Category: theatre

“The Tonys have gone hostless before — with dire results. Theater people still wince at the memory of the 1999 awards, when a bunch of actors stood in a circle and declaimed famous lines from plays.”

The artist Okwui Okpokwasili blurs boundaries, hates talking about genres, and collaborates both with her husband and a variety of other performers. “Nearly six feet tall, with a hypnotic voice and limbs that swallow up space, she pushes herself to the edge as a performer, playing with extremes of ecstasy, sadness or rage with almost dangerous intensity.”

Seriously: All 40 theatres were full (the 41st is under renovation right now). How rare is this? (And what’s doing well, or less than well?)

That is one devoted audience member: “Using her free-flying privileges as a now-retired pilot, [Beverley Bass] has followed the musical’s developmental journey from La Jolla to Seattle to Washington to Gander to Toronto to New York, often with other female pilots in tow. Ms. Bass is both watching the show and reliving the events, clutching her husband’s hand as the emotions return.”

Take a Tony winner, a guy touring in “Hamilton,” and Renée Fleming, and what do you get? A revival of “Carousel,” of course.

An understudy goes on – and the music and lyrics writer addresses that fact – in the final preview before opening. How’d that go?

Of course, the program is called “Disney Musicals in the Schools,” and the kids produce and perform a “Disney KIDS” musical during the year they get funding and support, but hey: “Teachers will learn how to create all parts of a show, including building a rehearsal schedule, developing and maintaining a budget, choreographing a number, teaching the music and directing a show.”

“Much has been written about Miss Saigon, primarily by white writers: about the yellowface controversy, about the actors involved. But very few Vietnamese-Americans have weighed in. We are the sixth-largest immigrant group in America, numbering 1.3 million. And yet popular narratives of the Vietnam War typically exclude us. And as Miss Saigon tours the country next year, the most popular narrative of all will continue to shut us out.”

Declan Donnellan: “Plays without ideas are boring. But all ideas are dead until someone gives them flesh. Angels is full of ideas – bursting with them – but they land in our laps only because they have been vomited up by the living situation.”

Nelson Pressley looks at the growth taking place at Charm City’s flagship theater company, Baltimore Center Stage, and smaller companies that are feeling secure enough to invest in actual real estate.