Category: theatre

The interim artistic director at the Alley Theatre is weighing the best response to the query of, “What will be Gregory Boyd’s legacy?” Boyd, who left in January, helped grow the company’s reputation as artistic director over nearly three decades but was also accused of harassing several women on his staff and creating an abusive work environment.

Diep Tran: “There is one question that has been lingering both for me and many other women in and around the theatre: If we’re going to stage these retrograde works” – Pretty Woman, My Fair Lady, Carousel and Kiss Me, Kate are all on Broadway this season – “and ‘reinvent’ them for the 21st century, why are men the only ones being given the opportunity to do the rethinking – to give these old properties a ‘feminist twist’? Are male artists the only ones who get to define feminism in theatre in 2018?”

This retrospective meetup in the commercial O.K. Corral of American theater suggests that for at least some parts of the gay community, the canonization of milestone works is taking deeper root in the culture. Not that this signals any end to the struggles of gay, lesbian and transgender people, not by a long shot, or that the works of female and trans writers, particularly those of color, are as yet receiving the same level of prominent treatment as those of these white men. But, as Kushner noted in a telephone interview, the tide of history might be playing a part in this intersection of gay plays.

The West End production of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s show about US founding father Alexander Hamilton won best new musical and outstanding achievement in music.

Theatre history nerds, rejoice! “These one-sheet playbills trace the history of theater in New York. They were originally posted around Manhattan to advertise Shakespeare plays, minstrel shows, new American plays and early musicals. One showcases a performance of ‘The Black Crook,’ which opened in 1866 and is often credited as the first musical. The earliest broadside in the collection advertises the Old American Company’s performance of ‘The Merchant of Venice’ in 1785; tickets were four shillings for a gallery seat.”

Lin-Manuel Miranda won, and so did the show’s choreographer, the actor who plays Aaron Burr, designers, and the musical itself. Hamilton, with seven wins, did not beat (in numbers) last year’s big winner, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

A young American woman who was told she was “too sensitive” after dealing with racist and anti-Semitic remarks from students (and fellow teachers!) started working with a peer to use Theatre of the Oppressed to change the school “The administration saw a theatre club as a benign activity, but little did they know that through games and acting exercises, the very status quo was being challenged.”