Category: theatre

“Critics often fall back on neat phrases to gesture at flaws they’re reluctant to spell out, or to wave impotently at a whole mass of ideas that would take a PhD thesis to explore. For your entertainment, three Exeunt writers are here to crack the code, and reveal the true meanings behind some of the shorthands that critics fall back on when deadlines, word counts and writers’ block bite.”

Ilya Vett, who has worked fabricating and maintaining the masks and puppets for the hit show for at least a decade, was found by New York police in the Minskoff Theatre prop room, producing a gun using the company’s 3D printer and plans he had downloaded from the internet.

“Circus using performing animals, now restricted in 43 different countries, is dying out. It has been replaced by three different sub-genres, according to Brisbane Festival artistic director David Berthold. First, is the Cirque Du Soleil approach: big, ballsy, and cinematic (essentially traditional circus without the tigers). Second, is blockbuster cabaret that contains high circus skills (think the down n’ dirty Blanc de Blanc). The third is what Berthold calls ‘art circus’.”

One of the things that copyright law allows some courts to do in the nineteenth century is to essentially exert control over what gets put onstage, because in theory, if you say this has no copyright, you’re saying an author can’t realize any value from it, economic value from it, because you can’t monopolize it. In fact, if you say, you don’t have any right to prevent other people from doing it, things that one might want to censor, for example, the display of partially nude women onstage, which is one case I discuss, tends to proliferate rather than to disappear.

“I am not at all shy about how much personally I love it as a show. But for me, understanding what’s problematic about it helps me appreciate it more and helps me understand more what is possible.”

Stage directors with chest pains, 26 outdoor performances canceled or moved inside, and at least $2 million in lost revenue hit the festival this year, with four wildfires burning for months nearby. What does the festival’s “smoke team” plan for next year?

The Notch Theatre Company’s model of talking about public lands includes plays that are generated from a lot – a lot – of community meetings and input. “The plays also act as an indelible record of the largest loss to public lands our country has ever seen. They document a community’s unique history and culture at a particularly urgent moment in that community’s journey. Because they are based on true stories, the plays are marked by an authenticity of character and voice, and a sometimes-disarming honesty.”

Lucas Hnath’s A Doll’s House, Part 2 leads the list, well ahead of the runner-up, Lynn Nottage’s Sweat. Female playwrights lead males on the list by three to one, and, with Shakespeare and A Christmas Carol not included (by design), all of the titles are by living writers (though two are adapted from Pride and Prejudice).

With his A Doll’s House, Part 2 the most-produced play, Lucas Hnath leads the list (excluding Shakespeare, of course) with 33 productions, edging out last season’s leader, Lauren Gunderson, who has 29. This year’s list is the most diverse in its 25-year history, with 11 female playwrights and six nonwhite ones. 17 of the 20 are American (including one immigrant), and all but three (August Wilson, Tennessee Williams, and Sam Shepard) are living.