A new book chronicles the backstage perils and failures of Broadway bombs. “Dramas are hard enough. Musicals, to judge by the on-the-scene accounts by several critics and journalists assembled here, seem particularly fraught with a special kind of peril. ‘When disparate elements don’t gel, panic sets in. With the clock running out, and the bankroll running low, and superegos running amuck, strange things can happen’.”
Category: theatre
Deaf Theatre Loses Funding, Might have To Close
The 38-year-old National Theatre of the Deaf has lost a major grant and the theatre’s leaders fear the company might not be able to continue. “Without the $680,000 annual grant, administered by the U.S. Department of Education, the National Theatre of the Deaf slashed its annual budget from $1.2 million to $300,000.”
Another Play – The Success Burden
So you’ve produced a play and it’s been well received on Broadway. Now what? “Expectations rise along with the number of opportunities to disappoint fans, who tend to want what they’ve so memorably enjoyed before. Then, of course, there are the critics, a few of whom specialize in holding artists to the impossibly high standards of their best works. These dramatists (one almost feels inclined to label them ‘poor little rich’) are damned if they attempt to produce more of the award-winning same and damned if they don’t.”
Canadian Stopgap For Billy?
“Is Billy Elliot, the biggest hit now on the London stage, going to open in Toronto before New York? That depends on whom you talk to.” Promoters are downplaying the idea after it was initially reported in a New York tabloid, but according to sources in Toronto, many performers are being told to “keep their schedules clear” for the show.
On The Fringes Of Success
There was a time when the only real gain you could achieve by being included in the New York Fringe Festival was the satisfaction of a job well done, and hopefully, a few tepid reviews. But ever since Urinetown leaped from the Fringe to Broadway back in 1999, the festival has become a whole new ball game, with any number of people keeping score.
“Corrie” Goes On In Seattle
A play about peace activist Rachel Corrie might be too hot for New York Theatre Workshop, but a version of Corrie’s life is playing at a small theatre in Seattle…
Guthrie Head To Step Down
On the eve of opening a new home for Minneapolis’ Guthrie Theatre, managing director Tom Proehl says he’ll leave the job. “I’ve been so focused on this new building for the last 2½ years. I thought this was a good time for me to say, ‘I got us here. Let’s move on.’ The new Guthrie will be a very different place, and I think it will do well with a fresh perspective on what it can really be.”
London’s Wicked Anticipation
Londoners are looking forward to “Wicked”, which opens in September. The show “has broken London box office records to sell £100,000 of tickets in its first hour, with theatregoers queuing from 6.30am in the morning to secure a purchase.”
The “Corrie” Case – Big Disappointment
New York Theatre Workshop’s decision to back down from presenting “My Name Is Rachel Corrie” says something about the current state of New York’s theatre scene. “We have reached the unacceptable face of the New York arts scene when the theater that produced the original Rent—and, more to the point, the conscience plays of Tony Kushner and Caryl Churchill—should cave in like this to peculiar, unspecific pressure.”
Where Are The Right-Wing Playwrights?
Oscar winning screenwriter Julian Fellowes says there’s a problem with today’s theatre. What? There’s a shortage of right-wing playwrights. “There are all sorts of interesting areas for the right wing playwright to get into – the subversion of parliament, the intrusion of government into every day life. You could write a play about any of these things and technically it would be a right wing play but the phrase ‘right wing’ has now been kind of cast out into the shadows.”