Category: theatre

Small Theatres Struggling In Minny

Minneapolis-based Pig’s Eye Theatre has canceled the remainder of its 2005-06 season and will focus on raising enough money to mount a comeback next winter. Pig’s Eye, which operated on a shoestring and was known locally for an offbeat combination of classic repertoire and edgier fare, is at least the second small company in the Twin Cities to face its own mortality in the last year, as high rents and economic malaise take their toll in a region loaded down with theatre.

Producers Looking For New NY Venue For “Rachel Corrie”

London’s Royal Court Theatre is considering other opportunities to stage “My Name is Rachel Corrie” in New York after New York Theater Workshop canceled a planned production because of political concerns. “Royal Court’s statement took issue with the workshop’s assertion that the planned production of “Rachel Corrie” was not definite, saying that press releases had been finalized, previews set, budgets approved, flights booked and tickets listed for sale.”

“Corrie” Cancellation Heretical

New York Theatre Workshop was surprised when there were big protests over its decision not to present “My Name Is Rachel Corrie.” It shouldn’t have been. “What made it a more volatile act was that by declining for now to offend with the play, the theater violated the most sacred principles of our artistic temples. Those principles are: Thou shalt offend, thou shalt test limits, thou shalt cause controversy. If there is an artistic orthodoxy in the West, it is that good art is iconoclastic and provocative, and that any pull back from this orthodoxy is cowardly and craven. In this distended context, the New York Theater Workshop’s act was heretical.”

The Shakespeare Industry At Full Roar

The who-was-Shakespeare industry is currently in full gear. “Last year saw no fewer than three hefty biographies, distilled from the slim documentary record of Shakespeare’s existence and coloured up into portraits through socio-historical detail and complex deductions from the plays and poems. Soon the Royal Shakespeare Company will launch a multinational season of the “Complete Works” at Stratford-upon-Avon, with 41 full-scale productions. And now we have the National Portrait Gallery’s Searching for Shakespeare, an exhibition centring on eight pictures that have at one time or another been accepted as true images of the Bard.”

Hytner – Recipe For Success

Nicholas Hytner has become a star as he turns around the fortunes of London’s National Theatre. “Allying a series of bold, eye-catching plays with a policy of massively cutting ticket prices, Hytner’s vision has paid off spectacularly. New audiences packed its auditoriums for everything from headline-making Jerry Springer: the Opera to an ambitious production of Philip Pullman’s children’s bestseller His Dark Materials to David Hare’s savagely docu-realist account of the run-up to the Iraq war, Stuff Happens. Hytner was widely credited with reviving not just the National, but theatre at large.”

Selling A Canadian Unknown On Broadway

“How do you sell $1-million (U.S.) worth of tickets a week to a show that practically nobody’s heard of? You cast your eyes across the Broadway musical-theatre landscape, and this is what you see stacked up against your baby: big stars and big brands. How do you position a smart, funny musical from first-time Broadway writers, with an ensemble cast and a lead from Canada?” You get unconventional…

The LaChiusa Method

“At a time when most songwriters would kill to wangle a no-budget workshop in a downtown black box, Michael John LaChiusa is regularly produced by the foremost institutional theaters in the country, and now even by opera houses. But part of the controversy stems from his insistence on bringing a seriously modern sensibility to a form mostly consigned to the ash heap of nostalgia. Whether you judge his musicals to be successful or not — and critics are divided — they are never glib or self-cannibalizing.”