Category: theatre

Where would British theatre be without him? Quite possibly in a more interesting place. Of course, we are blessed to have all those wonderful plays, but the success of Shakespeare has created a gold standard by which all British theatre is calibrated. He set us on a path of literary theatre that still dominates today. A little less Shakespeare production might allow a bit more room for new plays and the devised, visual and physical work that often gets too little space on our stages.

A producer and former performer will lead the launch of a new streaming network devoted to theater and theater-related content this summer, bowing a free version before a subscription tier that comes online in the fall.

“Over the course of a few weeks, we got a backstage look into the making of Playbill – the unmistakable, yellow-bannered magazine for theatergoers – and the transition of the 134-year-old New York institution to the mobile-first, social media-obsessed age.”

“[Sierra] Boggess, who got her start as Ariel in Broadway’s The Little Mermaid in 2007 before joining the casts of Phantom of the Opera and School of Rock, [had been cast as] Maria in a Royal Albert Hall concert performance of West Side Story.” The ensuing controversy changed her mind.

The concept of cultivating plays was perfectly in line with the values of our maker-based community, and it was undeniable that Nashville has an appetite for new works. They embraced my play in no small part because they saw the playwright behind it. Like local honey at the farmer’s market, where it was made, how, and by whom matters to this town. They desire to connect with the person behind the product and to talk together about its taste. After the initial festival, new works exploded across the city. Local theatres started programming new play premieres as part of their seasons, the Nashville Ballet and even the Nashville Opera made commitments to original productions, and the Ingram New Works Festival thrived.

The union that represents stage performers announced this week that it would cease using the title “Gypsy Robe” to describe one of its most cherished insider rituals — the passing of a colorful patchwork garment from one chorus to another on a Broadway show’s opening night — citing the potential offense to Roma people.

One theatre writer (who’s white) says that it’s disingenuous to have all-white casts, white directors, and white designers for plays that supposedly examine white privilege.

“The union that represents stage performers announced this week that it would cease using the title ‘Gypsy Robe’ to describe one of its most cherished insider rituals — the passing of a colorful patchwork garment from one chorus to another on a Broadway show’s opening night — citing the potential offense to Roma people.” Some performers are not happy with this decision.

“I also think that he was a playwright who was very confident in his interpretation of the play. I once heard him say, ‘No actor or director has ever shown me anything in one of my plays that I didn’t intend to be there.’ I think what he meant by that was not that he had all the answers, but that if you found it, on some unconscious level he meant it to be there. I found that statement – there was something very sad about that statement to me. Because one of things I like most about rehearsal is when somebody brings something to it that I’ve never thought of.”

It was, in her words, “a fucking compulsion,” says Tommy, a mixed-race native of Cape Town who came to Massachusetts with her family at age 15. “I believed the lie that the reason that there weren’t more of us [directors of color] working was because they didn’t believe we were qualified. So I was like, ‘Here I am! Here are the reviews, here’s the sales, here’s the work.'”