Category: theatre

Theatre Calgary has a new director. He’s “Dennis Garnhum, 37, a London, Ont., native who has been living in New York for the past three years, is a chameleon director whose résumé includes musical theatre, opera, American and British political drama, murder mysteries and a number of new Canadian plays.”

“Maybe it’s the air-conditioning or the advertising or even – imagine this – the entertainment, but Broadway is sizzling. Eight weeks into the 2005-6 season and despite an oppressive blanket of heat flopped over the city, box-office sales are up by 9 percent over last summer, with a 5 percent increase in attendance, making for the industry’s fastest start ever… The attendance and box-office figures, which include sales through Sunday, put Broadway on track to set records for both attendance and gross sales, good news for an industry that saw negligible growth last season. Bullish Broadway executives say much of the summertime boom is the result of a current crush of tourism, including many overseas travelers drawn to the United States by the weak dollar.”

“These are awkward times for provocative playwright Dennis Kelly. In May, he had a play at London’s Hampstead Theatre with the controversial title Osama the Hero, and now his new one, After the End, shows what happens in the wake of a terrorist nuclear attack… Does Kelly have any doubts about writing about a terror attack now that one has happened? ‘The bombs in London are so recent that I’m not really sure what I feel. The play is about how we behave, and it argues that terrorism, no matter how terrible, cannot change our society – only we can do that. It’s us that choose to become monsters – terrorists can’t make us monsters.'”

“American Equity, the professional actors’ union, has invoked contractual and financial barriers that make it impossible for Stephen Rea, noted Irish film and stage actor, to appear in Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theatre’s long-advertised world premiere of “Henry” by Irish playwright Thomas Kilroy… The impasse between Equity and PICT over Rea was because the Small Professional Theatre contract with Equity under which PICT operates states, ‘Non-resident aliens shall not be employed in Small Professional Theatre productions.'”

It’s not easy being the son of a legend. Just ask Adam Davidson, who has started to carve out a name for himself in the L.A. theatre scene, even as he simultaneously attempts to slip out from under the considerable shadow cast by his father, Gordon, head of the Center Theater Group for 40 years.

England’s Arts Council has denied a funding request for a new dedicated black theatre called Talawa, setting off a storm of criticism from the company. But not everyone is sure the council’s decision will hurt black theatre in London. “While nobody in the black theatre community… is glad to see the project fail, and all express concern about Talawa’s now uncertain future, many see this as an opportunity to reassess the needs of black theatre in Britain when its profile is undergoing significant changes.”

“Stephanie Riso, a co-founder and managing director of Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theatre, will leave the company in January to pursue her career as a performer and composer… Riso co-founded PICT with the company’s artistic director, Andrew Paul, in 1996.”

As it turns out, nobody in New York is much interested in the life of Suzanne Somers. The former sitcom star spent $4 million to bring her autobiographical, one-woman show to Broadway, where it received scathing reviews, flopped hard and closed after less than a week. A further planned tour to Toronto has been scrapped as well.

The problem with running an avant garde theatre, of course, is defining success. Are you successful if your product is so cutting edge that audiences stay away in droves? Or if you are so convincing that you bring in the crowds despite the difficult content? And once you’ve been discovered by the public, how do you keep your edge in the face of the encroachment of the mainstream theatre world? If you’re L.A.’s scrappy City Garage, you just keep right on plugging away like you always have, worrying about the art more than the bottom line, and raising the theatrical standard to a level far higher than the average experimental troupe. “Indeed, City Garage’s auteurist single-mindedness, particularly as applied to its original works and adaptations, is unique in Los Angeles theater, perhaps in the country.”

London’s Old Vic is launching an ambitious project to find the 50 most talented young people in the city’s theatre scene, and to give them exactly 24 hours to do something impressive with their moment in the spotlight. “Over the span of a single night and day teams that have never worked together before must write, produce and perform plays. At 10pm the ‘companies’, each consisting of a playwright, a director, a producer and a handful of actors, is put together for the first time. The playwrights have all night to come up with a script; cast and crew have from 7am to rehearse it and learn their lines, before curtain up at 8pm. It’s terrifying for old timers, let alone newcomers. Yet the practice of creating a piece of theatre in the crucible of such a short time is not only invigorating but also immensely instructive.”