Category: theatre

“For the second year in a row, the Actors Theatre of Louisville has filled five of its six slots for the annual Humana Festival of New American Plays, running Feb. 29-April 10, with works written by women.”

Finally Scotland has its National Theatre. Should it cast big movie stars to make itself successful at the box office? “It is not Hollywood names that bothers many in the theatre establishment, but the idea that the National Theatre is seen as a means of getting them, of making theatre ‘sexier’. Is that what they were lobbying for all these years? You don’t need a national theatre for that…+

London’s “Tower Theatre had a 155-seat auditorium, two bars and rehearsal rooms, all housed in a fifteenth-century tower and hall in Canonbury, north London, rented from the Marquess of Northampton. Here they put on 20 full-scale productions a year, opening a new show every three weeks. But an alleged slip on the part of their lawyers led to the loss of their protected tenancy, and in March they became homeless. The financial consequences were disastrous.”

“Go to nearly any Broadway house, any night, and you can catch a crowd jumping up for the curtain call like politicians at a State of the Union address. And just as in politics, the intensity of the ovation doesn’t necessarily reflect the quality of the performance. The phenomenon has become so exaggerated, in fact, that audiences now rise to their feet for even the very least successful shows.”

Do women make good playwrights? There seems to be some prejudice in the industry suggesting they don’t. “There is no question that most of our celebrated playwrights are male and that female writers are responsible for only a small minority of the plays produced in this country. But these historical trends are starting to change — and the proof is in the listings. Almost all the talked-about plays Off Broadway this fall were written by women.”

Chicago is teeming with theater groups, and in recent years, a lively subculture of theaters performing in semi-converted grocery stores and abandoned warehouses has sprung up, to the delight of audiences and critics. But many of the performance spaces are not even remotely up to city building codes, and “2003 may be remembered as a year not unlike 1999, a year in which the city cracked down, hard, on small theaters operating without a license… Unless the city streamlines the process by which a small theater can open its doors legally and affordably, 2003 may be remembered as the year the pendulum swung too far – and Chicago theater never quite recovered in full.”

In 2001, Charlotte Repertory Theatre’s board embarked on a five-year plan to become one of the best regional theatres in America. “Two years later, the Rep’s trustees have driven away two artistic directors, two managing directors, two literary managers, and the first full-time development director in the company’s 27-year history. In the wake of artistic director Michael Bush’s sudden resignation last month, there is no permanent artistic leadership at Charlotte Rep, and the company is further from realizing its ambition than it was”

The Producers is going to London. Richard Dreyfuss and Lee Evans are to star in a West End version…

What kind of year was it for British theatre? Michael Billington writes that: “A year ago I bemoaned British theatre’s detachment from politics. Where were the plays that dealt with the big issues? The heartening thing about 2003 has been theatre’s reconnection with the wider world. We have had plays about Iraq, David Kelly, the railways, racial tension and Belfast. Theatregoing no longer seems a pleasantly marginal activity. The most cheering aspect of the year was the varied and rapid response to the Iraq crisis.”

After weeks of trying to get an important Canadian actor into the United States for an upcoming production, San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre finally gave up and recast locally. “Since the creation the Department of Homeland Security, it has been increasingly difficult, if not impossible, for foreign artists to get into this country. While we tend to hear more often about artists from ‘hostile’ nations, such as Cuba, having the door slammed in their faces, the policy is obviously affecting Canadian artists as well.”