Category: theatre

“The group’s founders, Amy Poehler, Matt Besser, Ian Roberts and Matt Walsh, who control operations of the organization’s training program and theaters, said that they have been seeking nonprofit status since February, and that they intend to pass control of their theaters to a new board ‘of diverse individuals.'” – The New York Times

Despite current rules limiting bars and clubs from opening to the public, the live comedy club Stand Up NY on the Upper West Side held an invite-only show for professional comics on Wednesday night. The club was not exactly sneaky about it. Outside, there was a sandwich board with the words “illegal comedy” and an arrow pointing inside. – The New York Times

How many of the people who authored those statements actually visited the Black Lives Matter website before posting is unknown. What is known, however, is that the stirrings of support statements coming from the American theatre community was too late and certainly not enough. – Howlround

How do we sustain the infrastructure to make the kind of highly professional theater that we have come to revere without pushing the actual artists to the fringes of that ecology? How can we reimagine the American theater to acknowledge who our “first responders” are: actors, directors, playwrights, designers, composers, musicians, in all their plurality and diversity? Should we be asking our artists in this pandemic to make home videos that extol our work when we took them off the payroll the moment the pandemic hit? – Clyde Fitch Report

“Clearly, we’re not bringing anybody back to work anytime soon in person, based on those guidelines,” Aurora Managing Director Julie Saltzman Kellner told The Chronicle by phone. “To be honest, we weren’t anyways. They are really similar to the guidelines we had set out for ourselves, in terms of when we imagined we could produce again.” – San Francisco Chronicle

On one side, new faces have meant less tolerance for the flippant bigotry that has long been a part of stand-up—Shane Gillis, for example, recently lost a spot on Saturday Night Live after people called out his history of using homophobic and racist slurs. On the other side—which includes some of the biggest names in the business, like Dave Chappelle, Bill Burr, and Ricky Gervais—comedians complain that people can no longer take a joke and that the art is losing its edge because of what they dismiss as “cancel culture.” – The Walrus

In fostering greater identity complexity, the American theater today is realizing more of its mimetic potential — a potential long curtailed because of the restricted access of artists on the margins. As the theater belatedly opens up, the repertoire of representations expands, creating a more extensive vocabulary and grammar for self-understanding for us all. – Los Angeles Times

Peter J. Kuo of ACT: “With the ability to gather in person on freeze, many of us in the theatre industry collectively held our breaths, waiting to exhale. Now, we find ourselves gasping for air. … I believe, with the community’s support, live video theatre can pump the oxygen into our respiratory systems. Not simply sustaining us through this pandemic, but growing our field into the future. The investment in this art form requires a mental shift among creators on how we define theatre, but the product and process will be strangely familiar and satisfying for artists and audiences of both theatre and film.” – HowlRound