When things shut down in March, Mercury Theater proprietor L. Walter Stearns — one of the few commercial theater producers in the city to own the real estate they operate on — thought he’d be out of business for a month or so. Now he says he can’t see any near-term end to the danger COVID poses to performers, staff and patrons — so the only way he can avoid foreclosure on the mortgage is to shutter the company and sell the buildings. – Chicago Tribune
Category: theatre
‘Drive-Thru Drama’: Another Solution To The Theatre-In-The-Age-Of-COVID Problem?
“With the usual model of theatregoing currently out of the question most everywhere, a handful of theatres have taken a cue from an old concept: medieval pageant wagons. Only this time, instead of the artists driving from audience to audience, the audience drives from artist to artist.” – American Theatre
How To Figure Out ‘Performance For One’ Online
Playwright and director Edward Einhorn on adapting his in-person creation for the virtual world: “I have never witnessed the audience member witnessing the performance. Which, I must say, is hard for me.” – HowlRound
It Took Richard Pryor To Change How Comedy Sees The Police
Comedy culture before Pryor, that is, white comedy culture, depicted copys “as clownish bullies, and their violence, divorced from any racial context, played as a kind of shtick. When they swung their clubs, you never really felt the blow.” Then Pryor came along. – The New York Times
American Theatre Magazine Shuts Its Print Edition Through The Rest Of The Year
For the first time in its 36-year history, we at American Theatre have made the difficult decision to forgo printing and mailing hard-copy issues of the magazine for the next six months, or the remainder of 2020. – American Theatre
Chicago’s iO Theater, Mainstay Of City’s Comedy Scene, To Close For Good
The improv company, which was co-founded in 1981 by Charna Halpern and the late Del Close and numbers Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, and Adam McKay among its alumni, has been closed to the public since March because of the coronavirus. Halpern hasn’t set a final closing date but confirms that the theater won’t reopen and its building will be sold. – Vulture
Edinburgh Fringe, On Brink Of Insolvency, Gets A Rescue
Culture secretary Fiona Hyslop has announced a £1 million interest free loan and £149,000 in funding from a “resilience” fund for the Fringe Society, which runs the official website, box office and programme for the event “to enable its return next year.” – The Scotsman
Audiences For Children’s Theater Are Quite Diverse. The Creators, Not So Much.
“A new study finds that about 80 percent of the shows presented around the country are by white writers, and 85 percent of the productions are led by white directors. Also of concern: Much of the industry’s diversity is concentrated in a small number of productions about people of color, while the shows that dominate the industry’s stages, generally adapted from children’s books and fairy tales, have overwhelmingly white creative teams.” – The New York Times
L.A.’s Mark Taper Forum, Ahmanson, and Kirk Douglas Theatres Will Stay Closed Until Late Next Spring
“Center Theatre Group announced on Tuesday that it would remain dark until spring 2021 to help curb the spread of COVID-19 — an unprecedented, more than 56-week closure period. The largest nonprofit theater company in Los Angeles — which stages productions at the Ahmanson Theatre, Mark Taper Forum and Kirk Douglas Theatre — said programming is scheduled to resume in late April.” – Los Angeles Times
Chicago’s Mercury Theater Closes Permanently Due To Corona-Lockdown
“Opened in 1920 as a silent film nickelodeon, the movie theater would undergo several retail business incarnations in the decades that followed. … It ‘reopened’ in 2011 under the current owner/leadership team as an Equity-affiliated commercial theater house, having since produced 25 plays including four world premieres.” – Chicago Sun-Times