“Work seems to be being supported and assisted at a community level. So there’s a perception that people with learning disabilities can enjoy participatory activity but – on the other side of that – the professional opportunities and the professional training is dwindling. And it seems to be a strategic choice.”
Category: theatre
Tom Stoppard Says Audiences Are Now Too Ignorant To Get His Plays
“Sir Tom explained how he had to change a scene in The Hard Truth three times between the previews, making a particular allusion more and more obvious each time. … ‘And I must say that I was completely wrong [in assuming the audience would understand it] and I really resent it.'”
Even 2,500 Years Ago, Acting Prizes Caused Drama
Except that the prize at the festival of Dionysus wasn’t a statuette. It was a live goat.
One Of Britain’s Most Admired Actors Is Giving Up The Stage Because He Can No Longer Remember His Lines
Michael Gambon: “This can’t work. You can’t be in theatre, free on the stage, shouting and screaming and running around, with someone reading you your lines.”
Massive Change Coming To North America’s Second Largest Repertory Theatre
By the end of 2015 The Shaw Festival “will announce Jackie Maxwell’s successor as artistic director, Elaine Calder’s replacement as executive director and, if the new leaders are up to it, a concrete plan to build two brand-new theatres on a tract of land the festival purchased for $4.5-million on Dec. 30.”
The Playwright Whose Work Is Never Done (In More Than One Sense)
“Terrence McNally plays are like city buses: They sweep by, may not take you where you think you’re going, and, when absent for a while, suddenly arrive in droves and from all directions.”
Religion And Geography Are Destiny For Theatres In Boston
“There are four factors that Boston’s 300-year-long struggle between censorship and commerce in the performing arts has produced. First, when we talk about theatre in Boston as it now exists, we are talking about a way of doing theatre that is only forty or so years old.”
As Audience Participation In Live Theatre Ramps Up, Is The Trend Cool Or Terrifying?
“To those who see aggressive audience participation as the cutting edge, even the future, of theatre—who talk about its emergence from video gaming and the digital revolution, etc.—it might be instructive to point out that audience participation is as old as English Pantomime.”
A Bill To Give Tax Breaks For Producing Broadway Shows
“The Support Theaters in America Growth and Expansion Act would mean that shows and live theatrical productions would enjoy an incentive given to film and TV productions for certain costs. Under section 181 of the tax code, they are able to immediately expense up to $15 million when 75% of compensation is paid for services in the United States.”
Conor McPherson Has Been Trying A Little Tenderness In His Ferocious, Malevolent Plays
Charles McNulty: “What is different about his most recent plays, however, is that amid the dilapidated settings, killer hangovers, corrosive humor and generalized brutality, McPherson draws our attention to moments of unexpected tenderness and camaraderie.”