Category: theatre

The Broadway League said Monday that theater owners and producers will refund or exchange tickets previously purchased for shows through Jan. 3. Given the unpredictability of the coronavirus pandemic that has prompted the shuttering of Broadway, the League said it was not yet ready to specify exactly when shows will reopen. – The New York Times

Without the small stages, emerging voices in British theatre don’t have much of a chance. One playwright: “Uncertainty is dreadfully demotivating. I intended to use the lockdown to write a new play that’s been nagging at me, but I’ve hardly written a word. For the first time in a decade and a half, I cannot see much prospect of getting it performed.” – The Guardian (UK)

People are right to be frustrated about the lack of diversity backstage, says the president of the Broadway League, which is ready to perform a “diversity audit” of many parts of Broadway. She says that the League can’t force participation, but that it “would strongly encourage all affected entities, including labor unions and nonprofits that operate on Broadway, to cooperate with the researchers.” – The New York Times

Jose Solís: “As an insider who still holds a little bit of hope about the possibility of change happening within these overly white spaces, I would like to propose some things the Drama Desk and the Outer Critics Circle can do to secure a more diverse membership, who in return will honor shows that defy conventions of what good theatre is, and who gets to make and star in it.” – Token Theatre Friends

The actor who played Burr in the original off-Broadway and Broadway casts on negotiating better pay for the soon-to-be-out movie: “You want to be an ally? You make sure that Black people and people of color and women are getting paid, that they’ll be able to take money home to their families. It’s not about revenge, it’s about equality.” – Los Angeles Times

This is in part because Hamilton is a sung-through musical, meaning there aren’t any scenes of spoken dialogue in between the songs. Everything in the show is right there on the album—with the exception of one very brief scene in which Hamilton learns of the death of his friend (and in countless fan fictions, his lover) John Laurens. – Slate

When the Flea Theater was founded by Sigourney Weaver, playwright Mac Wellman and two others in 1996, it was intended to have no stable location and to shut down after five years. Twenty-six years later, the Flea is still here, and in its own $21 million, three-theater building. Yet it continued to operate like a shoestring enterprise, requiring its actors to work for free both on- and offstage. Helen Shaw reports on how the current moment of racial reckoning shocked the Flea into addressing its problems with both pay and inclusion. – Vulture

Two actors have publicly accused Eric Schaeffer, who has been the Northern Virginia company’s artistic director since its beginnings in 1989, of repeatedly grabbing their genitals during public events in 2016 and 2018. Signature management says that a two-month investigation in 2018 by an attorney for the company found the allegations “not credible,” but Schaeffer decided to resign this week after the actors made their accusations public on Facebook over the weekend. – The Washington Post

Eric Schaeffer, founding artistic director of the Tony-winning Signature Theatre, resigned late Tuesday after an actor made public his allegation that Schaeffer sexually assaulted him during a Washington awards show in May 2018. – Washington Post