Category: theatre

“Playwriting is a young man’s – and, of late, a young woman’s – game. It requires the courage of youth still inspired by rejection and as yet unperverted by success. Most playwrights’ best work is probably their earliest. Those prejudices of anger, outrage and heartbreak the writer brings to his early work will be fuelled by a passionate sense of injustice. In the later work, this will in the main have been transformed by the desire for retribution.” That said, writes David Mamet, “The Night of the Iguana is not a very good play.”

“Of the 39 plays and musicals that opened on Broadway this year, 3 were directed by women. Of the 34 new shows in 2004, women directed 2. These are not particularly encouraging figures for those looking for the new female directorial voices. Many women can be found directing shows off Broadway and running regional theaters, but the best-known and biggest-budget venue has not been all that welcoming.”

Nobel-winning playwright Dario Fo has written a play about peace activist Cindy Sheehan. “Peace Mom received its world premiere in London on Saturday night, starring British actress Frances de la Tour, with both Sheehan and Italian dramatist Fo in the audience. The one-woman show is based on extracts from Sheehan’s letters to Bush and other writings.”

One sign of the growing ambitions and importance of children’s theatre in America are the elaborate new theatres being built to house them. The Kennedy Center is opening a new $9 million Family Theater that is “the first self-contained new theater to be christened at the center in 26 years. Built with federal funds in a space that formerly housed the AFI Theater, the playhouse is a significant facet of the center’s five-year, $125 million effort to upgrade arts education.”

The British actors union Equity is protesting decisions by two retail chains to stop selling DVDs of “Jerry Springer, The Opera.” “Equity strongly supports artistic freedom and equally strongly opposes censorship in all its forms, however offended any individual may feel themselves to be by a particular piece of dramatic art.”

Canada’s Stratford Theatre balances its budget, but “paid attendance for its 15 productions was 540,000, down 5 per cent from the 568,715 patrons it drew in 2004. In fact, this was the third consecutive year that attendance declined, after reaching an all-time high in 2002 of almost 673,000.”

“The sun is setting on America’s regional theaters, as they’ve existed for the past half century. There are also other reasons — cultural and technological, leading to the reality that putting on shows can no longer be the primary purpose of theater. Such a purpose — as a sole purpose — is unsustainable for either profit or nonprofit theaters in an era of funding cutbacks when the Internet, iPods, cell-phone cameras and flat-screen TVs have added to the already tempting distractions of California’s beaches, mountains and amusement parks.”

London’s National Theatre is considering adding Sunday performances. “The NT says the move reflects a growing recognition within the industry that audiences expect opening times to fit around work and family life.”

“Sincerity isn’t skill, and it isn’t knowledge. The feelings that The Color Purple may arouse in you don’t disguise the fact that they’ve been gotten in a comparatively crude and unimaginative manner. The disheartening lack of quality in the material dilutes the quality of feeling with which it’s being put over and makes the meanings behind it look questionable as well.”

More colleges are producing more actors than ever and the job market is stagnating. So schools are adapting. “Instead of the pure education-of-an-artist approach that dominated in undergraduate acting programs through the 1980’s and 90’s, there is now a growing emphasis on helping students find work in a famously competitive field. The result is something of a confounding dilemma both for educators and for some professionals, who fear, on the one hand, that vocational training robs student actors of necessary artistic exploration and, on the other, that schools have to do a better job of preparing actors for the grim realities of professional life.”