“One, FringeNYC will present over 80 staged productions in the West Village from Oct. 12-28, while FringeBYOV (bring your own venue) will involve venues in the boroughs outside Manhattan like the Irondale Center in Brooklyn and the Secret Theater in Queens selecting their own performers and shows (Oct. 1-31).”
Category: theatre
Could Audiences Really Replace Theater Critics As They Disappear? Here’s The Problem With That
Responding to Lyn Gardner’s recent column arguing for “a new approach to theatre criticism, in which theatres see developing critical voices as part of audience and artist development,” Bill Marx writes that what Gardner seems to be suggesting is both vague and, well, unlikely: “Is the money invested in theater development these days dedicated to making stage audiences more ‘critical’? Are there any plans for ‘creative power sharing’ with spectators? From what I can tell, … the goal is to buff up [theaters’] business plans and marketing efforts, not to encourage the development of ‘critical’ audiences.”
An ‘Oklahoma!’ With Same-Sex Couples? Sure – The R&H Folks Are Fine With It
Laura Collins-Hughes visits the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where artistic director Bill Rauch convinced keeper-of-the-Rodgers-and-Hammerstein-catalog Ted Chapin to let him go ahead with a production of the musical in which both Laurey and Curly are gals and Will Parker pairs off with Ado Andy.
How Susan Sontag Staged ‘Waiting For Godot’ In War-Torn Sarajevo
Twenty-five years ago this Friday, Sontag’s production of Beckett’s play premiered in the besieged, hungry, surrounded-by-snipers Bosnian capital. Two actors who participated and a local journalist who was there recall how it happened.
Giving New Meaning To The Term ‘Dinner Theater’ By Making The Meal The Performance
For more than a year, the Detroit-based experimental theater company The Hinterlands has been staging what they call “µTopian Dinners” – literally preparing and sharing a meal with guests. The company sees the project “as a kind of a laboratory to investigate the cultural values that are reinforced through eating, meals, and cooking. … Implementing this process of non-textual translation via food practices carries a kind of power in the fact of it being a non-verbal form of communication, but one that nonetheless is extremely culturally specific.”
Meet Broadway’s Favorite Throat Doctor
“Breathless and behind schedule, Dr. Linda Dahl rushed into the waiting room of her office on East 56th Street in Manhattan where two patients, handsome men with chiseled physiques, waited. ‘Someone once asked me, ‘What’s with your patients? They’re all gorgeous,” she said later with a laugh.”
Ticketmaster To Shut Two UK Ticket Reseller Sites
The ticketing operator said Get Me In! and Seatwave – two of the UK’s four largest reselling sites – will be replaced by a new fan-to-fan ticket exchange service. The decision has already been hailed as a major commitment by the industry to combat online touts, which use secondary marketplaces to resell tickets for entertainment and sports events at highly inflated prices.
Choosing A Play Title That Helps The Show Become Iconic Isn’t The Easiest Task
Or maybe it is if you’re Mike Birbiglia, whose new play is called, well, The New One. Current trends in play-naming are contradictory: “banality and protractedness.”
Should Theatre Be Getting Out The Vote?
Theatre itself can be activism, of course, through subject matter and through subtle casting changes or donation asks at the end of the play or musical. But “public service” – part of most nonprofit theatres’ mission statements – shouldn’t end at the theatre doors.
Should A Big Theatre Magazine In The US Acknowledge Theatrical Designers In Its Photo Credits?
The designers asked them to, in an open letter from their union to American Theatre: “When ATM denies credit to designers while simultaneously highlighting photos of our work, they minimize the role designers play in a production. Not crediting our work diminishes designers’ contributions to a production, denies them publicity and exposure that is rightfully theirs, and further minimizes the value of good design to theatre producers, directors, playwrights, and other theatremakers.”