Duh? And yet, ugh: “The notion that musicals are somehow a lower form of art seems to be felt at the very highest echelons of the industry itself – even at Equity, it seems, which recently approached its members with a survey that approached three categories differently: one for performers in musical theatre, one for actors in plays and one for stage management.”
Category: theatre
Theatre Of Empathy Subbing Out The Victims
Theatre for a Change, a partnership between the UK and Malawi, is “one of a number of organisations around the world using theatre to educate about sexual consent, the company favours a technique called ‘legislative theatre’. This concept was developed by Brazilian dramatist, director and theorist Augusto Boal, who believed that putting the powerful in the shoes of the disempowered enabled an empathy that could effect legal change.”
What Provoked The Sudden Departure Of Houston’s Alley Theatre Director
Alley administrators, Gregory Boyd, 66, and several board members refused to respond to requests for interviews about the surprising departure, which comes after Boyd signed a five-year contract in 2016 and was weeks away from the Alley’s first production of 2018.
How The Art Of Directing Theatre Is Changing
“If the job description and skill set of directing hasn’t changed much, the circumstances in which American directors work certainly has. The cost of renting performance spaces has shot up in major urban areas, and the existence of affordable spaces for young artists everywhere has dwindled. While programs and grants to nurture young playwrights have sprung up across the country, support for those with directorial aspirations is relatively sparse.”
Why Demand For “Hamilton” Tickets Is Waning In Chicago
Sales are slowing. Browse the official Ticketmaster website and you will see availability, pretty good availability, for midweek shows in January, and these are not resale inventory. They’re as yet unsold. They will be sold, by show time. But they won’t command the same prices and those weekly grosses will not be $3 million. It behooves “Hamilton” to leave with audiences still wanting more, leaving some room for a return by popular demand.
‘Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede’, A Sort Of Civil-War-Themed ‘Medieval Times’, Drops The ‘Dixie’ Part After Criticism
Slate‘s Aisha Harris: “Last summer, I made my way from Yankee territory and into the land of cotton to review Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede in Pigeon Forge, Tenn. … a kitschy dinner theater show best summed up as ‘Springtime for the Confederacy.’ … Seeing it in 2017, just a week after protests over Confederate monuments led to the death of an innocent woman, made it especially shocking. I articulated this sentiment last August, and my review stirred up no shortage of debates over history, Dolly, and Southern pride.” Now the producer of the Parton-themes shows seems to have heard those debates.
The Women Running London’s Donmar Warehouse Are Leaving
“[Josie] Rourke will step down in 2019, after eight years as the Donmar’s artistic director, and [Kate] Pakenham, the executive producer, will leave this June. The pair made up the first female partnership to lead a London playhouse.”
How Josie Rourke Changed The Donmar, London’s Little Theatre Powerhouse
“Her predecessors at the Donmar, Michael Grandage and Sam Mendes, had turned the 251-seat venue in Covent Garden into an international player, through movie-star casting and regular West End and Broadway transfers. Although thrilled to be the first woman to run a central London theatre, Rourke knew the risk of becoming a theatrical equivalent of John Major after Margaret Thatcher or Gordon Brown after Tony Blair. After a nervous start, she made the theatre her own with a programme that forefronted women – notably Phyllida Lloyd’s magnificent trilogy imagining Shakespeare tragedies as performed by female prisoners – and politics.”
Live-Streaming Broadway Makes Sense. But It’s Been REALLY Hard To Get There
In reality, much of Broadway’s success comes from a handful of breakout hits, while the majority of shows never turn a profit. Long-running favorites like The Lion King or Wicked may consistently attract tourists, but that doesn’t help the houses that either struggle to fill seats or aren’t reaching their full potential. Of the 32 or 33 shows listed the boards during a typical week, some may not even bring in half of their earning capacity. Streaming could fill in those gaps, the argument goes, by either helping to promote shows while they’re still running or offering producers a new revenue stream that exists long after the show is closed. Easier access to shows could also help democratize Broadway’s stubbornly homogenous audience–last season, 77% of ticket buyers were white, and most had an income of over $75,000 a year.
‘Les Mis’ Composer Claude-Michel Schönberg On What Makes A ‘Proper Song’ For A Musical
“Q: You’ve said that many new musicals don’t have proper songs. What goes into the making of a proper song?
“A: To write proper songs for a musical, there are special theatrical things you must master. Your songs must always be telling the story, which is very tricky, and you must learn how to do it. And the transitions between spoken dialogue and music are very hard; you can always tell when these transitions are awkward.”