Category: theatre

By Accident, Howard Sherman Finds Himself In A Theatre Audience Of Young People. It Changed His Experience

“Most theatre professionals recognise the value of bringing in younger patrons, especially those seeking careers in the theatre, as essential to the continued welfare of the industry. But there’s another benefit to bringing in such a group – that it has the effect of improving the vitality of the entire audience, broadening the range of responses to the work and breaking down the homogeneity that too often affects that essential element of theatre: the audience.” – The Stage

15 Ways Of Looking At What America Will Be Like In 2024

“We asked 15 playwrights to imagine America five years into the future” — among them Lynn Nottage, Terrence McNally, Jeremy O. Harris, Adam Rapp, Jocelyn Bioh, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Nassim Soleimanpour, and Paul Rudnick. “Alongside six of the plays you’ll find videos in which actors including Nathan Lane, Kerry Washington and John Lithgow perform the works.” – T — The New York Times Style Magazine

America’s Most Famous Constitutional Scholar Meets The Creator/Star Of ‘What The Constitution Means To Me’

Laurence Tribe, who’s taught at Harvard Law School for 50 years and is familiar to many a public TV and radio listener, went to see Heidi Schreck’s hit theater piece in its pre-Broadway run in Manhattan’s East Village. He loved it, and he wanted to meet her. And so he did, after a Broadway performance of the show last month. Journalist Peter Marks got to come along. – The Washington Post

‘The Jungle’ — Dramatizing A Crucial Period In The Life Of The Notorious Calais Refugee Camp

The play, written by two young Englishmen (Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson) who went to live for several months in the camp and set up a makeshift-but-busy performing arts center there, shows what happened in the winter of 2016 after French authorities issued an order that the southern half of the camp — by that point, home to 3,500 people, several mosques and churches, restaurants, and a school — was to be evacuated and destroyed. – The New York Review of Books

Hip-Hop Playwrights Turn Their Keyboards Toward Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Justin Bieber, And ‘Pygmalion’

A Q&A with Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm, author of P.Y.G., or The Mis-Edumacation of Dorian Belle (two black rappers are Henry Higgins to Bieber figure’s Eliza Doolittle), and Psalmayene 24, who wrote Les Deux Noirs: Notes on Notes of A Native Son (Wright as Jay-Z and Baldwin as Kanye). – The Washington Post

‘No More All-White Seasons’ — Activists Slam One Of Philly’s Largest Nonprofit Theatres

“Titled ‘No More All-White Seasons,’ the [open letter on Facebook] praises the [Philadelphia Theatre Company’s] current 2018-19 season for its diversity — then condemns a lack of it in the theater’s upcoming 2019-20 season [of three plays]. In the process, it points to the sometimes acrimonious diversity debate underway at local and national theaters.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer

This Theatre Asks Audience Members To Help Plan Its Programming

“For the last year or so, the Theatre Royal [in the English city of York] has not only been asking its audience what they think of their shows – it has invited them to make programming decisions themselves.” Visionari, a group of about 20 (old) Yorkers assembled by Theatre Royal, “[have] attended workshops, met everyone from the artistic director to the graphic designer, and taken responsibility for a week-long festival in the studio.” – The Guardian

How Grown-Up Actors Pull Off Playing Children Onstage

“Sometimes adults play children’s roles for absurd effect … but the bigger challenge is pulling off realism, creating the illusion that the adults onstage are plausible as the much-younger characters — a feat accomplished by two of Broadway’s biggest hits, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and To Kill a Mockingbird.” Stuart Miller talks to the performers in question about how they do it. – Los Angeles Times