“Is it crazy to think the younger black postmodernists — these interrogators of blackness, these satirists of race — have an intellectual luxury afforded them by Wilson’s dogged devotion to place and history? What made Wilson such an Olympian figure was that he could fit the whole country in an office or a backyard and make the bigness of his ideas seem life-size. As for what he would have had to say about this mutability matter? I’d like to think he’d probably have written a play about it.”
Category: theatre
Why Broadway’s (And Broadway Tours’) Box Office Is At An All-Time High
Alexis Soloski: “What accounts for the remarkable rise in revenue and attendance … that the last several years have witnessed? The answer probably relies on both the type of entertainment Broadway has been offering and the new strategies it has found to price and sell its wares.”
Frank Loesser’s Do-It-Yourself Musicals For World War II GIs
“For PFC Frank Loesser and PFC José Limón, their contributions to the war effort took the form of a series of musicals, created for the soldiers to produce and perform themselves. The aim was to boost morale among troops stationed in places where the USO couldn’t go.” Now some of those plays are being revived. (audio)
El Sistema Has Been Transformative Worldwide. So Why Is There No El Sistema Of Theatre?
“There are now almost one million young people investing their free time to make art, and then better art with their friends. There are programs in Afghanistan, Palestine, and refugee camps in Europe; in slums of Manila, Rio and Nairobi; in a Maori community of New Zealand, and an Inuit community of Greenland. Wealthy cities like Los Angeles, New York, Paris, London, Stockholm, Vienna, and Hong Kong even have programs for children living in poverty. There are over 130 different programs in the US alone. Though the research is still scarce, it affirms the enthusiastic claims—intensive ensemble learning in the arts can, and does change the trajectory of kids’ lives.”
How We Learned To Write Musicals – Seven Origin Stories
Benj Pasek, Justin Paul, Kirsten Childs, Nell Benjamin, Stew, Adam Gwon, and Kevin Del Aguila explain how they found their way into this specialized craft – one you can’t go get a degree in.
Big Plans For Broadway’s Littlest House
The Helen Hayes Theater has fewer than 600 seats (and had half that before a balcony was added). The Off-Broadway company Second Stage bought the venue in 2015 and is renovating it. “In the process, the theater company, which focuses on work by living American writers, is trying to figure out how best to use interior design to signal the organization’s decidedly contemporary bent in a decidedly noncontemporary building.”
Hillary Clinton Had A Slightly Different Experience On Broadway Than Mike Pence Did
The audience at “The Color Purple,” which was ending its run, gave her and former President Bill Clinton several standing ovations. One audience member “shook her hand, but said he is still filled with frustration over her loss. ‘She shouldn’t be here. She should be planning her cabinet,’ he said.”
The British Plan To Keep Real Hamilton Tickets In The Hands Of Their Actual Human Purchasers
Basically, it’s an experiment: “Those buying tickets for Hamilton – one of the most highly anticipated shows of 2017 – will only receive a hard copy of their ticket when they arrive at the Victoria Palace Theatre.”
Will Boston’s Theatre District Get New Life As Emerson College’s Colonial Theatre Reopens?
The deal with London-based Ambassador Theatre Group comes with a 40-year lease and both Emerson and ATG making capital investments in the 117-year-old building – and the revitalization of a theatre that’s been dark for more than a year.
The Shakespeare Detective Who Has Determined That Shakespeare Was, Indeed, Shakespeare
When she’s not making big data discoveries that slay the conspiracy theories about who else might have written the plays, the scholar Heather Wolfe is creating things like Project Dustbunny, “one of her initiatives at the Folger Shakespeare Library, [that] has made some extraordinary discoveries based on microscopic fragments of hair and skin accumulated in the crevices and gutters of 17th-century books.”