Category: theatre

But this year, another plague broke the record. “This year’s Passion Play, scheduled to premiere in May and run through the summer, had to be abandoned because of the coronavirus. An epic production, cast with local residents as actors, the play would have brought half a million visitors to the village and 2,500 people, or half of Oberammergau, onto the world’s biggest open air stage.” – The New York Times

“Skylight Theatre, a Los Angeles theater company that prioritizes social issues, … [has] kicked off weekly plays from its writers lab set amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and the [online] series will continue until Skylight can open its doors again.” The project has started with Christine Hamilton-Schmidt’s Our First Honest Conversation, about an estranged couple, separately sheltering in place, trying “to reignite a sexual spark using only words.” – Los Angeles Times

Said Chay Yew, “We’ve always complained about how the American theatre doesn’t work. I for one find the blank slate exciting. We either repeat what we did before or we don’t. The structure will have to come down.” Joe Haj conceded that if the crisis “ends in six weeks, we may be much like we were before. But if not, or there’s another spike in the virus, we may need to rethink our model entirely. There’s a huge role for leadership. We need to be able to dream ourselves forward.” – American Theatre

“The [project], which is being called ‘Play at Home,’ is a website (playathome.org) featuring new plays, intended to take no more than 10 minutes to read, that are free so that anyone can read or perform them at home or by video conferencing. The commissioning theaters are providing a $500 stipend to the playwrights they select to write the works.” – The New York Times

Alexis Soloski: “You could fill a shelf with plays of the past several decades that have dreamed bleak outcomes for humanity. And then, in a pinch, you could burn that shelf and those plays for warmth. Recently, I spoke with several playwrights — via telephone and email — about what it is like to first imagine a cataclysm and then live through one.” (And then there’s this playwright, who picked the wrong time to premiere her play about the Spanish flu.) – The New York Times

“Ars Nova did not seek an article about the course it has chosen. On the contrary, [its directors] worried that discussing it publicly could look like they were shaming colleagues amid an industry-rattling pandemic.” That Ars Nova can pay everyone it had engaged for its canceled shows “has nothing to do with an angel donor — there isn’t one, [the managing director] said — but rather serendipity.” – The New York Times

The city’s largest theatre nonprofit, which operates the Mark Taper Forum, Ahmanson Theatre, and Kirk Douglas Theatre, will maintain health insurance for its workers but send half of them home until at least August 9; the rest will face pay cuts. – Los Angeles Times

Sure, everything’s online now, but some comedians have been doing the work for a much longer time than the last two weeks. They didn’t need to adjust “because they were already there, particularly those in the growing genre of ‘front-facing camera comedy’: short character sketches played directly to the camera. Owing a debt to the hectic editing of Tim and Eric and the influence of the defunct six-second-or-less platform Vine, these videos have gone viral for years, but with comedians and audiences stuck at home, they have replaced the special as the dominant comedy form of the Covid-19 crisis.” – The New York Times

AD Eric Ting: “This may seem like an extraordinary decision, but taking into account the incredible uncertainty of this moment, the cost of producing a season at the Bruns, of which ticket sales only account for a third, the current and long-term disruption in fundraising, … we feel this is our best course of action.” No word on whether the four plays will be rescheduled in future seasons. – American Theatre

Why now? “As an adult, I’ve try to keep my performing past under wraps. Being a theater nerd was never cool to begin with, but … polite society seems to find something sad about being nostalgic for the activities you loved in adolescence. But now that we’re in the midst of a worldwide pandemic, shame is no longer a concern of mine.” – Slate