Category: theatre

As Broadway pits have shrunk to make room for theater seating, musicians (especially those who play bulky instruments) have increasingly found themselves consigned to remote locations, following a conductor on a monitor and playing into a microphone. Not that they’re complaining – not being in the pit means wearing whatever you want to work and getting to read or talk to friends between cues. Besides, as one Broadway music director points out, “Once you’re hearing an orchestra solely through a sound system instead of hearing them acoustically, then it doesn’t really matter where they are.”

Actor and playwright Sam Shepard is the latest in the ever-extending line of theater types who would like a piece of President Bush, and he’d like it before November 2, if possible. That’s awfully short notice in the New York theatre world, but Shepard’s new play found a willing short-order team at Manhattan’s New School University. Performances of The God of Hell, which Shepard describes as “a takeoff on Republican fascism, in a way,” begin four days before the presidential election.

London’s new fall theatre season is going a long way towards making everyone forget about last year’s dismal crop of plays, and the only major flop so far is the high-profile production shepharded by Hollywood’s Kevin Spacey. David Hare’s anti-Bush/Blair dramedy Stuff Happens is the runaway hit of the season, of course, but overall, London stages are featuring productions heavy on substance and long on buzz.

“It’s easy to forget that it’s only 18 months since Nicholas Hytner took over the [UK’s] National Theatre. The territory he’s opened up has been extensive and the dividends tremendous, in financial as well as artistic terms: record ticket sales; a steady stream of first-time attenders (encouraged by the cheap seats policy); audience numbers which rose by 150,000 to 750,000… Now Hytner is taking one step further. For the first time, the National has set out to develop a relationship with one of the young independent companies which has been revolutionising the idea of what the theatre can be.”

With the death of Joseph Papp in 1991, there was much hand-wringing over where the next great impresario would come from. But given the current climate of arts support in the U.S., individuals who can be artistic leader, political mastermind, and money magnet all at the same time are seeming like an outdated pipe dream to many theatres. “For whomever’s sake, art is expensive and (according to most artists) radically undersupported. This has only worsened in recent years. ‘The bedrock of municipal and civic responsibility’ on which Papp (sometimes just hopefully) based his enterprise has largely eroded… Given the difficult climate, search committees at some cultural institutions have begun to feel they may be better off with skilled managers instead of star impresarios.”

Applause Theatre and Cinema Books has filled a unique niche in the publishing world for two decades, boasting a catalog of 400 titles and releasing an average of 20 new books per year. For its entire existence, Applause has been under the care of one man – Glenn Young – for whom the business was always more about love of theatre than making a profit. But it’s tough staying afloat in today’s publishing world, and Young was forced to sell out to the Hal Leonard Corporation a couple of years back. Now, the only boss Applause has ever had is exiting stage left.

In the U.S., “the largest new subject for theater is the complex of issues related to 9/11 and homeland security, in plays that have percolated through the development pipeline for three years. Arriving now, they inevitably impinge on electoral politics. But theater always does this: No matter how much it aspires to the ‘universal,’ it is grounded in real life, which pushes it toward politics.” Is theater right now any more political than usual, or is it just the audience that perceives it that way?

The world of British theatre has been taken with the theme of rebellion against authority for some time now. But 18 months after the British/American invasion of Iraq, “polite skepticism and goofy satire are shading into something closer to wall-to-wall paranoia.” From multiple plays which deal blatantly with current global events to a revival of One Through Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, the productions currently on display in London’s West End reveal a distinctly dark and seditious mood that is obviously striking a chord with the UK’s theatregoers.

“The festival idea … has almost irresistible selling points: There is strength in numbers. There is spice in variety. There is built-in word-of-mouth. There may be more outlay, true, but there may be more revenue.” But are there simply too many festivals?

Liam Neeson has joined those fighting to save one of Belfast’s oldest theaters, the Group Theatre, where many of Northern Ireland’s leading actors got their start.