Category: theatre

The Pacific Playwrights Festival struggles to promote playwrights. “The American theater is losing too many talented writers. Aspiring playwrights are getting discouraged, especially as other development programs die off. Emerging playwrights, unable to make a living, are moonlighting in Hollywood and never coming back. Established playwrights are having trouble finding homes for scripts that lack commercial appeal.”

That’s the rumor about the playwright, at least. “What seems to have happened is that Frayn, asked by a reporter the traditional question as to what he was writing at the moment, replied with an absolute honesty that honours both his old NUJ card and his hobby of philo- sophy: nothing.” Not to worry, though. “A few weeks on, he is about to begin a screenplay of Headlong, his 1999 novel about an art-theft, but has no inklings of new books or plays, and is too scrupulous or superstitious to assume that they will come.”

Dominic Dromgoole hasn’t distinguished himself as a producer of the Bard’s works. And yet here he is running London’s Globe Theatre. “For all his excitement, the idea of Dromgoole, 42, running the Globe is going to take some getting used to – and he’s got a lot to prove. The role was previously filled by the sensitive actor Mark Rylance, who bashfully attributed the Globe’s unexpected box-office success – generating an annual pre-tax profit of £1.5 million – to the ensemble effort rather than his own stellar contribution.”

Arnold Mittelman has run Florida’s Cocnut Grove Playhouse for 21 years. “On April 10, South Florida’s theater community paid homage to the 61-year-old stage veteran. Standing tall in the spotlight at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, Mittelman, his blue eyes sparkling, accepted the George Abbott Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts. By the next morning, though, a very different kind of spotlight began to shine on Mittelman amid revelations that the landmark theater he has run with a single-minded determination is on the brink of ruin.”

The English ban on smoking could after plays onstage. “For example, do almost all Ibsen’s male characters smoke because it is central to the argument of the drama or because Ibsen was a social realist and, at the time, being in a room after dinner was like walking alongside a steam train? Under the Finch rules, smoking might become for future generations of actors equivalent to nudity in the past, with respectful reference to performers who were ‘prepared to light up’ but only ‘if the part absolutely demanded it’.”

“Musical theater was once a staple of television. Throughout the 1950s and ’60s, ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’ regularly featured performances from the latest Broadway shows, allowing people who had little prospect of seeing the productions to get at least a taste of them. In the mid-’50s, when Mary Martin brought “Peter Pan” to NBC, it was a national event — one that the network repeated regularly for years. Televised productions of such musicals as “Wonderful Town,” “Annie Get Your Gun,” “One Touch of Venus,” “Brigadoon” and “Kiss Me, Kate,” among others, also were presented during that era. Where did it all go?”

“This transformation of a Hollywood movie into a Broadway musical, a trend that appears as irreversible as global warming, is an example of recycled recycling, or second-hand nostalgia.”

Actress Jan Maxwell quit the Broadway production of “Entertaining Mr. Sloane,” complaining about actor Alec Baldwin. In the e-mail, Maxwell said Baldwin put his fist through a wall and was “throwing things around with all of us cowering,” and Maxwell accused Baldwin of giving the Roundabout an ultimatum: refusing to go on with her.

Theatres in the UK are looking for onstage exemption to a general smoking ban. “Exemptions are now being considered where smoking is integral to the plot. The government is considering providing a specific exemption from smoke-free legislation to ensure that smoking can take place on stage during live theatrical performances, or during film and television recording.”

Theatrical agents in the UK are being accused of charging aspiring actors thousands of pounds in fees in return for securing work that never materializes. “New laws from April 2004 made it illegal to charge up-front registration fees, although did allow agencies to charge a ‘reasonable’ sum to include someone in a publication or directory. But [a report in a UK trade magazine] made clear that the majority of performers were unaware of the new laws from the Department of Trade and Industry. Moreover, the rules were being flagrantly breached by many agents.”