Linford Hudson worked at London’s Palladium Theatre for more than 50 years, and he just got a special Olivier award for his skill. “I was born to do the followspot,” he says. ‘A lot of people try and fail. It takes a lot of finesse and feeling. I don’t use sights.” And he has stories. Ask him about the time Bette Midler flashed him, but don’t ask him about the parties Sammy Davis Jr. threw for cast and crew alike. – The Stage (UK)
Category: theatre
American Theatre Leadership Is Diversifying. Will It Help Diversify Audiences?
Recent turnover in some of America’s most important theatres has helped diversify leadership. And there’s work to diversify boards and staff. But there’s a long way to go to expand the audience. – The Stage
425 Years Of ‘Titus Andronicus’ In Popular Culture
“The image of a mother made to eat her children was hard to shake, and a couple of decades after its 1594 premiere, artists had already begun to appropriate — O.K., fine, cannibalize — its plot for uses comic, tragic and savagely satirical. Its blood has spattered everything from bootleg Dutch tragedies to Japanese anime to Game of Thrones. Directors have staged it with almost no gore and with nothing but gore. It has been modernized, musicalized, performed by puppets and adapted to Kabuki. Stephen K. Bannon sent it into space.” – The New York Times
The Scripts From The Translating-Shakespeare-Into-Modern-English Project Are In
“Four years ago, the news that the Oregon Shakespeare Festival had commissioned modern English ‘translations’ of all of Shakespeare’s plays drew headlines, and no small alarm, from purists who saw it as a kind of literary vandalism. Now, the public will have a chance to judge the full fruits of the effort for itself” as all 39 scripts get public readings in June in New York. Jennifer Schuessler looks into the progress of the project and the guidelines the commissioned playwrights followed. – The New York Times
How ‘Hadestown’ Went From Community Theater To Concept Album To Broadway
The Anaïs Mitchell/Rachel Chavkin musical about two Greek myths — Persephone’s abduction by Hades and Orpheus’s (failed) rescue of Euridice — traveled a long road that went from Vermont and New Hampshire to Manhattan’s East Village to Edmonton to London (the National Theatre, no less) to Braodway. “Along the way [Mitchell and Chavkin] experimented with everything from the set design, to the size of the cast, to their way of thinking about the main characters’ roles in the story.” – Vulture
Canada’s National Arts Centre Indigenous Theatre Endangered After Government Turns Down Funding
Two years ago the National Arts Centre decided to add a company devoted to indigenous theatre to its french and english theatres. But the Canadian government has turned down a $3.5 million funding request and the plan is now in jeopardy. – Toronto Star
Theatre Critic Nancy Pelosi: Broadway’s “Mockingbird” Is A Play For Our Time
“In this play, we learn something so important: decency. In our country right now there’s a craving for decency, and this play is about that,” Pelosi said at an event at the Library of Congress hosted by the Educational Theatre Association. – The Hill
New Wave Of Young Black Playwrights Bring Jolt Of Energy To American Theater
“An extraordinary new talent convergence is riveting the contemporary American stage. … All in their early 20s to mid-30s, [these playwrights] are newly asserting their ownership of an ongoing American conversation about racial identity, one that has taken on urgency in the race-baiting age of Trumpism.” – The Washington Post
This Playwright’s Subjects Are So Explosive That His Plays Are Regularly Banned And He Fends Off Death Threats With Ice Cream
Abhishek Majumdar has written a trilogy of dramas about the decades-long cycle of violence in Kashmir, another about Hindu nationalism, and one about the 2008 riots in Tibet’s capital. That last is the one that got him the death threat, and London’s Royal Court Theatre cancelled a production of it last year under apparent pressure from the Chinese government. (The Royal Court was shamed into reversing that decision, and the play is about to open there.) – The Guardian
Frank Rich Goes To A New Production Of “Oklahoma” And Is Taken Aback By The America It Portrays
The musical was groundbreaking for its time (for many reasons), and portrayed an optimistic version of America. A new production startles Rich into a reevaluation and the discovery of its darker side of that America. – New York Magazine