Category: theatre

Scotland is about to get its first government funding for a national theatre. “The sum required for the scheme is relatively small within the overall overspend – a recommended minimum initial investment of £2.5 million – and will represent an additional sum over and above the £38 million the Executive supplies to the Scottish Arts Council.”

Shakespeare gets ever more popular. New theatres devoted to the Bard are being built in Europe. “In the past month an Italian version of London’s Globe theatre has sprung up in the Villa Borghese park in the heart of Rome. In Poland, efforts are underway to reconstruct a Shakespearean theatre that thrived in the Baltic port city of Gdansk almost 400 years ago, but has since been replaced by a carpark.”

“Playwrights have shuttled between Hollywood and the theater for decades. But the commute is looking more attractive lately, with the poor economy affecting the arts, and mass media growing in influence. With the economy not exactly booming, now is not a great time (if there is one) to be trying to earn a living from the theater, note observers – making Hollywood look all the more appealing. In New York, for example, several theaters that focus on new works are doing fewer plays than they did 30 years ago, dropping from two dozen a year on average to six or eight today.”

In the national touring company of the Broadway smash The Producers, the orchestra is huge, by Broadway standards and that is creating a problem in many theaters outfitted with tiny, ancient orchestra pits. But rather than employ the controversial ‘virtual orchestra’ concept, The Producers hires a full 23-piece orchestra, and the players who don’t fit in the pit are placed in dressing rooms, backstage nooks, and wherever else they, their instruments, and a microphone can fit. In Boston, the harp, percussion, and cello sections are all located remotely, connected to the conductor only by a video screen and an audio monitor. It’s not ideal, but the musicians, knowing that the alternative would likely be their replacement by synthesizer, aren’t complaining.

After a dropoff in audience because of the blackout a few weeks ago, Broadway has rebounded with a robust end of summer…

This summer’s biggest Broadway success story wasn’t some cutting-edge musical featuring agressive tap-dancers, and it wasn’t a provocatively-titled, fast-paced romp from the mind of one of theater’s hot new stars. No, the king of Broadway this summer was none other than the late Eugene O’Neill, whose four-hour play, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, has garnered rave reviews and standing-room-only attendance in its 5-month run. Some of the success of the revival can be chalked up to star power and savvy marketing that pandered to the ‘serious’ theatregoer. But some see it as a sign that Broadway crowds are ready to be challenged.

Asian actors have more of a presence on London stages than ever before. “Two major West End productions with all-Asian casts wouldn’t have happened even five years ago.” But some worry about the kinds of roles Asians are landing.

The good news for American theatres is that attendance is up 17 percent in the past five years. Contributed income is also up – an astonishing 52 percent above inflation ove the same period. The bad news is that for the first time in the Theatre Communications Guild survey’s 28 years, “more than half – 54 percent – of surveyed companies ran a deficit, a 24 percent increase in the past two years.”

Want to produce a hit play? Then find a cult movie that has a following and adapt it. “Don’t worry too much about slickness or professionalism – your audience will be largely composed of young people who seldom go to the theatre, and never to a musical, and have no standard against which to measure performance. What they seek is authenticity, fidelity to the spirit of the cult. Deliver that, and you’re well on your way to establishing a hit.”

Scottish theatre is in disastrous shape, “haemorrhaging some of its greatest talents to better-funded companies in England. Its great companies are lurching from one catastrophe to the next, and a long dreamed of national theatre, which was meant to symbolise the reawakening of a new, dynamic Scottish identity, has slid into limbo.
Theatres are only producing half the work they did in 1990. That this impoverishment has come at a time when Scotland has produced the most exciting generation of playwrights in a century” is a tragedy.