Category: theatre

The Pasadena Shakespeare Company is closing up shop for awhile. “In the last week things finally came to a head where I realized that unless something really changes in the near future there is no way the money is going to be there to get through the rest of the year,”

NEA chairman Dana Gioia’s most visible initiative so far is a plan to tour Shakespeare around America. The plan would be “the largest theatrical tour of Shakespeare in American history. Indeed, no fewer than six American theatre companies would be funded to bring forth the Bard in over 100 small and midsized communities in every state. Yet not everyone in the regional theatre scene appears pleased with Gioia’s plans, and they’re speaking out.”

“Site-specific theatre is not new; indeed, it arguably has its roots in the happenings of the 1960s. What’s striking is the number of site-specific pieces on the scene and, more notable, the variety, each work with its own philosophical underpinnings. To wit: An existing play placed in a particular setting and, as such, enhanced or reimagined in some way – in fact, the site may be a part of a play’s revised aesthetic. Or a work fashioned to suggest something about a site, or a site and narrative that inform each other in a theatrical manner.”

A new musical in London’s West End is expected to be the most expensive show ever to hit London. “An £8 million musical version of ‘The Lord Of The Rings’ is to premiere in London. An adaptation of Tolkien’s trilogy is due to open at the beginning of 2005 and will cost £1.5 million more than ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’, until now the biggestbudget musical in the capital. Eventually it is hoped the production will roll out across the world.”

So what will a new “Lord of the Rings” look like? “A singing and dancing cast of 50, playing hobbits, elves, giant trees, wizards, monsters and the other main creatures of the author’s Middle Earth are due to take to the stage in spring 2005. ‘If Shakespeare can put all England on stage in Henry IV, I am confident we can put on the whole of Middle Earth’.”

With a fresh outbreak of SARS feared in Toronto, officials of the Shaw and Stratford Festivals in southern Ontario are fearful that the public will once again start to stay away. Advance sales are down amid fears of the outbreak, and there is simply no way to predict whether the latest round of quarantines will cause festival-goers to change their plans. Said one producer, “Fear is a difficult commodity to argue with.”

Despite multiple earlier reports that the Minnesota state legislature had a deal in place to partially fund construction of a new Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis through a bonding bill, the measure became badly stalled yesterday when House Republicans balked at the inclusion of the theater funding. In response, the Democrat-controlled state Senate is refusing to honor agreements to pass a Republican budget-balancing bill until the House passes the bonding bill. If legislative history is any indication, the Guthrie will probably get its money in the end, but no one dares say so just yet, with cranky legislators stretched to the breaking point in what has been a particularly contentious session.

It looks like Minneapolis’ Guthrie Theatre has put together money to build its new home after the Minnesota legislature struck a deal to include money for the Guthrie in a bonding bill. The Guthrie has “gathered $64.5 million toward its internal fundraising goal of $75 million. The final price tag of the new three-stage Guthrie on the River is $125 million. The theater’s board plans to borrow $15 million, so the $25 million from the state leaves a $10 million gap. Last session, the Legislature approved $24 million for the Guthrie. That appropriation fell to then-Gov. Jesse Ventura’s veto pen.”

After delays, the Minnesota legislature reportedly has a deal in place to provide funding for construction of a new Guthrie Theatre and the Children’s Theatre Company. “Guthrie leaders had warned that without state support the theater’s planned $125 million three-stage complex on the Mississippi riverfront, designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, would be derailed. The theater has privately raised $65 million, officials said.”

Playwright August Wilson takes to the stage himself for the first time in his new play in Seattle. “The 100-minute play, ‘How I Learned What I Learned,’ is brightened by sudden flashes of poetry and unfolds like a meeting between Dylan Thomas and Malcolm X. The dramatic high point comes when Mr. Wilson leaps into the character of a man in one of his stories who fatally knifes an acquaintance in a bar. He jumps around the stage, curses wildly, slashes the air and brutally kicks his imagined victim.”