“I don’t think there’s pressure [to remove] the bawdy jokes. He’s bawdier a lot more times than people realise. The pressures I feel are more for times where he will say something very antisemitic.”
Category: theatre
Robert De Niro To Direct Stage Musical
Along with theater veteran Jerry Zaks, the Oscar-winning actor will direct a musical adaptation of Chazz Palmintieri’s play A Bronx Tale, a film version of which De Niro directed in 1993.
Here’s Why American Musical Theatre Has Slipped From The Mainstream
“Now that Broadway-minded songwriters no longer have a universal musical language on which to draw, it isn’t possible to write a show with genuine broad-gauge audience appeal. It says everything about the desperate state of the American musical that the last theatrical song to become an enduringly popular hit, Stephen Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns,” was written in 1973.”
Suzan-Lori Parks Wins $100K Playwriting Prize
“The critically acclaimed epic play Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2, & 3) by Suzan-Lori Parks has won the Edward M. Kennedy Prize for a theatrical work inspired by American history … A check for $100,000 will also go to Ms. Parks, a Pulitzer Prize winner for the drama Topdog/Underdog.”
Opening Up Paris Theatre To Visitors And Expats
“While the locals flock to the 300 or so venues, they are largely un-visited by tourists and expats because one of the main requirements for a visit is a good knowledge of French. At least that’s what Carl de Poncins says. He quit his job as the marketing director of a multinational company last year to focus on making theatre accessible for English speakers by introducing surtitles.”
In Los Angeles, Small Theatres Are Quietly And Not So Quietly Freaking Out About Equity’s Minimum Wage Proposal
“By the time the meeting broke up it looked as if a civil war were at hand and that, in an extreme rarity for the U.S. labor movement, a substantial force within a union was mobilizing against a pay hike.”
Second Stage Gets Extra Time To Find Money To Purchase Helen Hayes Theatre
“A roughly $21 million balance exists on the total purchase price of $24.75 million.”
More Americans See Actors In Redface On Stage Than Ever See Native Actors
“My grandma walked straight to the president’s grave. She stood for half a second, then her neck arched back, her body heaved forward, and for the first time in my life, I saw my grandma spit. It wasn’t a casual spit. It was a once in a lifetime spit. I watched as the saliva of our ancestors flowed through her mouth and hit that grave with an echo that turned heads and stopped conversations.”
Can Los Angeles Bring Back Its Own Broadway?
“Nowhere in the world can visitors walk by so many historic theaters and movie palaces. Block after block, stunning Beaux Arts, Art Deco, and revival-style buildings attract the eyes upward, teasing out its many intricate details. Famed acts such as the Marx Brothers, Houdini, and Duke Ellington once walked here, but it seems that time has dimmed the street’s glamour.”
Brian Dennehy On The Hard Work Of Acting Eugene O’Neill
“You feel like crap, you’re exhausted, you may be sick, you may have a cold. I’ve got arthritis everywhere. … But it all disappears the minute the lights come up and you start walking down a small dark hallway or climbing down into this tunnel. I have no idea what the attraction is. I cannot tell you how many times a day I say to myself, ‘Why am I doing this? Why do I have to go there?’ I have no answer for it.”