Category: theatre

“An investigation opened by the theatre, following allegations that the actor had sexually assaulted young men while working [as artistic director] there, led to 20 people coming forward to report incidents of inappropriate behaviour up to 2013. … The Old Vic said a ‘cult of personality’ had existed around Spacey during his time as director and that his stardom and status had prevented people, particularly junior staff and young actors, from speaking out.”

“I believe the future is less about what ‘live theatre’ is or isn’t, and more about the further blurring of lines of categorization. People will be less clear about the difference between “theatre” and “live performance” and “immersive” and “public art” and “interactive”,  especially once ‘reality’ based technologies like AR/MR/VR invade the live sphere with faster and smaller real-time processing.”

“Over 20 years, hundreds of performers have joined the show in cities around the globe. These are some of their stories – laced with hope, tragedy, homesickness and triumph.”

Sally Greene, who hired Spacey as the theatre’s artistic director, “said it made her ‘sick to the stomach’ to think people may have suffered harassment or abuse [there]. The theatre is facing questions about how much was known among management and trustees about Spacey’s alleged behaviour during his 11 years in charge. Former employees have described it as an open secret.

“The organization announced the inaugural Bridge Award on Monday, granting $10,000 to a playwright who has served in the military for the production of a new play.” This year’s judge: Suzan-Lori Parks.

Yeah, not great. Whew. “We ought to carefully consider who is excluded from the experience when required to sit in perfect silence, in a designated squeaky seat, in darkness, next to strangers, with no food or drink, without a bathroom, in a narrow row, for several hours. In fact, now that I’ve written that, it sounds more like a hostage situation than a way in which I want to spend my entertainment dollars. Oh, and PS, there are one million stairs, because this play is produced in the non-accessible, historic building that’s within the budget constraints of this small non-profit.”

The problem isn’t just Shakespeare; it’s also Chekhov – and Arthur Miller, all three of whom dominate English-language theatre training and thus the classroom, and it’s partially why so many women majoring or doing grad work in performance get to act much less often than their male counterparts. “The coexistence of these phenomena — the paucity of plays by women in the classroom and the narrow selection of roles for women in production — begs the exploration of a connection. Are members of an artistic community less likely to put gender parity onstage if it is not presented to them offstage as artistically valuable?”

Well, we know why, but we don’t know why the show did what it did in the first place: “The production, whose lead producer is Scott Rudin, refused to provide tickets for one of the Tony nominators, Jose Antonio Vargas, and as a result, Tony officials pulled 1984’s eligibility. (Broadway sources, speaking on background because they weren’t authorized to comment, said the Tony Awards were also rebuffed in efforts to buy the tickets for Vargas.)”