Category: theatre

Robert Trussell has a problem with a Kansas City shakespeare festival’s casting. “Once again, the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival has assembled an all-white cast for its annual production, which this year is “Much Ado About Nothing.” The festival hasn’t indulged in monochrome casting every year, of course, but minority representation has been a troubling issue since the organization was founded in 1993. I have no doubt that I will hear from a few readers who see this as, well, much ado about nothing. I’ve heard all the arguments before. They usually go something like this: The actors at the Globe Theatre were white, so what’s the problem? There were no Asian, African or Hispanic actors in Shakespeare’s day, so why are you shoving diversity down our throats?”

Broadway’s “The Odd Couple” has already sold $18 million in advance sale. That leaves few tickets available when they go on sale this week to the general public. “The type of advance sale that “The Odd Couple” offered through American Express is increasingly popular among producers, guaranteeing money in the bank long before the reviews come in. It also cuts down on costs, reducing the need to advertise after the show opens.”

It’s been fashionable for American movie and TV stars to try their hand at theatre in London’s West End. But “their performances refute the seemingly self-evident principle that human flesh generates more heat than celluloid. These actors are all playing the sorts of irresistible sexual enchanters from whom a wink is as good as a kiss.” But what works on screen doesn’t necessarily translate to the stage.

Why isn’t American theatre criticism more of a “companion piece” than a Consumer Reports verdict, wonders Anna Shapiro. “Two things baffle me and make me angry, and they are this: When somebody writes about a new play and says the play is beautiful; the production is beautiful; the performances are stunning; the directing is weak. That makes me angry. But not as angry as: The direction is beautiful; the production is wonderful; the actors are amazing; the play is weak. That makes even less sense to me.”

“For the last quarter century, for five days every summer, the League of Washington Theatres has held an open audition — a cattle call for local actors. Eight hundred or so people get to shovel their head shots, résumés and 90-second monologues into the faces of auditors from a couple of casting agencies and 54 local theaters (more precisely, 53 local theaters and, for some reason, the Actors Theatre of Louisville). Your odds aren’t great, but sometimes people get discovered and cast in meaty roles.”

Ten thousand children from 400 schools in the UK are taking part is a mass shakespeare event. “The event – One Night of Shakespeare – is a collaboration between the BBC and Shakespeare Schools Festival. Organisers hope to enter the Guinness World Records for the most performances of Shakespeare on one night. Pupils will perform their own interpretations of shortened versions of some of Shakespeare’s plays, directed and produced by their teachers.”

Shakespeare is everywhere in the summer. Outside in the parks of America. “How did a nation come to expect free Shakespeare? And why must we watch it in the park? This peculiar mandate can be traced to Joseph Papp, the mercurial producer who founded a Shakespeare workshop in New York’s Lower East Side in 1954.”

“Maverick playwright and auteur director Peter Hinton has been named the new artistic director of the [Ottawa-based] National Arts Centre’s English Theatre… One of this country’s most innovative theatre artists, Hinton has directed more than 70 new plays, classical texts and operas, and championed the works of a range of Canadian playwrights in Toronto, Vancouver and, more recently, Montreal, where he was dramaturge-in-residence at Playwright’s Workshop Montreal.”

Miami has a new children’s theatre company, and it’s no small-time operation. “The PlayGround Theatre for Young Audiences has been up and running only since April, but it has already made a deal for its own permanent playground. The ambitious young company has taken over the lease on the long-struggling Shores Performing Arts Theater, a spacious former movie house,” thanks to a major grant from a foundation with family ties to the company’s founders. In addition to presenting serious children’s theatre, the company intends to offer theatre classes and summer camp experiences to kids throughout South Florida.

Columbia University has announced a new fellowship program for theatre students. “Producer Harold Prince said the new program, which will invite one or two students a year to follow a specific study and producing plan, was created for fledgling producers who ‘want to nurture new work, encourage new artists, and take chances’ but ‘recognize that the current climate on Broadway makes that almost impossible.’ The Fellowship “will emphasize that the creative producer’s role is to be the instigator, the collaborator, and the leader who gets art on the stage and to the public.”