The difference between these current comedy avatars isn’t confined to their material about the shifting cultural status of straight men, although that’s a big part of it. Originality and craft are just as important. To put it bluntly, many of the most established, big-name acts in comedy, like Maher, Ricky Gervais, Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David, Dave Chappelle, and (to a lesser extent) Chris Rock are either coasting or flailing. At worst, they’re regurgitating old styles and points of view and sounding culturally as well as artistically conservative in the process.
Category: theatre
The Empathy Project: When Medical Workers Write Plays And Make Theatre
“By studying theatre you’re being asked to exercise getting into someone else’s psychology. There is something about writing other characters that is a fundamental act of empathy and emotional, psychological imagination.”
How Ventriloquists And Their Dummies Trick Our Brains
“The common misconception is that this trick involves the performer somehow ‘throwing’ their voice through a clever trick of the voice box.” But that’s not it at all. “‘Imagine you hear a loud sound, and at exactly the same time, there is an abrupt appearance of something. Then, automatically — because of the coincidence in time — you would tend to associate these two events as originating from the same cause,’ says [researcher] Salvador Soto-Faraco … ‘That is the inference that happens in ventriloquist illusions.'”
An Avant-Garde ‘West Side Story’ (?!?) Is Coming To Broadway
A pair of Belgian stage artists who are leaders of Europe’s institutional avant-garde, director Ivo van Hove and choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, will stage the first major American revival of the musical to make a complete departure from the model of Jerome Robbins’s original staging. (De Keersmaeker and her company have been regular visitors at the Brooklyn Academy of Music; van Hove has directed two Arthur Miller revivals on Broadway and won a Tony for one of them.)
Here’s One Theatre That Raised Its Hiring Of Women Directors Tenfold
“The number of women directing plays at [the Gate Theatre in Dublin] is up from 8 per cent between 2006 and 2015 to 80 per cent in the last 18 months … The number of women writers increased from 6 per cent to 33 per cent over the same period, set designers 26 per cent to 44 per cent, lighting designers 13 per cent to 33 per cent, and sound designers 1 per cent to 44 per cent.”
Running A Theatre Is About So Much More Than The Plays, As These First-Time Artistic Directors Found Out
“Most UK theatres are run by people with the title of ‘artistic director’. But many taking over a building for the first time, even if they are not doing the job of chief executive as well, very quickly understand that being artistic is only one part of the job. … Lyn Gardner talks to those in the know and finds they all agree the overall experience of an audience is as important as the plays they stage.”
Robert Lepage’s Slav Will Go On After All After Protests
The Montreal International Jazz Festival closed the production, a “theatrical odyssey based on slave songs,” after only a handful of performances in the wake of an outcry over a majority-white cast portraying black slaves. Only two of the seven people in the show, directed by Robert Lepage and starring Betty Bonifassi, were black. While critics of the show have welcomed the closure as a necessary cultural reckoning, several leading theater directors in Quebec rallied behind Mr. Lepage this week, citing their concerns that closing a production by such an internationally acclaimed director could have a chilling effect on artistic expression in Canada. At least four theaters are proceeding with productions of “Slav,” even if that means braving protests.
Oops! New Broadway Musical Sells $169.50 Tickets For $16.95
“This was quite the Broadway bargain. Last night, producers of the upcoming Broadway musical Gettin’ the Band Back Together, which begins previews July 19 at the Belasco Theatre, scrambled to correct a massive error they posted on Telecharge.”
What Happens When Your Country Is Run By An Aging Narcissist Who May Not Be Entirely Stable? ‘King Lear’
“In the third episode of Lend Me Your Ears, host Isaac Butler talks to theater critic Helen Shaw, Yale English professor David Kastan, and University of Roehampton professor Clare McManus about the themes of unification, misogyny, and entitlement found in one of Shakespeare’s greatest works.” (podcast)
Meet The Man Who Got A Best Choreography Tony Nomination For A Straight Play (‘Harry Potter And The Cursed Child’)
“[Steven] Hoggett … did not win the Tony. (That went to Justin Peck for the more traditionally dance-heavy Carousel.) But the recognition was well deserved: His choreography and movement direction for the two-part Cursed Child is no less meticulous and detailed than any dance number, and as important to the theatrical language of the play as the writing, by Jack Thorne, and the direction, by John Tiffany.”