It has spawned two feature films, with a third on the way, and has generated more than $13 billion in retail merchandise sales. adapting family entertainment to Broadway has brought mixed results, especially when not from Disney. Recent examples include “Matilda” (a hit), “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” (a failure) and two outright bombs, “Seussical” and “Shrek the Musical” (though both have ended up with longer lives in high schools). If “SpongeBob” sinks on Broadway, it could damage a carefully cultivated two-decade-old brand.
Category: theatre
This Woman Is The Reason There’s A Video Archive Of 4,000 Broadway And Off-Broadway Productions
How Betty Corwin, now 97, corralled and cajoled producers, unions, and librarians to create, and run for 31 years, the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
Why Do Only Ten Percent Of Americans Ever Go To The Theatre? Maybe It’s The Way We Teach It
No other form of literature is taught this way; indeed, no other art form is taught this way. Kids are encouraged to read current, popular fiction in school. Perhaps by the time they reach high school their choices are narrowed, but at least by then they’ve been encouraged to read dozens of contemporary books that they love. Students are assigned novels and poetry by living authors, many of whom are—gasp—not white men. Art class is full of hands-on work where the students create while they study masters both new and old. Even music instructors teach jazz and hip hop alongside classical music.
The Problem With Plays About Campus Sexual Assault: Good Drama Just Isn’t Helpful
Alexis Soloski: “A boy student assaults a girl student. It’s sad, yes. But to quote Shakespeare again, it’s ‘everyday’s news.’ Who wants to write about a victim? It’s depressing. Better to thrill an audience with some he said, she said, right? … We know that sexual assault on college campuses is both epidemic and underreported, in part because women and men who have experienced assault doubt that they will be believed. So is it too much to ask for a play that confirms the truth of an assault? Or suggests that a victim wasn’t somehow asking for it?”
Study: Singing Musical Theatre Can Help Slow Alzheimer’s
Researchers working with elderly residents at an East Coast care home found in a four-month long study found that people who sang their favorite songs showed a marked improvement compared to those who just listened.
Actors In London Lead A ‘No Gray Area’ Protest Of Sexual Harassment In The Theatre
The silent protest, an action performed with the support of the National Theatre, was meant to be for solidarity with those who can’t yet speak up and for visibility of the problem. “Those attending were asked to wear black and white clothing and were provided with white ribbons to wear.”
The Public Theater Is Holding A Town Hall On Sexual Harassment
London and Chicago theaters have already gathered and hammered out some guidelines for theaters in town, and the Public says it’s time to do so in New York. “Stephanie Ybarra, the director of special artistic projects and one of the event’s organizers, said the Public Theater was a civic institution as well as an artistic one, and therefore ‘a place where art, ideas and conversation flow freely.'”
What We Learned On a 13-Hour Immersive Theatre Performance On A Plane From London To JFK
“Our work is interactive so audiences are not passive observers but in the midst of the action, both as witnesses or participants. We had members of the press offering to write a tale for our heroine’s birthday and one passenger, who had forgotten to take his usual Valium dose, dealt with his in-flight nerves by becoming a character in the show. However, being thrust into a theatre show for 13 hours can be bit much, even for the most ardent theatre-goer.”
Should Theatre Reflect Audience Or Create It?
“Populism aims to represent the people. That can function on two levels: reflecting it on the one hand and creating it on the other. With the former, we assume that the people exist before a representation of them is made. With the latter, we want to make it exist. This second concept is performative; we understand that it is close to the performance. The link with theatre and the other performing arts depends perhaps on how we should understand what an audience is.”
‘Singin’ In The Rain’ On Stage, Looking Like An Old Black-And-White Movie Musical
Robert Carsen’s production of the old Gene Kelly classic for Paris’s Théâtre du Châtelet (and which he hopes to bring to Broadway) isn’t entirely in black-and-white: “We use sepia toning sometimes. If it’s in a garden, it’s tinted green. If it’s indoors, it’s tinted pink. In the fantasy section, when it’s not in Los Angeles anymore or making a movie but dreaming of being on Broadway, in the Broadway melody, that all goes into gold and warm tungsten stage lights.”