Category: theatre

Lyn Gardner reports on the project by London’s Czech Centre and the interactive company Oneohone to perform updated versions of Havel’s Vaněk Plays, which were originally staged in secret in a Prague apartment after the Czech Communist government banned the playwright.

Brook understands what divides cultures. As he says in his book, “if in English we speak words, the French speak thoughts”. Yet he also sees common factors, especially in the universal search in actors for ever greater self-disclosure. “If we were transported back to the Elizabethan theatre,” he says, “I think we’d be shocked by the crudity and coarseness of what we saw.

The glasses will enable D/deaf and hard of hearing audiences to read live captioning on the lenses during a performance, removing the need for captioning screens in the auditorium. NT director Rufus Norris said the glasses mean that for the first time, D/deaf audiences will be able to attend any performance during a production’s run, rather then rely on the limited number of captioned performances – up to four per show – that are currently scheduled.

“As artistic neighbors go, Howard Shalwitz and Michael Kahn appear to be miles apart. Shalwitz runs the new-plays troupe Woolly Mammoth Theatre; Kahn heads the classical Shakespeare Theatre Company. Woolly seats 265; the STC’s two stages combined hold more than 1,200. … Swinging up and down Seventh Street between the Lansburgh and Woolly from morning till night, these are glimpses of a day in the life as Shalwitz and Kahn gear up for their latest shows and power down their leadership roles.”

“Protesters associated with [a group called] Dust to Glitter had been occupying the [Volksbühne] since Friday night, declaring the building ‘property of the people’ in their initial statement. They intended to develop a ‘People’s Stage’ over the next three months, as well as an ‘anti-gentrification center’ and a ‘parliament of the homeless.'” (The protests were not aimed specifically at controversial new artistic director Chris Dercon.) Yet the occupiers left peacefully when the police arrived (though a few had to be carried away) – as one of the organizers said, “It seems that the theater workers were not entirely supportive of the occupation.”

“Matt Ward Entertainment, the Australian producing entity behind the production, came under fire last week when a series of character posters were released online revealing that a cast of predominantly white actors had been hired for the production. … Some protesters questioned the creative team’s decision to move forward with the musical once it became apparent that they were unable to authentically cast the production.”

Identifying La MaMa as a New York theatre is accurate in the geographical sense only. It might be more apt to think of it as the international theatre of the East Village, in accordance with Ellen Stewart’s belief that the local is global and the global local.

“Theater is where I go to confront the hard stuff; to have my heart shredded there is O.K.” Laura Collins-Hughes writes of her recent encounters with Sarah Ruhl’s For Peter Pan on her 70th birthday and Eurydice and how they helped her with her father’s decline and death from Parkinson’s disease.

“Her ability to make a go of ACT in the wake of dual disasters – the artistically uncompromising [founder Bill] Ball’s financial mismanagement and 1989’s Loma Prieta earthquake, which partially collapsed and temporarily shuttered the palatial Geary Theater – looks downright miraculous even to her. … The story of those early years, particularly a riotous first season that included a picket by the Catholic Church and exercised critics and season subscribers alike, is now theatre lore.” Perloff talks to Richard Avila about how she did it and what she learned over the years, especially about being a woman running a major institution.