“The £3m, three-year Unlimited initiative aims to give venues a choice of work and stop them from, as Verrent put it, ‘programming shit, and the first piece of work that they came across with a wheelchair and a guide dog in it.'”
Category: theatre
Shakespeare’s Plays Show That His Attitudes Toward Women Evolved
“Something happened, somewhere around Love’s Labour’s Lost and the early history plays and going into Romeo and Juliet. Either he fell in love or he just grew up, but something happened to him where he suddenly ‘got it’ about women and there was a profound shift in his writing.”
Theatre Of The Community Isn’t Necessarily ‘Community Theatre’
“HartBeat does not look at its Greater Hartford community as potential audience members but rather as an important part of the play-making. Ensemble members regularly spend months researching a subject by interviewing people from whatever the community or neighborhood the subject is about as it develops its works.”
The Tony Awards: They’re About PR, People, Not ‘Good’ Theatre
“The Tony system canonizes a subset of a subset, making the odds of any one show or person pocketing a Tony rather less impressive. What’s more, the awardees and runners-up have typically been nurtured beyond Broadway — often in the nonprofit theaters that have grown up across the United States since the mid-20th century.”
Cleveland Playhouse Wins 2015 Regional Tony
“Cleveland Playhouse prides itself on being a longtime champion for new work, having presented Tennesee Williams before “The Glass Menagerie” and, more recently, premiering titles by Ken Ludwig, Lee Blessing and Deborah Zoe Laufer. Pulitzer winner Quiara Alegria Hudes is working on a commission for the company that will bow next season.”
British Theatre Has Gone Election-Mad
“It’s a paradox. In TV studios and on Twitter, British politics seem trapped in a spin cycle of claim and counter-claim, carefully massaged soundbites and kitchen-sink (or kitchen-counting) drama for an audience largely looking the other way. But on stage – particularly in the hands of young, experimental theatre-makers – the workings of democracy have rarely seemed so charged with possibility.”
How Could Such A Good Broadway Revival Of ‘The Heidi Chronicles’ Flop? Is The Play That Out-Of-Date?
Does it really “represent a moment in feminism that has passed”? Or is it an important piece of history? On the other hand, observes Lisa Kron, “Does this question get asked when a Mamet play closes?”
The Shakespeare’s Globe Round-The-World “Hamlet” Tour: Postcards From The Halfway Mark
“After 80,000 miles, 96 countries and more than 150 shows, the two-year worldwide tour of Hamlet has reached its halfway point in Spain – on Shakespeare’s birthday. Here’s a taste of some of the shows so far.” (slideshow)
This Theater Company Makes House Calls
“The latest iteration of intimate, in-home performances – think home concerts – Salon Ariel hopes to fill a void in the theater world.”
A Brief History Of Religion On The Stage
“Religious drama is one of the oldest forms of British theatre, with the incorporation of performance into worship recorded from the time when Christianity was only 500 or so years old.” Mark Lawson gives an overview of the 15 centuries since then, from medieval mystery plays through Murder in the Cathedral and Jesus Christ Superstar right up to The Testament of Mary.