Category: theatre

If playwrights speak to the human condition, can their work be anything less than political? Do we inherently trust playwrights who are overtly political? A group of prominent playwrights gathers to discuss the issue.

Buy your tickets online and print them out on your own printer. It’s happening in Australia. “The Lion King will be the first major theatre production in Australia to use direct printing from the internet to make tickets available to patrons. Taking the pain out of queueing at the box office and dramas over lost or mislaid tickets, customers will be emailed a file with their ticket and other information on the show, with a $3 saving on the booking fee.”

“Something like a dozen innovative Seattle theater groups are grabbing younger audiences – people under 40 who pretty much elude the established stage institutions. Youth-friendly companies pattern their content and their style on TV, our No. 1 baby sitter, our low-cost mood-altering drug. The resultant shows are episodic. They are funny. They use a lot of music. They are sexy. They feature characters and situations with which under-40s can identify. Brandon Jepson performs for a Jet City Improv crowd. The bulk of Jet City audiences are between 16 and 25. And they are satirical. Using ridicule as a demolition ball, they whack away at anxiety-causing people, situations and organizations.”

So this year’s Tony Awards broadcast was entertaining… the rating didn’t improve. “Despite the general impression inside the industry that the television broadcast was handled well and even ? gasp! ? entertaining at times, the Nielsen ratings didn’t improve. About eight million people watched the Tonys last year; about eight million people watched the Tonys this year. Is that surprising? More important, is it depressing? In the end, no. Some 11.4 million tickets to Broadway shows were sold last year, a number that has held roughly the same for several years.”

Ah yes, Broadway ended up having a big-selling season at the box office. But for producers, navigating the minefield of situations that came up this year required some extra risk-taking. “New York theater has had a troubled winter. Bad weather, a Broadway strike, the war in Iraq, and an uncertain economy have made for dicey times for an industry still trying to figure out what the new normal is since 9/11 knocked it for a loop.”

Baz Luhrmann’s flashy La Boheme is closing after 228 performances. “The production, which cost about $8.5 million to mount at the Broadway Theater, recouped only about a quarter of that investment. Jeffrey Seller, one of the producers, said that although the production had found an audience, it was not necessarily the audience that a show needed to survive on Broadway.”

If ABBA and Billy Joel can do it, why not Rod Stewart? Why not indeed? Write a musical based on his music, that is. A project based on Stewart tunes is in the workd. “Plot details were sketchy. It apparently chronicles the exploits of ‘a shy young man’ who is tempted by Satan while ‘attempting to win over the love of his life by emulating his hero Rod Stewart’.”

St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre unveiled architectural proposals for the theatre’s expansion. They weren’t received well. “Such extravagant and eccentric ideas have frayed tempers in a city celebrated for its baroque architecture. The competition caps last month’s lavish 300th birthday of Russia’s cultural capital. The government will pay £66m towards the project, which will link the new building – on the site of the Palace of Culture in Honour of the [Soviet] First Five Year Plan – to the old Mariinsky building (formerly known as the Kirov, and home to the ballet company) via a bridge on the Kryukov canal. The spending is criticised in a region facing poverty and unemployment.”

A new Canadian theatre festival called Magnetic North hopes to be a showcase for the best new Canadian plays from across the country. The festival will switch cities each year. “Magnetic North never stays put. The concept is that every other year we will be in a different Canadian city and then return to Ottawa. So 2004 will find us in Edmonton, and 2005 back in the capital again.”

Prices for Edinburgh’s Fringe Festival are climbing, and some are complaining. “We do try to keep prices as low as possible but producing a show in Edinburgh seems to cost more than in any other city in the world. For some reason, venue costs in Edinburgh are almost twice as much as anywhere else – and that includes London’s West End.”