Category: theatre

“Throughout the three weeks of the festival there have been almost daily demonstrations. Several shows have been stopped or disrupted, though the worst nightmare of the organisers – total cancellation of the entire event, as happened in 2003 – has happily been avoided.”

Lisa McNulty, “who has been the artistic line producer at Manhattan Theater Club since 2006, will begin her new job on Aug. 11. She has a long history with the 36-year-old Women’s Project Theater, whose mission is to produce plays written and directed by women.”

“More than 100 people either fainted or left the theatre after being overcome by on-stage gore – making it a strong candidate for the most potent show in British history. … Those who fainted included The Independent‘s reviewer.”

“I was listening this morning to a Norwegian doctor who’s been in Gaza and working in a hospital in Gaza, risking his neck and going through a kind of unimaginable hell. And I was thinking, well, he’s there because of Ibsen. He wouldn’t be there if that man had not influenced his society in such an extraordinary way.”

“I’ve always felt that Krapp is an autobiographical piece. You do feel, all the time, that it’s Sam saying, ‘There but for the grace of …’ For me it’s a kind of essay in aloneness – and an essay on self-deception, too, which Krapp is well aware of. He is like any addict. One side of him says ‘I shouldn’t do this’ and the other side says ‘But I’m going to – and what’s more you know I’m going to’.”

“Was there really no alternative to euthanizing a company that had achieved so much over its 22-year history?”

“Most actors are not rich – they are very poor indeed. … The one thing you can ask, I think, is that actors get paid a living wage. I would like it if all the repertory theatres that currently exist could do that. It would make a huge difference.”

“Done well, jukebox musicals, which are by nature about popular music, can have great music and dramatic insight, too. I propose that we stop being embarrassed by them, and I hope that producers and librettists continue to make the genre better. Great pop music can be celebrated well and enjoyably.” Sarah Lawson explains how, with examples.

“Compared with some other forms of Japanese theatre – Noh, for example – Kabuki had humble beginnings. It was made by common people for common people. … Other forms of Japanese theatre, such as Noh and Bunraku, subsist on government funding. Kabuki lives on ticket sales.”

“The way it was handled has created a situation we fear is damaging to the Women’s Project’s reputation, especially as it typifies the very thing we are committed to fighting — the lack of acknowledgment of the contribution of women to the American theater”