Category: theatre

“‘The American public continues to impress with how much they’re willing to embrace the new — every time we thought we had reached the limit for the audience base, it turned out we hadn’t,’ said Oskar Eustis, artistic director of the Public Theater, where ‘Fun Home’ began off Broadway.”

“This is, as far as anyone can remember, unique. Nobody else has tried to offer the equivalent of a DVD extra, live, on a Manhattan side street, twice a week.”

“This is Miller’s legacy, finally: the hope that, against all odds, human beings will somehow still strive for that perfectibility in our troubled world. ‘It’s not enough to feel guilty and to weep,’ said Wilson. ‘Miller is saying we must step forward and do whatever is in our power to do.'”

“The Bard will be everywhere. Theater companies, orchestras, cinemas and opera houses are presenting his works—and works inspired by him—in venues ranging from London and Duluth, Minn., to Tehran and South Sudan. A New Orleans jazz funeral will mark his death. The hashtag #Shakespeare400 will beckon Shakespeare-lovers on Twitter. And a publishing frenzy has already begun.”

“He was working on the 2000 film ‘The Beach’ when one of his co-stars, the actress Tilda Swinton, asked him what he would like to leave as a legacy. … ‘You know what actors are like,’ he said dryly. ‘I just wanted to do a costume drama.'”

The musical has been seen by more than 5.25 million people in London and nearly 11 million people around the globe in worldwide productions.

“The theatre is, of course, halfway through a world tour of Hamlet, which it hopes will visit every country on the planet … [The DPRK government] apparently contacted Shakespeare’s Globe to say its production could go ahead, but only if the play involved music, dancing and acrobatics.” Says artistic director Dominic Dromgoole, “There is a limited amount of music, dancing and acrobatics in Hamlet.”

“Our collective institutions—artistic staff, marketing departments, etc.—are placating the older white audiences, and are afraid to challenge them, or even educate them. We take their donor money and put them on boards, and we brush their microaggressions off as our old grandma or grandpa who might be a little racist and elitist but are otherwise harmless.”

Lyn Gardner: “Complicite’s early shows evolved as much from a lack of resources as they did from a particular aesthetic, and it’s been the same with plenty of other companies, from Improbable and Kneehigh to Little Bulb and Action Hero. That’s not an argument for artists starving in garrets or being unable to access subsidy and investment … But it is a reminder that need can be a spur to creativity and make artists think about different ways of making theatre.”