Category: theatre

“Any good sound designer understands that technology is making our jobs more fulfilling and manageable. But it is also making it easy for noncollaborative design to emerge. Anyone can, at this moment, find a specific piece of music, from a specific place anywhere in the world, by clicking a few buttons on multiple devices. However, this does not mean that what is found is the right choice for the production.”

“Broadway attendance in 2014 was the highest it’s ever been, even if that is no great indicator of regional theater attendance. But it is the case that relatively few people are seeing any theater at all, and, apparently, theater is having such little lasting impact on audiences that its creators are all but unknown, even to the people who may be attending it. So what’s the point in restating this reality? Don’t we know it already?”

“Ironically it’s the theater that most esteems writers; we are generally recognized as the principal artistic force behind new work, and we even retain ownership and control over the material we create. Yet on the very awards show intended to celebrate our craft, we are effectively negated.”

“The cloak and dagger nature of trying to see a play in one of Europe’s most authoritarian nations is to be mirrored in the UK as part of Belarus Free Theatre’s 10th anniversary celebrations. Audiences will have no idea where they are going to see performances and post-show discussions being staged in a festival scheduled over two weeks in November.”

“Bombshell” did arrive on Broadway this week to a rapturous reception at the 1,700-seat Minskoff Theatre — but only as a one-night charity event in which members of the original cast reunited to sing and dance their way through the songbook created by Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman. Tickets to the Monday night show had sold out in about an hour in April after a Kickstarter campaign raised $300,000-plus to defer development expenses.

As a person of color, I strongly believe in self-identification. Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out how to gather enough self-identified demographic information to be statistically representative. So this report looks only at gender, which I generally figured out from artist bios.

“Recognizing history is something the Tonys, in recent years, have become not just indifferent to but openly fearful about. The thinking is all terror-based: Ratings have fallen from decades past; the telecast skews old; young people must be entertained at all costs.”

“In a year of record Broadway grosses ($1.36 billion), it’s heartening to see commercial imperatives take a back seat. But then perhaps Broadway is beginning to recognize how reliant it is on nonprofit theater in the U.S. and nationally subsidized theater in Britain.”