Category: theatre

Dallas theatres seem to be making a rush to produce “mainstream” theatre. “The premise seems to be that a lot of theatrical material has ventured away from the concerns of average folks. The trouble is, there’s not a lot of consensus about where the mainstream is. What seems like the broad channel to some might be a stagnant eddy to others.”

A production of the mega-musical Phantom of the Opera is taking up permanent residence in Las Vegas. “Clear Channel Entertainment, a unit of Clear Channel Communications (CCU), will produce a 90-minute, $35 million version of the Tony Award-winning musical, set to open in the spring of 2006 at the Venetian hotel-casino.”

“This year at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, a host of non-actors is taking to the stage, with journalists and musicians, cartoonists and restaurateurs spilling beans, not about their personal lives, but about how they earn a living.”

“Founded in 1948 by Judith Malina and Julian Beck, the Living Theatre is so much a part of American theater history that many people are surprised to learn it’s still active. It is, though. The company that pioneered off-off-Broadway performance in the ’50s, and became an icon of experimental techniques and radical anarcho- pacifist commitment in the ’60s, is still going strong — in both Italy and New York, where it’s building a new theater, and conducting political-theater workshops all over the world.”

“British judges rarely inject themselves into politics. Even more rarely do they directly attack foreign governments. But on Nov. 23, 2003, Lord Justice Johan Steyn, Britain’s third-highest ranking judge… delivered a blistering attack on what he saw as the ‘arbitrariness’ of the detentions and procedures involving international individuals held by the United States military at the naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba… At the time, the judge had no idea that, in less than six months, his words would be turned into the moral center of an intensely provocative, artfully conceived and rapturously reviewed piece of modern political theater, written, rehearsed and produced all in a matter of weeks.”

As a theater town, Chicago may currently be unrivaled in the U.S. But it’s a fair bet that even the savvy Chicagoans have never seen anything quite like 500 Clown, a three-person (yes, only three) troupe dedicated to presenting serious theater with serious, well, clownage. The company’s first show was 500 Clown Macbeth, which turned Shakespeare on its head and wowed the critics in the process. “With a manic brio, the show challenged past assumptions about the limits of on-stage violence and what director Leslie Buxbaum Danzig has dubbed ‘clown-theater,’ with equal emphasis on both words.”

Attendance at theaters in London’s famous West End are at a record low point, and at least one British arts executive is blaming the district’s overly careful and conservative selection of shows. But the problem may have as much to do with a lack of consistency at the theaters, and with the fact that few shows are being given a chance to dig in and establish an audience base.

The Royal Shakespeare Company has abandoned its plans to demolish its theater in Stratford-Upon-Avon as part of a major renovation project. The 72-year-old Royal Shakespeare Theatre had been slated for possible demolition under the RSC’s initial plan, but public opposition convinced the company to backpedal.

Ontario’s Shaw and Stratford Festivals have been hit hard by a decline in tourism in the past two years, what with SARS and a surging Canadian dollar. So the Ontario government is stepping in to help, with hundreds of thousands of dollars in promotional assistance.

Though he’s been dead for 40 years, Cole Porter has continued to have a huge influemce on music. “In a sense, Porter has never been away, though his reputation rests mainly on songs he wrote between the late 1920s and late 1940s, and he died in 1964 at age 73. He’s remained an icon in cabaret music and gay culture by virtue of both his music and his glamorous, if contradictory, lifestyle.”