Teatro Polski in Wrocław has always been considered one of the country’s most daring. But company members argue that the new artistic director, Cezary Morawski – installed by the nationalist Law and Justice Party’s government – is doing work that’s commercial, old-fashioned, and unambitious, tarnishing the theatre’s reputation at home and abroad. Staff has been fired, petitions have flown, and the national culture minister has been pulled into the dispute.
Category: theatre
Nine Broadway Shows That Closed Before They Even Opened
For instance: “Senator Joe – A rock opera that tells the story of Senator Joseph McCarthy, Senator Joe is perhaps as infamous as the man that inspired it. Apparently, financing was so shaky that the theatre’s marquee still read Kenny Loggins on Broadway—a hold-over from the theatre’s last tenant—for all three of the show’s previews.”
There’s An Increase In Roles For Older Actors. Can It Last, And Expand?
This is a rather urgent issue, particularly as the Baby Boomer generation ages. “At a time when theatre is becoming far more aware of its lack of inclusiveness in relation to gender, race and economic and social privilege, ageism is often left out of the diversity conversation.”
Theatre Could Act To Stabilize American Society, If Practitioners Decided To Commit
Jonathan Wei of the Telling Project: “Art can provide the opportunity for inquiry, immediacy, presence, receptivity, and vulnerability. It can provide a space for the expression of the primary desire to expand one’s world, to embrace rather than exclude, to experience rather than define, to immerse rather than to understand, and to contemplate rather than formulate.”
How Joe Haj Is Reinvigorating Minneapolis’ Guthrie Theatre
“Building on a foundation laid by his predecessor Joe Dowling — a visionary leader who built the Guthrie’s new home but became somewhat isolated from his staff and the community by the end of his 20-year tenure — Haj is bringing new voices and more resonant programming into the mix. He and his leadership team also are pressing the flesh in the community in ways that have been a pleasant surprise to Twin Cities arts leaders.”
Using Shakespeare To Help Heal Veterans’ Trauma, Onstage And Off
Laura Collins-Hughes profiles Stephan Wolfert, who teaches acting classes specifically for vets, and who performs a solo show combining Shakespeare texts with his own memories of the military.
Why Rosalind Is Shakespeare’s Most Complex Character
Angela Thirlwell: “Rosalind is a grand paradox. Man and woman, authentically alive yet forever a fiction, ageless and modern … When she sprints into the forest of Arden as the boy Ganymede, she expands our ideas about gender, and epitomizes what love feels like for both sexes, through the whole gamut of human emotions, in every time and place.”
Website Aiming To Be The Rotten Tomatoes Of Theatre Raises $2 Million
The new funds, ponied up by a group that includes Hollywood veteran Gail Berman and Gilt Groupe and Business Insider founder Kevin Ryan, will go in part toward expanding Show-Score’s activities beyond New York to markets that have expressed interest in the site, both in the U.S. and in London. The money also will help sustain exploratory efforts at what Show-Score founder Tom Melcher calls “harnessing the story of the audience’s reaction to theater,” including fan art, Instagram posts, videos and photography.
In A First, West End Theatre Asks Patrons Not To Eat In Their Seats
The Ambassador Theatre Group has asked ticketholders to the revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? “that no food be consumed during the performance.” (This may have been at the request of star Imelda Staunton, who has publicly complained about the practice.) This request is evidently unusual enough that ATG later felt the need to stress that food has not been banned outright.
Imelda Staunton And Critic Agree: Eating In Your Seat Is A Crime Against Theatre
Michael Billington: “I’ve only lately become aware of how popular this is. … Some theatres, I’ve discovered, even encourage the practice by supplying a meal-and-drink package, as if their patrons might die of hunger or thirst during the arduous business of watching a play. Does it matter? I think it does.”