Category: theatre

“Cirque has already played to over 160 million people around the world and I firmly hope it will continue to dazzle us with sights and wonders. But you’ll have to prove to me that a financial group whose major achievement has been the “branding” of J. Crew and Nieman Marcus will understand the impulse that made those crazy buskers from Baie-Saint-Paul become a bright, dazzling comet that streaked so thrillingly across the world entertainment sky.”

“The new wage could quadruple what actors earn from a typical production. But opponents say a change could backfire on actors by shutting down the most economically fragile theaters and putting the rest under pressures that would drain much of the flavor and adventure from L.A.’s small-theater menu.”

“[A] play about the police, race, a suspect shooting, and real estate,” with a retired African-American cop (shot and wounded by a white colleague) at its center, Between Riverside And Crazy debuted last summer at New York’s Atlantic Theater Company.

The majority stake went to a U.S. private equity firm, with minority stakes going to a Chinese investment firm, Quebec’s pension fund, and founder Guy Laliberté. Plans are for a major expansion in China, though the owners insist that Cirque’s headquarters will remain in Montreal.

“We are so reliant on the resilience narrative that it has become our intuitive response to every event, from audience development to fundraising to how we generate our creative work. This is a terrifying trend for the practice and production of contemporary theatre.”

“Carole Rothman, the artistic director of Second Stage, said the theater would be used for plays by contemporary American writers, with a particular emphasis on works by women and minority members. She said having a Broadway stage should enable the company to pay higher salaries to writers and actors, to run shows for a longer period of time, and to attract a wider audience.”

Also, the guy who plays Robb Stark on Game of Thrones. “The Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company will take up residency at London’s Garrick Theatre for a year in October. The Cinderella director said he wanted ‘to have a creative home where you could do a programme of work, rather than just one-offs'”

Announcing her resignation, Tessa Ross said only one person should be in charge. “It has become clear to me that the new leadership structure, with a separate role of chief executive, is not right for the NT at this time,” she said.

“Co-founder [and owner] Guy Laliberté sent an email to staff on Thursday saying that he had not yet wrapped up the company sale, after CBC/Radio-Canada and other media outlets reported American private equity firm TPG Capital and China’s Fosun will buy majority shares in Cirque du Soleil.”

“Under the eaves of a hospice for Syrian refugees in Amman, Jordan, a wounded young Romeo reaches out to the blurred image of a girl on a screen. From the besieged and bombed-out city of Homs, Syria, Juliet gazes back. Her head is covered because of her religion; her face is masked to protect her identity from the watchful regime of Bashar al-Assad. This is Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, performed by young people separated by war and reunited, in real time, via Skype.”