Category: theatre

A New York Times critic recently penned an article extolling the virtues of the intermission-less one-act play, concluding that one-acts offer a “purer” theatrical experience. Christopher Rawson doesn’t dislike one-act plays, but doesn’t agree that they are necessarily superior to more traditional two- and three-act fare. “What’s pure about theater? That’s like insisting all churches be white. The proof is really in the individual pudding. And although I understand [the critic’s] irritation at New York intermissions, where theaters are crowded with strangers, a Pittsburgh intermission still has social pleasures that need not conflict with the play.”

“About 2,500 miles to the west of Times Square, another major U.S. tourist Mecca, Las Vegas, is now being referred to by some as “Broadway West.” Could a growing live-theatre industry in this glittery playground for gambling aficionados and lovers of flashy thrills pose a threat to the Great White Way and to the national theatre-tour market?”

These days in London’s West End, musicals outnumber straight plays. Where did the plays go? “It’s not that the audience for drama has necessarily declined – just that people now have plenty of other places to see it. In 1954, you went to see a play in the West End or stayed at home. Now, subsidised venues such as the National, the Barbican, the refurbished Royal Court, the Donmar, the Almeida, and Hampstead, as well as the vast number of fringe theatres in pubs and other found locations soak up many of the play-going audience.”

Forty years after Mary Poppins flew on to the silver screen, the character is being revived and revised in a new version for the stage. New music. New attitudes. But will the beloved Julie Andrews character translate to the modern stage?

Three years ago theatre was banned in Afghanistan. Now there’s a national theatre festival – and even a play written by a woman, “The current revival is taking place in a climate of creative freedom. Many plays at the national festival have themes that are daring in Afghanistan – star-crossed lovers, hypocritical mullahs, corrupt provincial governors, smugglers of ancient cultural artifacts, and drug lords. But Afghans have not forgotten how to laugh – several plays take digs at doctors, policemen, and busybodies.”

Disney is rehearsing a new theatrical venture, and it’s decidedly different from the usual Disney fare. “On the Record represents an entirely different kind of project for Disney Theatricals — it’s cheap to do. And it relies utterly and completely on the public’s love for existing Disney songs such as “Under the Sea” or “A Spoonful of Sugar.” That affection — and familiarity — is both global and also widely found in smaller and midsize American cities that might never get to see “The Lion King” in all its glory. It’s a growing market for Disney Theatricals, which had tended to stay concentrated in the major theatrical centers. But that’s not how Wal-Mart made its money — ubiquity is profitable.”

It’s only fitting that with “Pacific Overtures,” which opens Thursday at Studio 54, Amon Miyamoto becomes the first Japanese citizen ever to direct a Broadway production. Like him, the show is an unusual and rather startling crosscultural experiment…

Boston playwright Patrick Gabridge has started “a 30-day online networking/marketing support group for playwrights” which encourages the participants to pool their knowledge of the business. “The Binge aims to create a sense of community. The group will tell their peers that this theater is amateurish, that director is hot. If a playwright can’t travel to another city to see the production of his or her play, other Bingers who live in that city will attend and report back. Aside from the information, contacts, and encouragement, the group provides the best kind of peer pressure: seeing other people get their plays done because they’ve taken the footsteps.”

Music publisher BMI is the force behind Broadway’s most successful creative workshop, but the group flies so far below the cultural radar that even most theater aficionados are unaware of its existence. “The workshop is little known except among music-makers, but to those in that rarefied world, it is the Harvard of show tunes, helping develop a string of hits that include A Chorus Line, Nine, Little Shop of Horrors and Urinetown… Every year, 30 to 40 aspiring lyricists and composers are selected for the highly competitive two-year course devoted to fundamentals. The third year (which students take again and again) is devoted to projects in development and is by invitation only.”