Category: theatre

Oscar “goodie bags” were worth more than $100,000 to presenters. There will be no such largesse to voters for the Tonys. “The Tony Awards Rules Committee has adopted resolutions that ban the distribution of “any campaign or promotional materials to voters, other than a script or a cast recording” tied to a show in award contention. The resolutions also prohibit nominees’ promotion through any communication that disparages or casts “any negative or derogatory light on a competing production, element, person or achievement.”

“Wicked” has been a huge hit in Chicago. Can its success be repeated? “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” hopes to do just that. “In Chicago, at least, “Spelling Bee” and “Wicked” have some notable similarities. Both musicals currently are successful — and profitable — on Broadway. Both share a New York-based producer in David Stone. Both will have open-ended, dedicated, sit-down Chicago productions (as distinct from mere stops on a tour) that hope to be around for years.”

One of the Bay Area’s longest-serving and most successful managing directors is leaving. Randy Adams has led TheatreWorks, and “for 21 years, working with founder and Artistic Director Robert Kelley, Adams helped transform an ambitious small Palo Alto company with a $300,000 budget to one of the region’s leading theaters, operating in two cities, with a growing national reputation and a budget of $7 million.”

Since its founding 28 years ago, Minneapolis/St. Paul’s Theatre de la Jeune Lune has been a collective, without a sole leader. That is about to change, as the company names its first director. “It is about time, said many admirers. Some feared that the theater’s internal fights over its direction and its guiding ideology, exacerbated in recent years by interpersonal rancor that has all but paralyzed decisionmaking, would lead it the way of the dodo.”

Minneapolis’ Guthrie Theatre is about to move in to a new $125 million theatre. As a prominent regional theatre, it can program almost anything it wants. But “the theater’s season announced this week is not merely unadventurous. This line-up is downright deflating, especially since it is the first opportunity to see shows in a hard-won facility sold partly on the promise of being a place that will push theater forward.”

New York Theater Workshop continues to insist that the dustup over the cancellation of “My Name Is Rachel Corrie” is nothing more than a misunderstanding, and not, as some critics would have it, a deliberate attempt to silence certain theatrical voices. “Whether a misunderstanding or not, how the workshop, an artistically bold and popular company, found itself in such an embarrassing public jam still baffles [the company’s directors,] who said they did not know the extent of the public relations damage and financial cost.”

The uproar over New York Theatre Workshop’s cancellation of “My Name is Rachel Corrie” “shows that New York needs a theater free from the prejudices of its funders and subscribers, one immune to special interests…”

“Today’s playwrights are a motivated, opinionated, highly intelligent, politically aware group of angry young men and women. It’s not that we don’t want to write big, demanding plays. It’s that we’re so often frustrated in our ambitions. And why? One reason comes up time and again: money.”

The corporate world has discovered acting school. Several acting schools around the world are dispensing tips from the typically more lively world of drama. “You have a unique way of seeing the world. In the business world, we try to help bring that to the workplace and have it be more than a job. It becomes a creative platform.”

“I’ve been writing poetry since my youth and I’m sure I’ll keep on writing it till I conk out. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I’ve written 29 damn plays. Isn’t that enough?”