Category: theatre

Kip Williams stepped up as interim AD in May, when Jonathan Church resigned and went home to his projects in England after nine months of attempting to commute to Australia. Williams has been with STC for five years and directed his first show there at age 25.

After all, the new musical, Come From Away, is set there – at Gander airport, to which 38 flights were diverted on 9-11-01, leaving an out-of-the-way little town to host several thousand confused and scared passengers for five days.

“‘I call this ‘The Metaphor Strikes Back,” says [director Suzanne] Richard of ‘the deaf, dumb and blind kid,’ as the ‘Pinball Wizard’ lyrics un-gently describe the traumatized title character of Pete Townshend’s seminal rock opera. ‘I think it’s time for the metaphor to get a dose of what the real experience of disability is like.'”

Five little words – “the Ars Nova Production of” – ahead of the show’s title in the Playbill led to an ugly dispute that got into both the press and the legal system, and now the show’s producers want to make it go away.

The Siminovitch, the richest prize in Canadian theatre, is awarded on a three-year cycle to directors, playwrights and designers – and Nadia Ross’s win in a year dedicated to direction is certainly an encouraging one for Canadian theatre artists whose practice doesn’t neatly fall into those categories, or, indeed, the mainstream definition of “theatre.”

Think about the National Theatre in London, for instance: “If you fancy a bit of high Gothic horror, you too could wear Benedict Cumberbatch’s Frankenstein costume – or indeed a whole host of others worn by the stars.”

“The leaders of Ars Nova, a small nonprofit that has never before seen a show it developed transfer to Broadway, have accused Howard Kagan, the lead commercial producer, of violating a signed agreement to describe the musical in the Playbill as ‘The Ars Nova production of’ the show.”

“Today, the producing population has been infiltrated by investors who assume the job title of “producer.” In the days when I was producing, I had 175 investors. They were press agents, company managers, actors, stagehands, and, of course, a few of my parents’ friends. But the names of producers above the title were never more than three. If you are a creative producer with an impressive track record, investors should have no serious role reading a script, contributing to the casting of a show, approving its decisions, and—guess what—attending the meeting the day after a show has opened and giving advertising advice.”