Category: theatre

The 1914 Hippodrome Theatre in Baltimore is reopening after a $62 million makeover. Organizers of the project are “declaring their intention of making Baltimore once again a force in the world of live theater. The center’s operators envision the new venue becoming an arts stadium of sorts, a live entertainment hub.”

This just in: “Shanghai has abruptly banned the U.S. play ‘Vagina Monologues,’ said the theater that had planned a one-month run beginning Tuesday, adding that conditions in China are ‘not ripe’ for the taboo-breaking drama.”

The Royal Shakespeare Company has faced nothing but problems over the past year. And yet, there are encouraging signs that the company is turing itself around…

Who’s leading the Royal Shakespeare Company’s revival? Gregory Doran. “It wouldn’t be too strong to suggest that he has redeemed the RSC’s battered reputation at a time when it was reeling from the sudden resignation of its former artistic director Adrian Noble and the crisis that followed the company’s precipitate decision to quit the Barbican.”

Rather than run a deficit, and faced with a shortage of income, the “Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival has postponed the final production of the season and laid off three of its six employees.”

Broadway now has a couple of businesses that help “paper” shows that aren’t selling well. “Subscribers to these services are permitted up to two tickets per performance, based on seating availability. While most tickets are for Off- and Off-Off-Broadway shows, seats for Broadway shows are not impossible to find. It’s all left to the discretion of producers, who may give away ‘comps’ when shows are in previews, underpublicized, or expecting reviewers or celebrities in the house.”

What sank the Seattle Fringe Festival? “Between insurance and payroll taxes tripling and funding by pre-established grantors tumbling some 46% over the last year, the organization had very little breathing room to spare. The open letter additionally explains that, while efforts to reschedule the festival from spring to September heightened its ‘artistic viability,’ the event ‘not only failed to draw additional audiences, but attendance actually declined.”

The once-thriving Seattle Festival has declared bankruptcy and closed up shop. “The move was not unexpected. Last November, SFTP announced that it needed $120,000 to pay off debts from the September 2003 Fringe Festival and continue to survive, but had only about $21,000 in cash assets.”

New York Post theatre columnist Michael Riedel is grateful to Boy George. He really is. “By regularly attacking me in print, on TV and even on stage during his show, George has elevated me from obscure theatre reporter to, in the words of the Toronto Star, ‘one of the most influential (and feared) media figures in Manhattan’.”

This has not been a good year for Broadway. The closing of Gypsy only underscores the problems. “The murderous economics of Broadway mean that people are prepared to pay high prices only for a copper-bottomed hit and that theatregoing has become an event rather than a habit. But I would go even further and say that Broadway has become a tawdry irrelevance in the larger scheme of American theatre. It is mostly a showcase for imported hits from London or the American non-profit sector.”