Category: theatre

Now What? Data Show UK Theatre Companies’ Gender Pay Gap

In total, 44 companies working in the performing arts reported the difference between men and women’s salaries, with a median hourly pay gap of 7% in favour of male employees. This means when comparing median hourly rates, women are paid 93p for every £1 paid to men. The median pay difference of the total 10,015 firms that published their figures was 9.7%, meaning arts companies came out more favourably than the average. The national median is 18.4%.

Could ‘Jesus Christ Superstar Live’ Rehabilitate Andrew Lloyd Webber?

“For years, the Lloyd Webber canon has been a bit of a cultural punching bag. It’s not hard to see why: His two most popular musicals are, respectively, a nearly plotless anthology sung by performers in spandex and fur and a faux opera about a disfigured stalker in pop culture’s most iconic mask … [Cats and The Phantom of the Opera] have allowed him to become a byword for over-the-top mediocrity that people can snub to feel cultured. Jesus Christ Superstar Live, however, reminded audiences of a different side to Lloyd Webber’s canon.”

Study: High Incidence Of Concussions Among Theatre Performers

Research revealed 67 percent of those surveyed had experienced at least one theater-related head impact. Astonishingly, 39 percent respondents sustained more than five head injuries and 77 percent had more than three head impacts during their time in theater. Of those who experienced a head impact, 70 percent had concussion-related symptoms but continued working.

Report: UK Theatres Passively Allow Culture Of Harassment

The report concludes that “bullying and abuses of power were seen to be prevalent” and that inappropriate behaviour can be found at “all levels” across all areas of the industry and in all genders. “There can be a passive culture of endorsing bullying. Leaders may encourage new entrants not to challenge, perpetuating the culture with statements such as ‘That’s just how they are’ or ‘We have extreme characters in our industry’,” it states.

Why Hamlet Is Different From The Rest

It’s a truism that no one accepts anyone else’s reading of Hamlet. And for at least two hundred years, no generation has been comfortable with its predecessor’s take on the play. It’s hard to think of another work whose interpretations so uncannily identify what the play calls the “form and pressure” of “the time.”

First Of Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s ‘Translated’ Shakespeare Plays Scheduled For Staging

In the fall of 2015, OSF announced the controversial project “Play on!”, in which 36 playwrights were commissioned to “translate” the 36 plays into modern English, creating companion works for the originals. The first product of the initiative, an English-Spanish version of The Comedy of Errors by Luis Alfaro, will debut in the summer of 2019.

London’s Royal Court Theatre Cancelled Play About Tibet To Avoid Angering China, Documents Reveal

The theatre cited “financial reasons” when it called off the production of playwright Abhishek Majumdar’s Pah-La scheduled for last fall. Newly-released correspondence says that the British Council warned the Royal Court that going ahead with the play could interfere with “significant political meetings” happening in China at the time and could jeopardize a project the Royal Court had planned with 16 Chinese writers.

Putting Ta-Nehisi Coates’s ‘Between The World And Me’ Onstage

“It won’t quite be a play or a straight recitation … Excerpts and fragments will be read either solo or in groups by a cast that includes the actress Angela Bassett and the rappers Common and Black Thought. Projections visualizing Mr. Coates’s vivid imagery will tower behind them, and the jazz musician Jason Moran will perform a live score with a trio.” Kamilah Forbes, executive producer for the Apollo Theater, tells a reporter how she’s gone about adapting the award-winning book by Coates, a close friend from college.