Category: theatre

“In 2019, the National Arts Center will launch a new Indigenous Theatre – a department devoted to indigenous performing arts that is intended to be an equal to the arts centre’s long-established English and French Theatre companies.”

She works on everything from West End plays and musicals to opera at the Met and Covent Garden to rock stars’ arena tours to the opening ceremony of the Rio Olympics. Says one director, “[She] doesn’t design plays. Or, at least, she doesn’t design the locations in which they’re set. Instead, she designs the ideas, the thought structures, the systems in which the characters operate.”

“There is a long history of performance as activism, from the street interventions of Bread and Puppet Theater to the secret shows of Belarus Free Theatre … But can we really expect even the most urgent and rage-fuelled piece of theatre to have audiences rushing to man the barricades and topple governments? … Do such shows do anything but preach to the converted?” (Maybe.)

“Although not a great play, [The Fifth Column] is a fascinating one for what it tells us about Hemingway himself.” (Which ain’t pretty.)

“There is still a long history of playwrights attempting to engage with Islam in ways that might make us uncomfortable today.”

“Bechdel Theatre Festival has been created by Beth Watson, the founder of Bechdel Theatre, which began life as a Twitter campaign last year. It promotes and celebrates plays that pass the Bechdel Test – which asks whether a play has at least two women in it, who talk to each other about something other than a man.”

“While attendance has yet to rise back to the half a million Stratford has as an internal goal, this year 102,000 tickets were sold to patrons who had never been to Stratford previously, suggesting a healthy level of renewal in the festival’s audience base.”

“Along the way, the mostly young, multicultural cast has endured the usual inconveniences of life on the road, including visa problems, lost luggage and endless takeout food. But they have also performed during a riot, encountered racially charged comments from audiences and narrowly missed the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.”

“One musical number stood out: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1945 showstopper ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone,’ which got a loud response from the live audience even though Ms. Yearwood’s voice wasn’t nearly big enough for it.”