Category: theatre

“Tom Greenwald recalled the main goal for marketing the show: ‘Make sure that it’s never ever associated specifically with the ‘plot or subject matter,” he said, ‘And make sure that people realize that it’s a beautiful, universal, family story of self-identification, reflection, and ultimately, hope.'”

Oh, what the heck: Start your week watching British acting royalty, and British royalty, getting into the Bard in these clips from this weekend’s Royal Shakespeare Company extravaganza.

“Why should Miranda get 10 percent, plus his salary as a performer, while Diggs remains merely a salaried dude? Did they not collaborate?”

“Naeem Hayat, who played Hamlet for the final show at the Globe, described being in Elsinore as ‘probably the most surreal experience’ of his life.”

“The A.R.T. currently has 10 productions—including the likes of Once, Pippin, Finding Neverland, and Sleep No More—in or about to hit theaters around the world. It has sent eight productions to Broadway.”

“Cycles of endless, torrential rain repeatedly wiped out crops and drove up food prices. Both bread and ale demanded increasingly expensive wheat and barley. And some tried to make a quick shilling off the catastrophe by hoarding grain and holding it back from the open market — thus hiking up food bills even further.”

“Miranda’s extraordinary success is a boon to an insecure industry hungry for heroes. Theater has long been receding as a popular art form; while it’s a tourist magnet in New York, elsewhere it’s become a fairly esoteric habit for a relatively small though devoted elite.”

“Tuesday 10 September – ‘How do you learn all those lines?’ This question is the one that the public most frequently ask of actors. We laugh about it, laugh at them for being so shallow – as though learning lines were the great mystery in acting. Well, I’ve stopped laughing. It’s an age thing.”

“My first impression is that it’s strange that something I wrote 30 years ago is a musical on Broadway. To witness its tortured history, from this thing that was a quasi-victim of censorship to a mainstream Broadway musical, makes me feel very, very old.”

“I’m with Mr. Butler, albeit for somewhat different reasons. To criticize “Hamilton” because it simplifies and fictionalizes Alexander Hamilton’s life and achievements is to miss the point of the show—something that literal-minded historians too often do when grappling with historical fiction.”