Category: theatre

At a time when many theatres are struggling to keep going and having to downsize, a number of theatre companies – like Minnesota’s Guthrie Theatre – are building and opening new projects. “Today’s projects are more likely to be about gaining flexibility and space for new programs and activities than merely adding seats. Theater companies are creating ‘campuses’ that they aim to fill with a variety of artistic activity nearly round the clock. Many are producing extensive education programs’ for both children and adults.”

“The O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford is suspending its open-submission policy, under which anyone could mail in a play for consideration for the following summer’s conference. Because of budget cutbacks, there will no longer be direct submissions, ending a 35-year policy. Instead, a group of 150 professionals throughout the theater community and across different geographical regions will nominate the work of 250 playwrights. That group of 250 will then be judged by the O’Neill’s own selection committee, which will choose 15.”

“As might be expected, the announcement of the policy change has caused great consternation in the playwriting community. On one prominent, Web-based email service, dramaturgy.net, word of the policy change preceded the O’Neill’s formal announcement by a week, during which time dramatists took out their frustrations. Among the charges: By moving to a who-you-know-based nomination/submission process, the O’Neill shuts the doors on the unknown playwright who doesn’t happen to be well-connected enough to actually know one of the nominators, and that the new policy, in effect, only serves to solidify the American theatre as a closed, exclusive, artistic plutocracy.”

When Nilo Cruz got the phone call informing him that his new play, Anna in the Tropics, had won the Pulitzer Prize for drama, he wasn’t entirely sure if he believed it. After all, he was a little-known playwright whose play had only been seen onn stage during a short run in Florida, and he was up against such legends as Edward Albee and Richard Greenberg, both of whose entries were running in New York. But it was no joke: Cruz is the first Latino playwright to win the prize, and his play gets a more auspicious bow this week at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, before moving to Broadway later in the fall.

They make musicals about anything these days. Indeed, offbeat topics seem to be preferred. So Dominic Papatola wonders: can you tell which ideas are Broadway musical fodder and which aren’t?

“On the surface, Lisbon seems to support a healthy plethora of venues – from the huge neoclassical Teatro Nacional on the commercial Rossio square to funky, hilltop cafe theatres such as Teatro Taborda – and companies, from established names such as Teatro Cornucopia, co-founded by Melo, to bands of kids performing experimental works in the grounds of mental hospitals. However, theatre here is afflicted by one overwhelming, trenchant problem: a lack of audiences. At the country’s National Theatre – a sumptuous auditorium seating 500, where I witnessed Titus Andronicus playing to a crowd of 120 – a paltry 25% house is regarded as a resounding, sell-out smash hit. Shows in the city are regularly cancelled when theatregoers fail to materialise.”

A proposal for a new national theatre for the site of the World Trade Center has theatre people talking. “A sampling of theater observers and major theaters in the region suggests that while the idea of showcasing the nation’s best regional theater in New York is laudable, the creation of such a super-regional theater would be immensely complicated to fund, curate and execute. For those of us who have been around long enough, this is at least attempt six or seven to do something like this.”

The founder of the now-global “Flash Mob” movement, in which seemingly random groups of people appear at a designated location and do something odd for a few minutes before dissipating, has decided to end his New York City-based mob’s performances. The founder, known as “Bill,” organized one final flash mob which was supposed to eventually lead participants to a party celebrating their common love of befuddling the public. But instead, the mob was thrown for a loop by a single man with a briefcase and a neon sign, and participants wound up as puzzled as the passersby they were supposed to be confounding. Naturally, Bill thinks the whole thing was just great.

A stage version of the classic British comedy film, Monty Python & the Holy Grail, is set to open on Broadway in the spring of 2005. Tentatively titled Spamalot, the musical will feature several new songs in addition to the classic Python ditties sung in the movie. No word yet on whether the quadruple amputee Black Knight will be granted a solo on the subject of biting kneecaps.

Scotland is finally getting a national theatre. “The Scottish finance minister, Andy Kerr, announced in a budget speech that there was finally funding available to establish the theatre, proposals for which have been around since at least 1949. It will be based in Glasgow and will have an initial funding package of £7.5m, with its first production due at the beginning of 2005.”