Category: theatre

Patrick Quinn, president of Actors’ Equity Association, has been named executive director of the union. “Quinn is a longtime working actor with 10 Broadway credits. He has also been a union insider for almost 30 years — he was elected to the Equity Council in 1977.”

“When is a theatre show finished? I don’t mean what time does the curtain come down (or rather not come down in the case of Edinburgh where curtains and traditional stages are thankfully in very short supply) but at what point do the cast and director stop working on the show in order to improve it?” The question “is particularly pertinent here in Edinburgh where there is a lot of fragile and fledgling work on view. This is a wonderful chance for companies to really develop a show in front of an audience, but often it simply doesn’t happen.”

The fourth triennial meeting of the AfriCanadian Playwrights Festival has attracted more than 60 playwrights among the more than 200 theatre folk attending. “It is the best time (for black Canadian playwriting). I think these stories have not been heard enough; I think they’re being heard more and more and they can only enrich everyone’s lives.”

“Clearing the way for a new artistic director to program the Dallas Theater Center’s anticipated 2009 move to downtown’s Dallas Center for the Performing Arts, Richard Hamburger announced Tuesday that he will leave the group next spring after 15 years.”

“Before launching a successful freelance career several years ago, Rauch spent two decades guiding the Cornerstone Theatre Company, a Los Angeles company he co-founded. Cornerstone collaborates with diverse communities to create shows rooted in timely concerns such as the plight of laid-off steelworkers and the role of religion in American life.”

“By almost any definition, Broadway has been enjoying a very good run for the last few years, if not for the last couple of decades. Attendance has been rising despite ever increasing prices, so that overall ticket revenue — even after being adjusted for inflation — has more than doubled in the last 15 years. But the road, which by some measures brings in as much revenue as Broadway, is far more of a boom-and-bust business.” Right now, it’s a big bust, with huge declines in box office.

Curtains, the final show collaborated on by composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb before Ebb’s death in 2004, is currently running in Los Angeles, is already ticketed for a Broadway debut next year, and “judging by the reaction of audiences and critics, Ebb’s faith in his final show was not misplaced.”

“The Minnesota Fringe Festival had another record-breaking year in both ticket revenues and total audience size. The 11-day performing-arts extravaganza, which ended Sunday, sold 44,814 tickets, a slight increase of 200 tickets over last year… There was some speculation within the Fringe community that attendance would dwindle in a year that featured more newcomers and fewer well-known names.” Average attendance per show was down slightly, but Fringe organizers say that’s because, without many big-name blockbusters on the schedule, the audience fanned out more than usual.

“The eight deeply flawed new musicals showcased in this year’s Stages 2006 marathon at the Theatre Building seemed to suggest the artform has fallen on very hard times. None of the shows presented last weekend, whether in semi-staged or concert reading style, was ready for prime time.”

“It has been an unusual year for the Atlantic. As medium-size nonprofit theaters go, it has been unusually successful. Two of its shows — half of its season — were picked up for commercial runs on Broadway. The company has a paid membership of 3,500. How the Atlantic found itself there is a tale of nimble negotiating and real estate jujitsu that could almost be the subject of a David Mamet play, albeit one in which the little guys come off pretty well in the end.”