Says Tania Bruguera about her directorial debut, happening this month in Portugal, “I’m interested in how Endgame brings power dynamics into our everyday lives. It feels relevant to see this piece today, when the world is seduced by so-called strong political figures and when democracy is abused instead of enacted. It feels like the end of a chapter.”
Category: theatre
Refugees Form A Theatre Company On One Of Berlin’s Fabled Stages
The Exil Ensemble is “a group of seven performers from Syria, the Palestinian territories and Afghanistan who can’t pursue their art in their home countries and who are now in residency at the Maxim Gorki Theater” (whose house director, incidentally, is Israeli). “But how do you turn your own arrival into art so soon? How do you face the trauma? And express yourself in a new language?”
The First Time I Ever Acted On Broadway (Was In The Show I Wrote, Which Has Been Running For A Year Already)
“I felt sick to my stomach from the second I opened my eyes that morning, but it wasn’t the familiar queasiness of too little sleep, or too much bourbon the night before.” Singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles, who wrote the music and lyrics for Waitress, writes about taking over the show’s title role – the first time she’s performed in musical theater since she got eaten by a plant in Little Shop of Horrors in high school.
Hillary Clinton Has Been Broadway’s Biggest Fan This Winter. Should She Present At The Tonys?
“Since the presidential election, private citizen Hillary Clinton has permitted herself two main types of recreation: hiking in the woods outside her Westchester County home and attending Broadway shows. Clinton has been the biggest unbilled star on Broadway this spring season, and there is no better endorsement than her heartfelt fandom.”
New Yorker Theatre Critic Hilton Als Wins Pulitzer Prize For Criticism
“For decades, Als has been a highly visible public intellectual. … In addition to writing his regular columns for The New Yorker, Als is an author, photographer, curator, and overall cultural force.”
Playwright Lynn Nottage Wins Her Second Pulitzer For ‘Sweat’
With her drama, now on Broadway, about working-class folks in a struggling Pennsylvania factory town, Nottage becomes the first woman playwright to win two Pulitzer Prizes.
The New York Times Could Have Helped Diversify Theatre Criticism, And Instead, They Hired Another White Guy
A roundtable discusses the issue. “The line that jumped out to me from Green’s interview was when Green quotes his new executive editor [Dean Baquet] as saying, ‘It’s wrong to try to solve all of an institution’s diversity problems in one hire.’ So the answer is … to not solve any of them with this hire?”
We Desperately Need To Cultivate Theatre Critics Of Color
“In the past thirty years, the range and scope of American theatre has diversified, and yet most full-time critics in America are predominantly white. When theatremakers of color create art that seeks to prefigure the world we wish to live in, being reviewed by someone entrenched in a white supremacist hetero-patriarchal, capitalist gaze is counterproductive. Being reviewed by someone who is not able to meet our art where it is at is problematic.”
‘Harry Potter And The Cursed Child’ Sets A Record At The Oliviers
The show had tied the record for nominations at 11 – and it won nine, which burst above the previous records set by “Matilda the Musical” and “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.”
Comparing The Tonys And The Olivers Pretty Much Tells You How Well Transfers Across The Pond Work (Or Don’t)
Shows rarely impress on both sides of the Atlantic, though some transfer shows do even better in their second country than in their first.