Category: theatre

Hollywood actor Kevin Spacey, who is spending part of his time these days as the artistic director of London’s Old Vic, is instituting a series of recorded messages before performances instructing audiences to turn off their phones, stop crinkling candy wrappers, and just generally sit still and keep quiet. Such admonitions have become common in the U.S., but some in London’s theatre world have a longer memory: “The behaviour of modern audiences is dramatically better than in previous centuries, when armed guards were frequently posted to stop the mob in the pit from storming the stage, and performers were sometimes knocked out by objects thrown from the gallery.”

“Leah Cooper, who helped the Minnesota Fringe Festival become one of the largest such events in the country, will step down as executive director next August, following the 2005 festival. Cooper announced her departure after a four-year tenure in which the attendance has grown 72 percent. The 2004 festival hosted a record 902 performances of 175 shows at 24 venues, drawing more than 50,000 people. Cooper also was instrumental in professionalizing the management of the festival and in bringing stability to the fast-growing festival’s financial organization.”

Philadelphia’s Freedom Theater has cancelled three of the four shows it planned to mount this season, citing the pressures of a $4 million debt. The company, which is “one of the city’s foremost African American cultural organizations”, has struggled to stay solvent while dealing with cost overruns on the construction and maintenance of its 300-seat theater, which opened five years ago. The theater plans to resume its full schedule in fall 2005.

“Mark Rylance, who has worked as the artistic director of London’s Shakespeare’s Globe Theater since 1996 and appeared in many of its plays, is planning to leave the post at the end of next year.”

The New York Fringe Festival had a rough year financially. But then, the festival opened and produced “record ticket sales for this year’s 17-day, 200-production endeavor, up at least 20% from 2003. If the numbers hold, it would be a record high for the eight-year-old festival.”

Yes, the Royal Shakespeare Company has revived its fortunes in the space of a season. But the best things about the revived RSC under new director Michael Boyd, are artistic. “The best thing about his plan is its intellectual coherence. He took over a company which was fitfully brilliant, but which lacked purpose. While this year’s season of Shakespeare’s tragedies and Spanish Golden Age drama has been artistically diverse, it has given the company an identifiable style, conspicuous for its narrative and linguistic clarity.”

The theatre preview is an odd beast. “Like so much, good and bad, in British culture, the preview is essentially an American import. The American theatre economy can sustain this lengthy period of what is effectively public rehearsal because it has a huge subscriber base. But why on earth should audiences be asked to watch something which in some sense is not deemed ready for public consumption? At best, they run the risk of being short-changed, especially if preview tickets are charged at the same price as those after the official opening.”

Dublin’s Abbey Theatre is hurting: “For its 100th birthday the Abbey announced a sprawling yearlong program of plays by unfurling an enormous banner that spans the width of its facade – almost a whole city block – asking the public, “What will you see?” Judging by the affairs that now threaten to obscure the theater’s centenary, the answer has clearly been “not much.” Much of the blame for the Abbey’s malaise has been laid at the foot of its artistic director, Ben Barnes, who designed the centenary program and has been criticized for an aloof and distant management style. He has made public his desire to leave the theater and move to Canada when his contract expires in December next year.”

Dublin’s Abbey Theatre has dug itself a deep hole. “The theatre, which produced playwrights from Sean O’Casey to Brian Friel, has seen the centenary of its foundation by WB Yeats marred by the disastrous box office of its anniversary programme, a deficit of almost €2.5m (£1.7m), a sudden plan to axe a third of its staff, and a decaying building that is a health hazard. A bitter email by its artistic director, Ben Barnes, has stoked tensions.”

Ben Barnes, artistic director of Dublin’s troubled Abbey Theatre, has found himself in yet another emergency meeting, this time over an e-mail he sent to international colleagues, distancing himself from his theater’s difficulties. But, having apologized for and retracted the criticisms he made of the theater’s board in the e-mail, he remains in his job.