“In both cases there are life experiences that make an actually autistic and an actually black actor better suited to playing the role in question. More than that, though, there is the simple issue of credibility.”
Category: theatre
Five Philadelphia Theatre Companies Find A New Home
“After 18 years performing at the tiny but storied Adrienne Theater on Sansom Street, InterAct Theatre Company will be picking up its props and sets and leading a group of four other theatrical organizations to a new, multistage home being carved out of the old Drake hotel ballroom behind the Kimmel Center.”
Do We Still Need Theatre Critics?
“The American Theatre Critics Association, ATCA, the only national organization of American theatre critics, has been struggling with their criteria for membership. Right now they admit people who, as they put it, write professionally, regularly, and with substance about the theatre. But what does professional mean at a time when only a handful of critics derive all their income from their reviews?”
Playwright Wins Copyright Infringement Suit Over “Three’s Company” Parody
“The play is a highly transformative parody of the television series that, although it appropriates a substantial amount of ‘Three’s Company,’ is a drastic departure from the original that poses little risk to the market for the original,” the judge wrote, noting that copyright law “is designed to foster creativity.”
A Black, Female Hamlet? Absolutely!
Wilma Theater artistic director Blanka Zizka: “Hamlet is a remarkable play, and one that I have always wanted to direct, but I had to wait for an extraordinary actor, and it was not until I met Zainab that I knew it was time for our production.”
Play Reimagining ‘Three’s Company’ Fights Off Copyright Lawsuit
A Federal district judge ruled that David Adjmi’s 3C “represented a ‘drastic departure’ from the TV show, which ran from 1977 to 1984 and remains in syndication.”
Wondering If The Show You’re Seeing Uses Union Actors? Here’s How To Find Out
Actors’ Equity has been aiming to educate the consumer and protect its members with an “Ask If It’s Equity” campaign that today expanded to Washington and eight other cities. (It tested earlier in Chicago.) The website www.askifitsequity.com will allow visitors to check touring shows city by city, and the D.C./Baltimore market will be seeing a digital ad and Twitter effort.
How “Sleep No More” Went From Avant-Garde Theatre Experiment To Thriving Commercial Enterprise
When the British company brought its immersive adaptation of Macbeth to New York in 2011 and parked it at an old hotel on the far West Side, the project was still experimental and risky, good reviews or no. Four years later, Sleep No More has a merch table, souvenir programs, and an associated bar and restaurant. It is, writes Alexis Soloski, “a case study of the relationship – sometimes cozy, sometimes uneasy – between art and commerce.”
Marlowe’s “Jew Of Malta” – Anti-Semitic? Or A Parody Of Anti-Semitism?
“This toxic cocktail of alienation and murder is laced throughout with deadpan black comedy. Think Wolf Hall reimagined by Quentin Tarantino, and you begin to get the feel of it. … It is a provocative or [Charlie] Hebdoesque piece of religious cartooning that challenges the complacencies and credulities of his audience.”
Canada’s Largest Non-Profit Theatre Balances Its Books As Audiences Shrink
“The Stratford Festival ended its 2014 season in the black – but the latest news on the Ontario theatre festival’s attendance is less black and white.”