Category: theatre

“[Ken] Jennings’ tweets could easily have been explained as a joke that didn’t translate well online, but in his next message, his final one on the subject, Jennings’ doubled down on his animosity towards the theatre and its audience. He wrote, ‘@HESherman @LouisPeitzman ok but they’ll have to turn up their hearing aids.'”

Steketee hopes the data will encourage companies to hire more women, and not just those who are already famous.

“Houstonians will shell out $200 for a touring production of Book of Mormon but would dismiss us based on looks. Or they simply didn’t even know we were here because of the lack of attractiveness factor.”

“To see Shakespeare as a court official working to please his political masters is not to reduce him to the level of functionary or propagandist. It is to marvel anew at the ways in which he could use even such humbling demands as sources of imaginative energy. … We begin to see a Shakespeare for whom the distinction between freedom and necessity is scarcely relevant. Here is Shakespeare as an opportunist in every sense, a political operator taking advantage of a shift in power and a voracious artist for whom the need to please new masters is not a restriction but a creative stimulus.”

“The equal-opportunity Barrymore nominations turned into near-equal-opportunity wins at Theatre Philadelphia’s celebration of itself. The most wins were four each, going to Theater Exile’s The Whale, a play about a morbidly obese gay man, and to Norristown’s Theatre Horizon production of the Stephen Sondheim fairy tale musical Into the Woods. Beyond that, most of the nominated entities went home with more than a little something.”

“Over 6,600 productions were staged across the venues in 2014 – an increase of 2% on 2013 – earning £438.6m in ticket sales. Venues that seat over 500 and principally present, rather than produce, took three quarters of this total – a proportion that appears to be rising. Producing theatres also enjoyed growth though, with larger venues taking 9.6% more at the box office in 2014 and smaller ones 3.5%.”

The Grand Unification Theory of Theatre Reviewing begins, as all theories must, by rejecting the historical paradigm. The historical paradigm, in this case is “A good review = A positive review.” But what to replace this with?

“Aiming to visit every country in the world to commemorate the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth, and the 400th anniversary of his death, it has visited 136 countries out of 196. The only country the company could not get permission and insurance to visit was Syria, so they performed in the Zaatari refugee camp on the Jordanian border to an entirely Syrian audience.” (photo journal)

“[Isabella’s] willingness to be a martyr for chastity – and Angelo’s moral crackdown, backed by capital punishment – would seem less quaint to the Tea Party wing of the Republicans, at the Vatican, or in countries and cultures subject to Islamic sharia law. And so the conflict in the Vienna of the play between sexual licentiousness and censoriousness has an obvious contemporary topicality, while the play’s broader exploration of the nature of justice is perennially relevant: at the Globe, the production is part of a season under the umbrella theme of ‘Justice & Mercy’.”