Category: theatre

“Attendance is up and the number of productions has risen by 15 percent at nonprofit theaters nationwide over the past three years. At the same time, more than half of the country’s noncommercial theater companies have been operating in the red, according to a Theatre Communications Group study.”

how does a man with no stage training and a poor command of the English language wind up playing Hamlet in the middle of Hollywood? And what marketing genius suggested $35,000 billboards to advertise an 85-seat theater production? Yet, given such extravagant publicity, why didn’t Hamlet learn his lines? What were they thinking? All of them?”

The Provincetown Repertory Theater finally has a home of its own at the tip of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, and artistic director Lynda Sturner wanted to create something “spectacular” to celebrate its opening. So she signed on 25 playwrights to write a “chain” play. Each writer wrote a scene, evolving the stories and characters as they went along.

A Toronto production of the “Terracotta Warriors”, a $3.5-million “action-musical,” is packing the theatre with ethnic Chinese patrons. “The production is “part of a new push by theatre producers to target niche ethnic markets in cities (Toronto, London, New York) where culturally diverse populations abound but theatrical representations of them remain scarce. Ethnic marketing is not a new concept itself but its application to theatre is. To put it bluntly: Blacks are a desired and untapped demographic. So are the Chinese and the South Asians.”

The De Vere Society is marking the 400th anniversary of the death of Elizabethan nobleman Edward de Vere. Who was de Vere? The group claims he was the “real” Shakespeare, and claims all sorts of evidence. But other Shakespeare experts dismiss the claims: “They have quite a large following. Like every organisation of this kind, they ignore the basic evidence and construct conspiracy theories.”

Director Peter Hall says that plays are now so difficult to produce in London’s West End, that producers are afraid to mount new plays without a big-name US star to goose the box office. He said “plays, rather than musicals, were proving increasingly uneconomic for West End theatres. But he denied the theatres were in terminal decline, saying early summer was traditionally a difficult time.”

There are certain classical musicians who spend their lives attempting to play old music in precisely the way that the original musicians would have played it. So why shouldn’t there be period theater as well? Maybe because we won’t have any hope of understanding the accent…

New York’s theater scene is in an undeniable slump, and Michael Billington thinks that it may be time to acknowledge that America’s best theater is no longer centered in the Big Apple, but on the shores of Lake Michigan. “No fewer than 156 theatre companies, predominantly non-profit, operate in the city. And while New York, with its suffocating commercialism, seems increasingly hidebound, it is to Chicago that the true theatregoer now avidly looks.”

The longest-running production in Colorado history – I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change – is closing. “The musical relationship comedy, which celebrates its fourth anniversary June 29, will have played 1,731 performances at the Galleria Theatre in the Denver Performing Arts Complex.”

Connecticut’s Goodspeed Theatre has been talking about relocation. Now it looks like a decision has been made. Goodspeed will build a new theatre complex in Middletown. “The final version of a plan that has been in the works since November and was approved Saturday by Goodspeed’s board of directors has the city taking the lead in pursuing financing for the new satellite theater with 700 or 800 seats and a Broadway-sized stage. Goodspeed would retain ownership of the theater and raise funds for support services, such as actors’ housing.”