Category: theatre

Marya Sea Kaminski will leave her job as associate artistic director of Seattle Repertory Theatre to become the sixth artistic director in Pittsburgh Public Theater’s 44-season history, succeeding the retiring Ted Pappas.

“After we solicited stories about harassment from the field last month, more than 100 theatre artists from around the country sent us emails or spoke to us over the phone and in person about their experiences. It is not only women who are the targets of harassment; men and gender-nonconforming individuals also had firsthand experiences to share. Most requested anonymity, citing an industry that, compared to Hollywood, is much smaller and more localized.”

In 2015, two young English playwrights, Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson, traveled to the notorious shantytown known as the Jungle and ended up establishing a theatre tent for the migrants there. Two years on, with the Jungle now bulldozed, the two Joes have created a play dramatizing a year in the life of the camp, and it’s about to open at London’s Young Vic.

“The casting companies have demanded that Broadway producers pay a surcharge of 29% on all currently negotiated fees, adding tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of putting on a show,” the lawsuit said. The lawsuit also alleges that the casting offices have recently begun boycotting new work.

“Throughout my career, I’ve experienced critics stepping away from criticism to offer up a wide body of other advice from plays they want the theater to produce to which authors they like and what should be the theater’s strategic priorities. Are these meant to be helpful suggestions or instances where a critic is trying to influence artistic direction? Can theaters politely ignore the suggestions if we disagree, or even worse if it is well beyond their missions, or will the critic take offense?”

Jez Butterworth’s win for The Ferryman marks his third Evening Standard Theatre award, having won most promising playwright in 1995 and best play for Jerusalem in 2009. The Ferryman also won in the director category, with Sam Mendes recognised, and in the emerging talent section, with Tom Glynn-Carney honoured.

Yes, the representation of LGBTQ+ characters on television has gotten much better over the last decade or so. But in musicals, even new ones, argues Dom O’Hanlon, “you can usually spot the token gay character a mile off. Reduced to a supporting role and often aligned with such stereotypical gay professions as dress designers, makeup artists, personal assistants and cabin crew, contemporary writers use gay characters for quick quips and a ‘sashay away’ for light comic relief.”

Independent drama schools where such legendary teachers as Stella Adler, Uta Hagen and Sanford Meisner are getting squeezed by the rising costs of space, competition from university-based programs, and smaller pools of students – students who, often as not, are more interested in audition-skills classes than in honing their craft.