Category: theatre

Maybe the Edinburgh Fringe Festival isn’t as cool as it once was? Some artists seem to think so. “As a booming fringe kicks off this weekend and finally threatens to overtake completely the official annual arts festival, there are signs of a dangerous split. Prompted by a dislike of the slick public relations operations, bureaucracy and high admission prices, many influential performers are striking out to create a radical, cool ‘fringe of the fringe’.”

The first Playwrights Showcase of the Western Region opens this week in Denver. “It will be by far the largest and most significant gathering of playwrights ever held in this part of the country. The three-day, nine-session festival represents 18 states – virtually the entire country west of the Mississippi. Despite a paltry budget and little marketing support,” the event will feature some of the American West’s biggest names in theatre.

A panel of theatre professionals gathers in Dallas to discuss the state of theatre. There was lots of gloom, with warnings that new ideas to revitalize have to be found. “We’re sadly mistaken if we think we’ll recover with the economy. … A lot of this is going to be about finding a different path.”

Ontario’s Stratford Festival is due to announce its new season soon. One of the plays under strong consideration was written by the theatre critic at Canada’s National Post newspaper. So what will this mean for critic/playwright Robert Cushman? “It’s an answered prayer for any dramatist, of course. Lights! Attention! Semi-fame! But if so, will the National Post ask Cushman to step aside as the newspaper’s Stratford critic for the 2005 season? That’s an onerous demand for a freelance writer with family to support and whose income comes story by story, but it’s one the Post and its scribe likely will have to consider.”

So your teenager wants to be a Broadway star, but you’re going nuts listening to him belting out Andrew Lloyd Webber tunes up in his room? Pack him off to Camp Broadway! The teen-oriented summer program began as an informal seminar created by a theater vet to entertain her nieces, and “has grown into a national organization, working year-round in cities across the country, including Tempe, Ariz.; Jacksonville, Fla.; and Detroit. For the price of admission… the campers get classes in singing, dancing and acting; workshops with Broadway professionals… a ticket to a Broadway show and a private discussion after the show with its stars.”

“Citing poor ticket sales during the week of the Republican National Convention, two more Broadway shows have announced that they will close to avoid a dismal week of business. ‘Caroline, or Change,’ the new musical by Tony Kushner, which was nominated for six Tony Awards this year, will close on Aug. 29, the day before the start of the convention, and ‘Frozen,’ a play by Bryony Lavery that was nominated for four Tonys, will end its run on Aug. 22, the shows’ producers said yesterday.”

“As it begins its second decade, the Minnesota Fringe Festival finds itself in fine financial fettle, bigger than ever, a popular launching pad for new shows and an institutional fixture in the Twin Cities theater scene. It might be difficult to recall that in 1994, 4,630 tickets were sold to 315 performances. That meant an average show was attended by barely 15 people. The 10-day event was put on for $35,000. Last year, the Fringe sold 40,500 seats to 783 performances, an average of about 52 people per show. Debt-free, the organization operates on an annual budget of $550,000, including an anticipated box office this year of $250,000.”

The hottest ticket at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival is a new stage adaptation of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The show is already set to move to London’s West End once the Fringe run is over. But the production has been in trouble from the start: director Guy Masterson quit three weeks into rehearsals, headliner Christian Slater came down with a nasty case of chicken pox, and opening night has already been delayed.

A stage version of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” may be headed for Broadway. Roger Waters is currently working on the book, and will arrange and orchestrate the music for the show, which will be produced by Harvey and Bob Weinstein of Miramax.

A recently unearthed play by Horton Foote has been hauled out of a desk drawer and thrust onto a New York stage this summer for its first “major commercial production.” But unlike many unpublished works by well-known playwrights, which tend to be underdeveloped and youthfully insecure, Foote’s work, which received its premiere at Whittier College in 2000, is a mature play, written when the author had already achieved a great deal of critical acclaim. “The reason it has not been staged before has more to do with his gentlemanly sense of propriety than any reluctance by a producer to stage it.”