Category: theatre

No one of the musicals nominated for this year’s best musical Tony has all the ingredients of the great show. “If life were fair or the Tonys were smart, next Sunday’s awards would probably be split among the four. We all know that isn’t the way of the world, but just for the sake of argument, here’s the way it should go. ”Spamalot” would win best musical, ”Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” best score, ”The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” best book, and ”The Light in the Piazza” best set design and actress.”

Departing director George C. Wolfe on his role leading the Public Theatre: “Very frequently I told people I felt like I was the whore standing in the window in Amsterdam luring certain kinds of artists and luring money into the building.”

Seattle-area theatres are being told by the state that they can’t treat actors as contractors, and must pay them as employees. “At least three theater companies in the region say they are facing fines from the state Employment Security Department. And dozens of others — along with the broader arts community — are worrying about what the change could mean.”

The New School’s 11-year association with the Actors Studio comes to an end as the school announces it is starting a new graduatee drama school. The decision to break with the Actors Studio is “a simple move toward more oversight and control over the program’s curriculum and staffing. The new acting program will be headed by Robert LuPone, who was nominated for a Tony Award as an actor in “A Chorus Line” on Broadway and was a producer of last year’s Tony-nominated play “Frozen.” He’ll be joined by Arthur Penn, the director of the original 1959 Broadway production of “The Miracle Worker” and of the 1962 film version, who will act as the school’s artistic adviser.

“Broadway touring shows sod 12.4 million tickets during the 2003-04 season and earned over $700 million in revenue. Nearly 200 theatres nationwide housed the Broadway tours for engagements usually ranging from a few days to a few weeks. The 12.4 million tickets matches the number sold during the previous season and ranks as the highest total since the 1998-99 season.”

“One week after the box office opened to the public, the [Toronto-based] world premiere stage production of The Lord of the Rings has generated $7 million in sales. Allowing for the $3 million (all figures Cdn) in group sales and the $1 million in Internet advance, that still means nearly $500,000 worth of tickets have been sold every day, an astonishing figure for a show that doesn’t open for nine months.”

The Minneapolis-based Children’s Theatre Company, which won the Tony Award for best regional company in 2003, has completed a $27 million capital campaign four months ahead of schedule, and announced a special “encore” campaign aimed at raising another $3 million by year’s end. The fundraising has been largely targeted to cover construction costs on CTC’s new expanded home, designed by architect Michael Graves. The extra fund drive will seek to bolster the company’s endowment.

Los Angeles’ Center Theatre Group is killing off its programs to develop new plays and playwrights. “Artistic director Michael Ritchie, who took the helm of Los Angeles’ flagship theater company in January, is eliminating the Other Voices program for disabled artists — a Taper fixture since 1982 — plus the Latino, Asian American and African American labs established from 1993 to 1995.”

It’s the Drury Lane Water Tower. “The theater auditorium is a cozy midsized house, its 17 rows of seats arranged to suit a gently curved proscenium stage. Sightlines and legroom are excellent, though it’s not a wide-open-spaces facility; you’re aware of impresario De Santis doing everything he can to maximize the number of seats within a fixed footprint surrounded by other Water Tower Place tenants.”

Two pieces of black British theatre are playing in London’s West End. “There are now three generations of Afro-Caribbeans in Britain, a cultural shift that the establishment can no longer afford not to invest in. These new audiences and theatre practitioners have experiences that are meaningful to everyone, not just to specific cultural groups.”