Category: theatre

“The Broadway League said Monday that shows on the Great White Way pulled in $40,993,950 for the week ending Sunday, better than the same week last year when 30 shows attracted $38,783,854. Attendance also went from 290,386 in 2013 to 318,721 this year, with crowds taking advantage of mild New York weather and Christmas falling on a Thursday.”

“As holiday traditions go, the play Burning Bluebeard doesn’t exactly seem like a natural: no Cratchits, no elves, no Grinches, no sugarplum fairies. Its place in the season is all about timing. It’s based on the real-life story of a fatal fire that happened in the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day – and it’s told by clowns.”

“New audiences, however, have sparked new security needs, particularly around the stage door that cast members use to enter and exit the theater. Fans, sometimes ones who didn’t attend the production, flock to them, so that most Broadway stage doors are now flanked by steel barricades.”

“It depicted what to me was a fantasy as attractive as any I’d ever seen: that you could be in your twenties, living in New York City, surrounded not by the family you’d left behind but by the ones you’d made. That you could pursue above all else art and love. At its end, I leapt to my feet in applause.”

“Terrible things happen, wonderful ones, too. There are big events, big emotions and the occasional influx of lobsters or Nazis. Her characters have juicier things to bite than their tongues.”

“The Reillys founded and are the creative force behind the American Irish Repertory Ensemble, the Portland-based theater company better known as AIRE. Both actors also worked with other theater companies. The news of the accident has devastated the Portland theater community.”

“Seen by multitudes, Potted Potter is testament to the resilience of Fringe comedy, to the power of the Potter brand – and to some unusually sensible attitudes toward copyright.”

“Civil society has a role to play in bringing political actors together. It is all intertwined. The work that theater people do and the work that journalists do and people to people initiatives outside of the political sphere have in moving society forward toward reconciliation, or any type of coexistence is critical.”

“Art and religion share the psychological state of transportation—being transported. We all love being taken out of ourselves, temporarily. So why in fields that are both devoted to awe and transport, does the norm seem to be an unspoken separation between church and stage?”

Saying in an open letter that they were “outraged” by the dismissal, the directors called on the JCC’s governing board to renounce the decision and the nationwide theater community to protest “in all possible ways.”