetts may think of Pittsfield as little more than an urban speed bump on the way to Stockbridge, Williamstown and the glories of Tanglewood and Jacob’s Pillow. But the city is betting that, with the help of a long-neglected jewel of a theater, it too can make a place for itself on the region’s arts map. After a two-year, $22 million restoration, the century-old Colonial Theater will reopen tonight for a year-round season that kicks off with a week’s visit by a touring company of ‘Rent.'”

The Dramatists Guild of America is protesting theatre critic Hedy Weiss’ reviews of eight projects in the Chicago Sun-Times a few weeks ago. “These musicals were presented in workshop. Every musical in workshop is understood to be a work in progress. Workshopping a new musical provides an opportunity for writers to evaluate their work as it evolves, protected from the consequences of critical appraisal. This security allows writers to take chances, to be bold, maybe even to embarrass them­selves—in short, to do their work.”