In this podcast he discusses: Why we’ll never go back to making reviewers review the opening night performance.
What he thinks when he sees a quote from one of his reviews splashed on a marquee. Why Writers should NOT read his reviews. What he’s looking forward to this season. How he responds to “hate mail.”
Category: theatre
Bye-Bye, Baby: Broadway’s ‘Jersey Boys’ To Close After 11 Years
“The jukebox musical about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons opened on Nov. 6, 2005, and won four Tony Awards, including for best new musical, in 2006. It is now the 12th-longest-running show in Broadway history; at its closing [on Jan. 15], it will have played 4,642 performances.”
Is August Wilson The Shakespeare Of Modern America?
Actor Keith David: “‘There is a rhythm in this language that if you betray, you won’t find the truth of. It’s inherent in the language. … [And his characters] are rich, full, incredible human beings – and thinking human beings, colorful not only in their use of language but the way in which they think and communicate, both with each other and out in the world.”
What Happens When Small Theaters Have To Start Paying People For Overtime?
“How are the soon-to-be-implemented rules” – requiring that any employee earning less than $47,476 per year be paid extra for working more than 40 per week – “affecting workers and theatres on the ground?” Diep Tran talks to the people in the proverbial trenches.
If A Show Is Written About Millennials, Will They Come To The Theatre?
“One theme all three shows explore is the dual nature of contemporary identity. With the pervasiveness of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, most young adults have two, if not three, versions of themselves—ranging from the public and curated to the private and sometimes secretly chaotic.”
Turning STEM Into STEAM With Theatre
“When science is presented through theatre, students aren’t as afraid of getting things wrong and feel free to shout out, or even dance, answers.”
Explaining The Conditional Love Song In Musicals, Flowchart And All
“When the conditional love song is a solo, the real subversions begin.”
Broadway Musicals Are More Diverse. But Broadway Plays?
“Somewhat overshadowed by the #TonysSoDiverse hype of the evening were the best performance awards in a play category: all four went to white actors over the age of sixty. After such an exciting season on Broadway, where productions finally reflected the zeitgeist of our times, are Broadway plays lagging dangerously behind?”
How Upright Citizens Brigade Turned Improv Into Big Business
“In 2003, the Times reported that ‘some 500 students’ were enrolled in ’30 or so improvisation and sketch-comedy classes’ at U.C.B. In 2011, New York had the figure at approximately eight thousand. The organization doesn’t reveal numbers (the better to avoid quibbling about not paying its performers), but one current employee let slip the latest tally: last year, U.C.B. trained twelve thousand students. That’s about five million dollars in revenue.”
Bitter Experience: Theatre Critic Finally Gets Why Regular Middle-Class Folks Don’t Go To Plays More Often
Andrzej Lukowski, theatre editor at Time Out London: “I [now] realise the essential reason theatres are so full of old people is that they don’t have to support their offspring. … There are no theatre access schemes to help out nice middle-class people who happen to be temporarily skint because of childcare, and quite right too. But … anybody who says theatre is for everyone is living in a fantasy land.”