Says director Gemma Bodinetz, “I wanted to make a modern audience sit up and feel something of what a Jacobean audience must have felt at seeing a black man commanding an army.” Star Golda Rosheuvel: “Some men have a terrible fear of women, particularly powerful women. They would prefer not to see change, and this Othello is part of change. She is a woman who has power over all these men, all that testosterone. How does she negotiate that? Then she goes further and brings her lover – Desdemona – into that arena. It’s a scary thing to do.”
Category: theatre
Why Theatre Directors Don’t Get Enough Recognition
“One reason for this is that they do not appear on stage. Unlike conductors, who stand in front of an orchestra and wave a baton, they are invisible artists whose work is done when the curtain goes up, and their methods differ so greatly that the art they practice defies succinct definition. Moreover, directors work not only with actors and playwrights but also with the designers of the sets, costumes, lighting and sound for their shows, making it still more difficult to single out their contribution to the theatrical process. It follows that directing should be as hard to teach as it is to define.”
After 75 Years, How Well Has Rodgers And Hammerstein’s ‘Oklahoma!’ Held Up?
“Said another way: Whose America did Oklahoma! depict?” (For one thing, the show is lily-white, and the state at the turn of the 20th century was decidedly not.) “And is the musical’s vision of the nation relevant today?”
One North London Theatre School For Kids Taught Many Of Britain’s Best Working-Class Actors
For half a century, Anna Scher has been teaching young students and adults in Islington, once quite a rough neighborhood. “In that time, she has created numerous stars, given hope and purpose to kids who had none, started her own theatre, seen it taken away from her, had a traumatic breakdown and fought her way back to good health and standing. At 73, she is once again thriving.”
London Theatres Up The Audience Experience
Across London, theaters have come to understand better than anywhere else that voracious consumers of the performing arts want something else to chew on, to be able to pair their love of drama with a pint or a glass of wine and, say, a burger and chips, or a cheese board. And so, at the Young Vic or the National Theatre near the Waterloo railway station, or the Royal Court in Sloan Square, or the brand-new Bridge Theatre, under the Tower Bridge, large, inviting and comfy spaces have been dedicated in the theaters to soaking up some alcohol and accommodating some serious schmoozing, to go with the cultural enrichment.
An Andrew Lloyd Webber Show About Coney Island Leaves Out The Disabled ‘Freaks’ Who Started It All
A disabled theatre critic is none too happy with Webber and his touring show. “Love Never Dies takes place in 1907, three years into the freakshow’s East Coast rise in popularity. For a musical owing its location to the disabled community, Love Never Dies is decidedly remiss in incorporating the community. We are offered mere tokens: a few musical numbers briefly mention oddities, and only ‘The Beauty Underneath’ uses freak attractions in its staging.”
Can Theatre In A Small City Recover From A Serious MeToo Accusation?
The Harlequin Theatre in Olympia, Washington, was hit hard a couple of weeks ago when a Seattle Times story revealed that one of its founders ignored harassment accusations because he was “starstruck” by playwright Israel Horovitz – and, after the story blew up, the founder resigned. One reaction, by someone who used to work for the Harlequin: “My biggest fear is that it’s going to tank a very important organization in this community. It would be a shame if they burned down the house.” But it’s not the first time in recent history that the Olympia theater world has been rocked by scandal.
London’s Hamilton Explains Why He Loves ‘Black Panther,’ And Gives Book Recs As Well
Jamael Westman says that “Wakanda forever” is part of what he says when parting from friends now – “It becomes a state of mind” – and talks about why he likes playwriting podcasts: “Amazing playwrights like these can feel unreachable. You can’t imagine them as normal people because all you see is their name in shiny lights under an amazing play. But this humanises them – it’s like chilling in a writer’s room.”
Bringing Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Book To The Stage In A Crystallized Moment Of Intense Pain
Though Coates said he was “really tired and kind of suspicious” as the book became a bestseller and cultural touchstone in 2015 – and he resisted his friend Kamilah Forbes’ ideas about turning it into a staged performance – he eventually gave her the stage rights and stepped away from the project, which runs at the Apollo and the Kennedy Center this week. “It won’t quite be a play or a straight recitation of the celebrated book, which won the National Book Award and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. 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.”
The Power Behind The Plays At Humana
Amy Wegener is the literary director for Actors Theatre of Louisville, and she’s the leader of the pack when it comes to finding scripts, reading plays, and getting everyone – artistic directors most definitely included – into conversations around what shows should run at the Humana Festival of New American Plays. As this year’s festival wraps up next weekend, she’s prepping for 2019 and thinking about how to support the playwrights, directors, actors, and everyone else involved. “I’m constantly reminded that every project and team is different — you’re embarking on exploring a brand-new world each time, even with beloved collaborators.”