Category: theatre

Philadelphia seems to be finding out: “Justice for non-binary people is about naming and acknowledging that we exist in rehearsal, performance, and audience spaces. It’s about creating braver spaces amidst verbal and physical harassment on the street as well as in respectable, progressive establishments. It’s about training companies to understand and respect the non-binary experience before they invite us into the room. It’s about paying non-binary folks for their emotional and intellectual labor when we’re asked for dramaturgical help in a creative process. It’s about theatres doing their own research before expecting non-binary folks to educate them.”

A night at the theater can mean everything from parking and dinner, to elbow room in the lobby and in the seats, all on top of the price of a ticket. The city’s entertainment czars know this; that’s what drove the remarkable expansion of theater after theater a decade ago, with boosted capacities and bigger lobbies. Even now, more money is being raised to convert comparatively new complexes into more fully rounded destinations.

Jan Fabre, known for his 24-hour stage marathon Mount Olympus, has been accused – in an open letter by 20 employees and interns at his Antwerp-based stage company Troubleyn – of “humiliation, intimidation and semi-secret photographic activities” as well as trying to extort sexual favors from dancers and offering them jobs or money afterward to keep quiet.

Touring is always in some sort of crisis. And currently it’s at the mid-scale, as highlighted by ACE’s Analysis of Theatre in England report in 2016. Venues say there is a dearth of shows, while producers say there’s not enough demand to make them. Meanwhile historic mid-scale audiences are ebbing away, undernourished, making the whole thing even less viable. It’s a catch-22. At conferences, roundtables and gatherings we lament, in hushed tones, the unsolvable conundrum of the mid-scale.

A troupe from Berlin’s Schaubühne was giving the first performance of a three-night run at The Egg in Beijing when one scene moved some audience members to shout out critical remarks about the Chinese government. Censors told the performers to remove that scene or have the tour cancelled, and they did; even so, the theater at the tour’s next destination, Nanjing, has suddenly experienced “technical difficulties.”

To complement its more conventional WhatsOnStage Awards, the publication’s new WhatsOffStage Awards will have categories for best box office, stage door, theatre website, front-of-house staff, and so on.

There are 14 actors in the enormously complex Off Broadway premiere of this ambitious bilingual play, a multigenerational drama that aims to be equally accessible to deaf and hearing audience members at every moment of every performance. There is one featured cast member and one shadow cast member for each of the seven characters. The shadow cast performs entirely in A.S.L.; the featured cast, in a mix of English and sign.

The conceit of Mac’s Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus is that the Roman civil war is over, madmen have taken power in the failing empire, and two servants — played by Andrea Martin and Nathan Lane — have the job of cleaning up all the dead bodies. Five-time Tony winner George C. Wolfe will direct, with set design by four-time Tony laureate Santo Loquasto.

As part of Playbill’s Back to School week (#BwayBacktoSchool), we have combined past Schools of the Stars features that track where members of the casts for each Broadway show went to college, along with a bit of added research, to present the ten colleges currently most represented on Broadway (plus a few honorable mentions).