“Engagement can take many forms, and treating the theatre as if it’s a church where everyone must be reverent is not my idea of fun. Particularly not at most Christmas shows.”
Category: theatre
Shakespeare First Folio Discovered In Small-Town French Library
“The book – one of only 230 believed to still exist – had lain undisturbed in the library at Saint-Omer in the north of France for 200 years.”
The Theatre Installation That’s Horrifying All Europe
South African playwright Brett Bailey’s Exhibit B mimics the “human zoo” exhibits of colonial “natives” seen in Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries. After four years of touring without much controversy, this year Exhibit B has seen “loud debates and furious demonstrations in Europe about the boundaries between artistic freedom and exploitation, censorship and political incorrectness.”
Equity Tries Campaign To Warn Audiences Away From Non-Union Touring Shows
“The 50,000-member Equity has spent a low five-figure sum on the campaign, chiefly to buy online ads that encourage people to ask ticket sellers and others if productions are Equity tours.”
Broadway Box Office Up, But New Musicals Fail To Connect With Audiences So Far
“Over all, Broadway musicals and plays grossed $26.7 million last week, compared to $23.4 million for the same week last season. Attendance was 262,452 for 36 productions, compared to 233,393 for 32 productions last year.”
Cuba To Stage Its First Broadway Musical Since The Revolution
Rent – in Spanish, with a full staging – opens on Christmas Eve for a three-month run at the Centro Cultural Bertolt Brecht in Havana.
Stage Directions: How Much Of Them Should Playwrights Include?
Ibsen and Shaw included lots of them; Eugene O’Neill wrote so many that they’ve been made into a play by themselves. Sinmon Stephens (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time), on the other hand, says his play couldn’t have become what it is if he had written out how he thought it should look and sound. Lyn Gardner considers the issue.
Rave Reviews Mean A Lot Of Disappointed Audiences
“The price of the tickets, the commitment to giving up an entire afternoon and evening, and the glowing reviews had all piled on the anticipation to such an extent that this was going to have to be a really astonishing piece of theatre for it to really deliver.”
Rodgers And Hammerstein’s Big Flop Is (Of Course) Being Revived For Off-Broadway
“‘Allegro’ was directed and choreographed by the acclaimed Agnes de Mille. It arrived on Broadway with a cast of close to 100 and the biggest advance ticket sales in Broadway history at the time.”
Return Of The Repressed? John Cameron Mitchell Will Be Playing Hedwig On Broadway
The writer and original star of Hedwig and the Angry Inch “said he was initially reluctant to play Hedwig again after his yearlong run downtown and then in a 2001 film adaptation. But as he watched [Neil Patrick] Harris, Andrew Rannells and Michael C. Hall in the role over the last seven months, … ‘I was kind of itching to do it, and if I don’t do it now, I’ll never do it, because I’ll be too old.'”