Category: theatre

The venue, in the trendy Carlton neighborhood of Melbourne, burned early Saturday morning. The fire commander said, “What’s really sad about this, it’s a heritage listed building, it’s well-loved, it’s been a business that’s operated in the community for a really long time and that’s evident by the scenes out in the street with a lot of people crying, a lot of people very emotional about the loss of this icon.”

Why? Because the U.S. visa process has gotten more expensive and much harder to navigate with success. “Visa delays and denials have damaged a wide number of productions, and in many situations, have led to cancellations. It is tempting to feel powerless—to feel that there is nothing that the performing arts community can do to push back against cultural isolation. But all is not hopeless.”

Recent plays are showing teenagers in all of their complexity, cruelty, shyness, rage, and desire for more, says Diep Tran. “In other words, there are whole worlds within teenage girls and they are complicated AF.”

Even though Summer: The Donna Summer Musical has been clearing $1 million per week since early April, Broadway doesn’t have a super track record with disco. But that hardly matters – the shows, critically panned, often survive for awhile on Broadway before taking off for massive world tours.

Chad Bauman, managing director of Milwaukee Rep: “After a career in theatre management and multiple stints as a producer or judge for theatrical awards in major metropolitan areas, I’ve become increasingly convinced that as a field we do not have a cohesive definition of excellence. In an admittedly informal attempt to discover commonality, I contacted several hundred colleagues and asked them [to define excellence]. I received more than 50 responses from a wide cross section of diverse people; below is an attempt at aggregating their thoughts.”

Reporter Bridget Minamore watches the company at work – six women and six men who decide together who plays which roles (yes, there’s gender-swapping, and Terry is playing Hamlet), what costumes to wear, the sound and music design, and even the sign-language sign for “Hamlet.”

“The short answer is a local election. The long answer: an unsightly public witch-hunt against [now-former artistic director Chris] Dercon in the press and public forums, an occupation of the Volksbühne building, [plans for] the [Tempelhof] airport venue proving an unaffordable pipe dream, and disappointing audience numbers.”

Daniel Evans, artistic director of the Chichester Festival Theatre: “Some directors actively seek out notes and use the opportunity to test the clarity of their intention at a certain crucial moment, or confirmation of a secret doubt they harbour about a certain costume or scene change. Other directors are more cautious and can appear so anxious about the amount of work ahead of them, and their own mountain of notes, that it seems there’s little head space for any other advice. And some (very few in my experience) show no interest in receiving [feedback] or discussing their work whatsoever.”

“Plain sailing for 200 years at the forefront of British theatre was never an option. Any theatre as venerable and vibrant as London’s Old Vic is bound to have had its ups and downs, but the Waterloo-based venue has had more than its fair share – from bankruptcy to bailiffs and bombing during the Second World War. What is regrettable is that arguably its worst ever crisis should have cast a major shadow over this, its bicentenary year.”

“There are no character descriptions in Shakespeare. There is nothing prescriptive about who can and should play what. Our job as actors is to offer up the impression of a person’s character in all its complexities and ambiguities. For me, that is what Shakespeare was doing within the limiting constraints that he was writing in. We don’t have those constraints anymore. When the timeless, mythic, kaleidoscopic worlds he has created collide and collude with ours, then the possibilities are truly endless.”