Says one of many admiring advocates and clients, “If a school is supposed to make programs accessible to students with disabilities — say, blindness — they might put things on tape and say it’s accessible. They don’t say to the person: What would be your preference? Hunter [Gullickson] does that. And he’ll get the program on tape, but also in Braille.” — The Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
Category: theatre
Upright Citizens Brigade Starts Laying Off Staff As Money Woes Mount
“The [comedy] theater, which has four spaces, including the flagship that opened in Hell’s Kitchen last year, has struggled in its new location, in part because of increased competition and high rents.” — The New York Times
Boat People Of The Mediterranean Form A Theater Company In Sicily
Founded in 2013, Liquid Company, a troupe made up entirely of refugees and migrants from Africa and the Mideast who survived the dangerous sea crossing, has developed, scripted, and performed four plays about their journeys, the asylum system, and human trafficking. — Public Radio International
Twin Cities Theatre Company Fires Director After #MeToo Complaints
Theater Mu, a St. Paul-based company focused on Asian-American work, cut ties with artistic director Randy Reyes after a board investigation “discovered conduct that did not reflect the culture we strive to achieve at Mu.” — The Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
What’s It Like To Direct A Historic Black Theatre Company In The 21st Century?
Just after Jamil Jude was announced as the incoming artistic director of the True Colors Theatre Company in Atlanta, he talks with Sarah Bellamy, who is the artistic director of St. Paul’s historic Penumbra Theatre. Jude: “When speaking about the work or having the work evaluated, do you feel like you need people in certain cultural contexts in order to better understand it? I feel like whenever I’m talking about True Colors, there’s an immediate lane some people want to put the work into.” – HowlRound
Is Britain Finally Going To Make Some Progress For Women In Theatre?
Maybe! Arts Council England chair Nicholas Serota met with a delegation, some of whom say that the meeting was quite useful. “We are on that track now and we are not getting off this time. We are not allowing it to be sidelined. I don’t want young people coming out of drama school being treated like that.” – The Stage (UK)
I’m Tired Of New Plays! I Want Something More
“In a word: I’m against the New Play. New Plays take many forms and have been around for years, but they seem especially prized lately. They’re plays with budget-friendly cast sizes, simpler stories with watery stakes, forward-slashes to indicate overlapping, a pretty strict adherence to the fourth wall, “ordinary” unaffected language, and an authorial injunction to either “play it fast” or “respect the beats”—or both. Further, all of the matter onstage is matter of the theatre (i.e. no video, film, poetry, live musical interlude, non-diagetic dance, opera, or lip-sync).” – Howlround
The World’s Oldest Surviving Form Of Theatre
The Japanese musical drama called Noh has been practiced without a significant break since the 14th century. In this short documentary, The Spirit of Noh, actor Michishige Udaka tells filmmaker Edwin Lee, “The actor wearing the Noh mask is not acting as a modern-day person, but as a spirit or wraith.” (video) — The Atlantic
New York’s “Fame” High School Removes Nazi Symbols From “Sound Of Music” Production
The principal at the elite “Fame” school, Lisa Mars, ordered Nazi flags and symbols removed from the stage set of the beloved tale of the Von Trapp family, who fled the Nazis from their native Austria as Adolf Hitler took power, students told the Daily News. – New York Daily News
Three Years After Reviving It, Theatre Drops Its Once-Famous Rep Company Because It’s Just Too Expensive
BBC”[Liverpool’s] Everyman became famous in the 1970s for its rep company, which launched the careers of actors like Bill Nighy, Julie Walters, Pete Postlethwaite and Sir Anthony Sher.The theatre was rebuilt at a cost of £27m in 2014, and revived its rep company two years later – decades after the system died out in most venues. … But the Liverpool and Merseyside Theatres Trust, which runs the Everyman and [Liverpool] Playhouse, has now been forced to ditch the idea once more.” — BBC