Category: theatre

Playwright Adam Hughes: “It seems that a lot of venues and organisations only want diversity when it’s visible and they can clearly highlight the ‘changes’ they are making. … So long as people are seen to be doing something, that is deemed enough. This is why class is constantly ignored – you cannot see it, you can’t easily be called out on it, so it’s not at the forefront of people’s agendas.”

Peter Conrad: “Shakespeare’s history plays about feudal England and republican Rome have become a nightmare from which the present is trying to awake. Tory plotters against the enfeebled Theresa May could be auditioning for the role of Richard III, who deftly kills his way to the crown. Meanwhile Donald Trump, according to his lawyer John Dowd, behaves like ‘an aggrieved Shakespearean king’ – a petulant Richard II or a deranged Lear, astonished by the disrespect of his subjects. Trump also matches two of Shakespeare’s Romans – a would-be Julius Caesar with despotic longings, he is as titanically tetchy as Coriolanus, given to volleys of abuse that betray his mental instability.”

After an investigation, the Old Vic said it had received 20 complaints of inappropriate behavior by Spacey, who led the theater between 2004 and 2015. It said most of the alleged victims had been staff members, and acknowledged that a “cult of personality” around the Hollywood star had made it difficult for them to come forward. In response, the Old Vic trained staff members to act as “confidential sounding boards” to staff members experiencing abuse and unsure about what to do.

Playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes: “Even positive reviews yank my art from my hands and serve up my heart like a well-dressed ham. Even rave reviews have deposited me, post-celebration, in a disorienting depression where I feel my mouth has been slapped with duct-tape. People call and congratulate me not on the work but on the Times review. Against my affirmations and meditations, I become once again the little girl seeking approval when I have worked so hard to reject that frame.”

“Nederlander of San Francisco, which operates that city’s Orpheum and Golden Gate theaters, this week asked a judge to prevent an ally-turned-rival, the producer Carole Shorenstein Hays, from staging the shows” — Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and Dear Evan Hansen — “at the nearby Curran Theater, which she owns and has lavishly restored and ambitiously programmed.”

Prior to the autumn of 1968, any reference to homosexuality, bisexuality and nude performances would have been considered too outrageous to be shown on a British stage. Even something as seemingly harmless as a reference to Walt Whitman’s poetry collection, Leaves of Grass, in John Osborne’s play Personal Enemy, was banned because it was seen as a codified reference to homosexuality.

As A.O. Scott once noted of the man behind Welcome to the Dollhouse and Wiener-Dog, “We don’t turn to Mr. Solondz for warm affirmations of human decency.” Elisabeth Vincentelli talks to Solondz about his debut as a playwright and stage director, Emma and Max.

When Anna Bergmann became the director of the playhouse at the Badisches State Theater in the German city of Karlsruhe, “her first major decision … was downright radical: Tired of hearing that theaters would like to hire female directors but could find few, she said she wanted women to lead most of the productions during her first season at the helm. The State Theater’s general director … proposed going further: Why not exclusively use female directors, for once?”

With the much-talked about London revival of the musical now arriving on Broadway, reporter Sopan Deb talks to director Marianne Elliott, co-producer Chris Harper, and star Rosalie Craig about changing the main character from confused bachelor Bobbie to commitment-phobic hetero single woman Bobbie.

“A decade ago, posters advertising glamorous theatrical productions lined Rue Pavée, a main road in [Port-au-Prince,] Haiti’s capital city. Local theatre was on the rise here until the devastating 2010 earthquake destroyed much of the city, including progress for the arts.” Once the National Theatre was reopened in 2013, stage artists began trying to rebuild the scene for live drama, with small companies and playhouses producing new work alongside the larger venue.