Katori Hall says change won’t be easy: “That requires a lot of giving up. Giving up your seat to let people sit at the table who haven’t always been allowed to sit … that’s often not on the stage, but where the decisions are made. That’s on the board. How many black artistic directors does the UK theatre scene have? I’m always asking, are we performing inclusion, are we performing diversity? Or are we actually doing it. Let’s see if the acknowledgment phase shifts through into the action phase.”
Category: theatre
Will The UK’s Oldest Stage School Move Out Of Central London?
Basically, Italia Conti may be out of room and looking to expand.
Critic: Why I Will No Longer Review Shows That Don’t Pay Actors
“I have also come to realise that, as a critic, I am complicit in this exchange. By going to review work at venues where actors are not paid, or paid very little, I am effectively endorsing a system that advantages some at the expense of others.”
Jewish Theater Co. Sends Solo Show By And About Palestinians To Tour Colleges Across U.S.
“For Lindsay Acker and Austin J. Sachs, students at Eastern Mennonite University who spent 3½ months last year in the Middle East, the one-man play that came to their campus compelled them to grapple with all sorts of wrenching memories. … And for Gassan Abbas, the Palestinian actor from Israel who has been performing I Shall Not Hate in one college town after another, the experience has broadened his understanding of the compassion in this country – as well as a sense of its myopia about the world.”
Setting ‘The Crucible’ In An Orthodox Jewish Settlement In The West Bank
An Israeli critic reviewing the production at Tel Aviv’s Cameri Theater “wrote that he went into ‘aesthetic shock’ when he realized that he was not watching Puritans in colonial New England, but a far more familiar group, one that Miller himself, disillusioned and ailing, had called ‘an armed and rather desperate society at odds with its neighbors but also the world.'”
Judge In Brazil Lifts Ban On Play About Transgender Jesus
“In a unanimous decision, the São Paulo [State] Court of Justice said an injunction to block the performance of The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven – in which the trans artist Renata Carvalho plays a transgender Jesus Christ – was unconstitutional.”
What Directors Do About That Damned Dagger In ‘Macbeth’
“Few visual moments are as strange as the scene at the beginning of act two, in which Macbeth sees a dagger floating in the air, apparently leading him to Duncan’s bedchamber. This hallucination provokes one of Shakespeare’s most famous speeches: ‘Is this a dagger which I see before me?’ … For this strangest of plays, the paradox is fitting: its best-known prop is almost certainly invisible.” Andrew Dickson looks at the ways some of the great actors and directors have handled the scene.
Another Chicago Theater Company Director Accused Of Abusing And Coercing Actresses
Less than two years after revelations of abuse led to the closing of Profiles Theater Co. and the creation of the advocacy group Not in Our House, “six Chicago-based actresses report an extensive pattern of verbal and physical abuse by Jeremy Menekseoglu, artistic director of the Dream Theatre Company (DTC), a small non-Equity company which recently relocated to the Atlanta area from Chicago.”
West End Attendance Breaks 15 Million Mark For First Time
“Figures released today by the Society of London Theatre (SOLT) showed 2017 was a record year for the capital’s theatre business with box office revenues topping the £700 million mark.” The reasons: Hamilton and Harry Potter.
Cameron Mackintosh’s Plans For New Non-Profit Theatre In London’s West End Approved
“The proposals will lead to most of the existing Ambassadors Theatre being demolished, with the existing West Street facade and part of the Tower Court facade retained. Under the plans, the building will then be redeveloped into a flexible performance space with 450 to 475 seats and a new floor built above the auditorium to house a rehearsal space for larger shows.”