Steven Moffat, showrunner for Doctor Who: “That really spoils the evening when they stop the show and give you the worst red wine you have ever drunk in a crowd of people who just want the show to keep going.”
Category: theatre
A New Play Is Inspired By The Shakespearean Dilemma Of A Refugee Actor In Australia
Playwright Charles Smith happened upon the story while watching his own plays. The new “is based on the true story of a young actor named Shedrick Yarkpai. Smith met Yarkpai when a theater company in Adelaide, Australia, produced two of Smith’s plays with Yarkpai in the lead.” Then, at lunch, the entire double-identity, maybe double-jeopardy plot revealed itself when Yarkpai talked about how he got to Australia. (2017 ironic twist: The actor couldn’t get a visa to come to Chicago to see the play about him.)
How Do You Prep For The Tony Awards While Doing Eight Shows A Week?
You disguise yourself after the matinee, try to avoid Hugh Jackman, and hop on the subway, trying to get back to midtown for the evening performance.
Why A Portland Theatre Wanted To Cast A Black Actor In Virginia Woolf (And Why Edward Albee’s Estate Said No)
The Albee Estate wouldn’t speak directly to NPR about the decision. Instead, it sent a statement, saying Albee had remarked on several occasions that a mixed-race marriage in the early 1960s would not have gone unnoticed in the script — though Albee did approve the casting of a black actress as the older professor’s wife when the playwright was still alive. This is the first time the estate has had to deal with this issue since Albee’s death in September 2016.
‘Ibsen Cross-Pollinated With The Marvel Cinematic Universe’ – Only It’s About Nigerian Immigrants
Diep Tran profiles actress/playwright Mfoniso Udofia and her “Ufot Cycle,” a planned series of nine plays. (About two of them, the New York Times‘s Jesse Green wrote, “[they] offer a moving and powerful corrective to the notion that what immigrants leave behind is always awful, and that what they find is always worth the trip.”
Looking Back At 20 Years Of Being A (Female) Theatre Critic
Susannah Clapp of Britain’s The Observer: “Strangely, given the fawning on female actors and the sneering at ‘luvvies’, the theatre is the most male world in which I have worked. Far less women-driven than publishing or literary journalism or broadcasting. In all areas: writers, directors, designers, heads of theatres. That is changing. It is hard to overemphasise the difference that one thing made to this.”
Donmar Warehouse’s All-Female Shakespeare Trilogy Headed For Cinemas
“Filmed versions of Julius Caesar, Henry IV and The Tempest, directed by Phyllida Lloyd and starring Harriet Walter, will be released throughout [this] year.”
The Difficulties Of Making Political Theatre When Our Politics Is So Theatrical Already
“It’s not easy to make political theater when American politics itself has been twisted into the format of a daily reality show. Trump won the presidency by blurring the line between TV spectacle and politics, and he has governed the same way, with policy choices of tremendous impact unfurled in multiday cable TV dramas.”
Edward Albee Wasn’t Always So Rigid About Casting ‘Virginia Woolf’
A lot of criticism has greeted the Albee estate’s decision to withhold the rights to perform Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? from a tiny theater in Portland that had cast a black actor as Nick. Thing is, though realism (the play is set in 1960s New England) was Albee’s stated rationale, he did not consider Virginia Woolf entirely naturalistic at first, and he did once permit a black Martha. What changed? Mark Harris has a theory – and a suggestion.
Audible Launches $5 Million Fund For Commissioning Audio Plays
“As audio fiction seems to be having a moment, in the realm of podcasts, Audible plans to draw from the vast pool of young writers to create one- or two-person plays. They will be available beginning late this year, the company said.”