Category: theatre

“In Hedwig’s story, I found a message of resilience and self-expression. Keep going, the film screamed at me. Let your freak flag fly, no matter how much shit people throw at you. This experience was shared by millions of queer and trans kids around the world, for whom the movie and stage show became a kind of modern Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

“Bucking Broadway’s trend,” the musical’s creators – all children of Jewish immigrants, and so no strangers to discrimination themselves – “cast African-Americans to play ‘full-fledged citizens who were portrayed equitably with their white colleagues’.” And they cast a Japanese-American as the ingenue – in 1944.

Playbill looks at two decades worth of big storms, and has to go back to 1996 to find one that closed more than a very few shows. (Except for Sandy, which didn’t have any snow.)

“Broadway theatres will go dark the evening of Jan. 26 as a major winter weather system bears down on the Northeast, with anywhere from 18 to 24 inches of snow forecast to fall across the New York City area in the next 24 hours. Several productions have already canceled Tuesday performances.”

“It empowers both the writer and theater to take risks to create the stories not being written. In addition, writing for a particular community––if you truly honor that audience’s needs––produces plays that are more specific, which in fact makes them more universal and ready for other productions elsewhere in the country.”

Joseph, who was a Pulitzer finalist in 2010 for Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, won the 2015 Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award, “which provides $50,000 to the winning playwright and an additional $100,000 to defray production costs for the play’s premiere.”

The famously volatile film producer “and the veteran Broadway press agent Rick Miramontez have parted ways on Mr. Weinstein’s forthcoming musical Finding Neverland after sharp words were said at their weekly planning meeting on Tuesday.”

“One of the many arguments for public and private support of this organisation, and organisations like this one, is we are the compost, the manure, the fertiliser that feeds culture worldwide.”

It seems such a good match of director and subject that you wonder why nobody thought of it sooner. George Brant’s Grounded features only one (human) character, to be played by Anne Hathaway.