Category: theatre

Richard Montoya’s Culture Clash has made a career out of trenchant political commentary. So what is the responsibility of creators of such work? “Do the creators of, say, the hit musical ‘The Drowsy Chaperone’ feel a certain responsibility to their audiences? I would assume yes. But for Culture Clash and other dramatists of color, it remains a loaded and constant question. I must admit I sometimes suffer from responsibility fatigue.”

“Simmering tensions between Actors’ Equity Association and the American Girl Place doll store in midtown Manhattan boiled over [yesterday] when actors walked away from their jobs to protest management’s refusal to establish a contract with the union.”

“A brief glance at Broadway confirms that the American market for political theatre is at an all-time low. Domestic dramas dominate; the Tony Awards are bypassing the middleman and going straight to British practitioners. And although no one seriously expects commercial theatres – which are sponsored by large corporations – to champion provocative writing (“Everybody knows you don’t bite the hand that feeds you,” says Shinn), the subscription theatres, the not-for-profit venues which are the breeding ground for new work, seem to be losing their nerve.”

“Want to find out about British history? Look no further than its theatre. As the National Youth Theatre celebrates its 50th anniversary with six new plays marking every decade since the 1950s, Michael Billington examines the concerns – and the blindspots – of Britain’s postwar dramatists.”

“After six months of uncertainty about the Source Theatre Company, the Cultural Development Corporation, a private, nonprofit group, announced yesterday that it is buying the theater’s building at 1835 14th St. NW and will make it an arts center. The moribund, 33-year-old Source Theatre Company will cease to exist, but the building will be called the Source.”

What, John Heilpern wonders, makes good political theatre? “Brecht, the most overtly political playwright and propagandist of the 20th century, didn’t change a thing politically…. Nor has any play in history. Remember, no ‘Lysistrata’ ever stopped a war. No play or work of art ever changed the world. They change the way we perceive the world.”

Canada’s Stratford Festival may have the bigger budget and the better-known name, Tony Brown concedes. “But I still prefer the almost always-invigorating work done at the Shaw Festival, in the twee-little village of Niagara-on-the-Lake in the wine-producing region just north of Niagara Falls. The Shaw Festival is smaller — it spends $20 million a year, has 68 actors and is staging 10 shows this summer in three theaters — but it is smarter by a country kilometer.”

Washington, D.C., mounted its first ever Fringe Festival this summer, and Peter Marks says that the district is a better place for its presence. “[The Fringe] broke down artistic barriers, making an institution-driven town more hospitable to entrepreneurial spirits in theater and dance, to independent types eager for a local platform to show what they could do.”

Nielsen, the company behind TV ratings, has come to the stage, pioneering a new strategy to allow theatre companies to assess the impact of their presentations on the paying public. “Using Hollywood-style data mining techniques and the Internet to contact hundreds of thousands of theatergoers, Live Theatrical Events is changing the way shows are marketing themselves, on and off Broadway.”

Minneapolis’s Guthrie Theater has named David Galligan interim managing director, beginning in mid-August. Galligan, who recently stepped down from the CEO post at the Ordway Center (St. Paul’s main performing arts venue,) will not be a candidate for a permanent job at the Guthrie, but agreed to help steer the company through the transition to its new home on the Mississippi River.