Category: theatre

London’s Royal Shakespeare Company will begin simultaneous captioning of its productions for deaf audience-members. – The Guardian

— makes big jump last week. – Variety

Does Toronto have a theater crisis? The city is currently stuck with a glut of live-performance venues, with little or nothing to fill them and too few entrepreneurs willing to risk production dollars. The Canadian Opera Company is trying to raise $130 million to move out of its current home at the Hummingbird Center and build a new theater. Some want to tear the Hummingbird down. Others want to spend $30 million on fixing it up. What fuels the indignation of the Hummingbird’s management is that the 3,200-seat behemoth is actually generating a profit. (Indeed, it’s the only city-owned venue, including the Toronto Zoo, that’s in the black.) – The Globe and Mail (Canada)

The Hummingbird Centre? There are better acoustics in a pinball arcade. Better sight lines in a football stadium. The word “albatross” comes to mind. – The Globe and Mail (Canada)

Musicals may not be popular fare at the movies, but increasingly, stage musicals are being made out of movie themes. – Variety

— theater community still feels nostalgia for four NY 42nd Street theaters being torn down this week. – New York Times

Wreckers get to work on row of theaters on Broadway’s 42nd St. New construction planned for the site, near where the Lincoln Tunnel traffic spills into the city, is supposed to include four 99-seat theatres off a central lobby, a 199-seat theatre, and a 499-seat theatre, as well as up to 30 stories of apartments. – Backstage

Theater hasn’t made much of a murmur in Soho for years – it’s the center of film and TV land. Now the newly-energized Soho Theater and Writer’s center has become a creative hotbed. – The Times (UK)

The best new British theater? Not the RSC or the National Theatre, many think. Artsadmin is a largely invisible supporter of experimental theater, exported to the world – Artsadmin sorts out its artists’ petty cash, finds them rehearsal space, administers their lives – a curious hybrid of producer, manager, facilitator and promoter. Most of all, it has become a champion of new work. – The Guardian

So American Airlines supported the arts by giving New York’s Roundabout Theater $850,000 a year for 10 years. In return the airline gets its name on the theater. But “American Airlines isn’t supporting the arts, bless them. They are paying a tax-deductible fee in order to advertise and sell their corporate logo on Broadway. Philanthropy has sweet zilch to do with it.” – New York Observer