Category: theatre

“Wicked,” a quirky and fantasy-filled musical about those folks who live along the Yellow Brick Road, picked up 10 Tony Award nominations Monday. “Assassins,” the controversial Stephen Sondheim musical, followed with seven and four shows tied with six nominations apiece: “Caroline, or Change,” “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Avenue Q” and the Lincoln Center revival of “Henry IV.”

“Pundits will tell you it hasn’t been a banner year on Broadway. What they mean, mostly, is that there hasn’t been a blockbuster musical that promises to run forever. Actually, much of the Tony Awards season that officially ended on Wednesday was quite healthy.”

“Classics don’t change depending on the nightly news or the morning papers. Our perceptions change, not the playwrights’. Wartime, such as our own time, makes certain plays rattle around in your head a little differently. Often it’s a war that places the play in the writer’s head in the first place, getting the conversation going at gunpoint.”

“Black artists are at the cutting edge of the music industry in Britain, but the West End has yet to play host to a show which celebrates their music. Some have blamed racism, others say that the black community are not theatregoers.”

It’s been a tough couple of seasons for Ontario’s Shaw and Stratford festivals. Attendance down sharply, revenues off, deficits mounting… But already in 2004, there are signs that the theatres may be bouncing back from their slumps…

“The New York Times Company Foundation has announced a new grant-making instrument focused on not-for-profit theatres: The New York Times Company Foundation Fund for Mid-Size Theatres. As its first gesture, the foundations announced its first set of grants totaling $70,000 to 30 theatre companies..”

The Melbourne City Council has voted to not fund any political art in the future after a controversy over a recent play. “We should fund art that the majority of the rate base don’t have a problem with. I don’t think political art is something that people want to fund.”

Missouri Repertory Theatre has changed its name to the Kansas City Repertory Theatre. “Many trustees and others in the community had increasingly come to believe that ‘Missouri Rep’ did not fairly represent our many supportive patrons living in Kansas, and it was also apparent that the name didn’t identify our location,”

A new report says that theatre is worth an annual £2.6 billion to the British economy. That makes the £121.3 million in public money spent on UK theatre each year seem like a good investment.

“ShakespeareWorks, an organization that has brought the Bard’s work to Toronto schools for several years, is raising $1.5-million to build a tent theatre at Ashbridge’s Bay, in the east end of the city.” The project is modeled on Vancouver’s successful summer Shakespeare series, and the company’s inaugural season kicks off in June. But concerns remain about promised federal funding which has yet to materialize, and the season will likely launch with barely enough cash on hand to meet expenses.