Category: theatre

“Bryan Doerries is using Euripides and Sophocles to help soldiers, generals and drone pilots deal with the horrors of war – and actors from Martin Sheen to Jake Gyllenhaal are queueing up to take part.”

“This is not said speciously. I look at the plays that I’ve done, that is those plays that continue to have their life, and if you look hard enough you’re going to find that they’ve got pretty good parts for actors. … Actors and directors have got to decide to do these plays. They’re not deciding because the play has quote great moral importance. Even literary importance. They’re deciding because they’ve got a hell of an idea of how to do this part.”

“[Philip] Griffiths joined Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical on October 9, 1990, originally as a swing, before moving into a character role as Monsieur Reyer and understudy Piangi. He became a resident director from 1998 to 2000, remaining as an understudy for two roles during this time, before moving back into the show as a performer.”

“What’s gained is a new subtlety of dramatic writing and performance—think Ibsen or Chekhov. What’s lost, to some degree, is the combustibility of a performance in which actors are actively present, alive to the external world that is in that very moment shaping their performance—a world to which they must listen.”

“A single play may tick the diversity box, but it’s definitely not inclusion – that only comes when theatres commit to the development and support of playwrights over a much longer period, and consistently programme a range of plays that give the space for a critical mass of writers to emerge and dig in for the long term.”

“Are there lessons here for Chicago? Sure there are. But it’s worth noting first that what one urban reformer sees as an improvement, another sees as the destruction of an indigenous culture. Riedel barely notes this issue, since the theater owners are the heroes of his story, but if you walk through Times Square today, as I frequently do, it has lost much of its character. “

The divide between liberals and conservatives is not in what we value, but how those values are expressed. So why are there no (or practically no) conservative voices in theater when they are so prominent elsewhere in society? When we say we want diversity in theater, do we really mean it?

“After 33 years, Boston University and the Huntington Theatre Company are parting ways, and the university is putting the BU Theatre up for sale, effective immediately. For the highly regarded Huntington, which just two years ago won a Tony Award for regional theater, the dissolution of the partnership with BU ushers in a period of uncertainty.”

“Depending on the staging, as many as 200 card moves are required over all. And if the wrong move happens during the wrong hand, the actors can easily find themselves in the middle of the wrong act. … Here are the memories and lamentations of some Gin Game survivors – and, in the case of Mr. Jones and Ms. Tyson, future survivors.”

“Most of all, Fiddler persists because it’s a beautifully built show that offers all the storybook satisfactions and memorable songs of the best mid-century musicals, while also advancing the form by taking it into some unusually dark realms: the first-act curtain comes down on a pogrom, the final one on a mass eviction.”