Category: theatre

“For over two centuries, since 1737, the Lord Chamberlain had the authority to veto new plays that they deemed indecent or that posed a threat to public order. … In the UK, we may no longer have ‘big C’ Censorship, but there’s also that with a small c, which can take the form of regulation such as film certification, or artists and organisations self-censoring due worries about public protest, sponsorship and its potential loss, media storms.”

“Playwright Chantal Bilodeau first visited the Arctic in 2007. She had not thought much about climate change in the past, but seeing Alaska’s melting glaciers firsthand and hearing stories of forced migration propelled the crisis to the top of her mind. She decided to write a play about the high north, its people, and the challenges they’re facing.” Bilodeau is now expanding the project into an eight-play cycle.

“To me, what is most appalling is the intolerant discourse heard both on the street and in some media,” Lepage said. “Everything that led to this cancellation is a direct blow to artistic freedom.” Lepage said theatre is based on the principle of someone playing someone else or pretending to be someone else.

It’s not a PR problem, y’all. And it’s not going to go away with a blog post from the artistic director blaming actors of color for not being available.

The local planning council gave permission for a 1200-seat theatre in a park in the city of Tunbridge Wells, but there’s a challenge: “Former conservative councillor Brian Ransley has submitted an application for judicial review to the high court, which means a judge will review the planning decision made by the council. The claim was based on an objection to the process that was used by the council to come to the decision, according to Ransley.”

Everybody in performance needs to toughen up and remember that “hushed reverence at public performances, from classical music to theatre, is a relatively recent invention, to keep the riff-raff out; it sounds as if attending plays in Shakespeare’s day, all tobacco and ale and raucous banter, was more closing time on a bank holiday than church service. It kept the playwrights and the actors on their toes, because they were forced to earn the audience’s attention, rather than just expect it.”

But French bureaucrats might not quite be with the program yet. “‘Since they didn’t know where to put me, I’m ‘undisciplined,’ ‘ [Phia Ménard] said in a recent interview, looking wearily amused. Ms. Ménard, 47, often perplexes programmers. Her stage productions feature almost no text and operate on an architectural scale, somewhere between choreography and art installation. Their slow-moving tableaux dwarf any human presence, leaving audiences with enigmatic, elemental images — a shadowy army of frozen figures melting before our eyes, say, or a lonely performer struggling in a vortex of fan-powered winds.”

Lileana Blain-Cruz went to New Orleans before she began directing Marcus Gardley’s “The House That Will Not Stand,” which is set in 1813 in the city. She documented what she discovered, and “even the food, she reported, felt relevant.”