Category: theatre

“We know that it’s a game of pretend: they’re still breathing. You can still see them breathing a lot of the time, and the stage trickery that is employed is usually not that good.”

A video visit to the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, the candlelit 340-seat replica of the sort of indoor venue where Shakespeare’s late plays would have been performed during the winter. Shakespeare’s Globe, which built and operates the Wanamaker, opened it this past weekend.

Yes, this is a real project, premiering this summer – and you’d never guess where. (It’s not Kazakhstan, but just about that unlikely.)

“Cirque du Soleil is looking to diversify its repertoire by expanding into Broadway-style shows and is creating a new division called Cirque du Soleil Theatrical that will be headed by Las Vegas theater impresario Scott Zeiger.” (Their one previous venture into that field didn’t go so well.)

“Ian McKellen dreaded it, Albert Finney dodged it. As Simon Russell Beale prepares to play Lear in Sam Mendes’s eagerly awaited production, Laura Barnett talks to five actors who risked their sanity (and their knees) to wear the crown.”

“In a world where arts criticism has almost universally been reduced to star ratings, it’s almost certainly the case that many theatregoers make their buying decisions on the bluntness of the rating rather than the nuance in the review.”

The prize, named after the late actor and monologuist, includes a $20,000 commission to create a new theater work (which Maxwell already has planned) to be staged at each of four participating institutions, including P.S. 122 in New York and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

“At issue is the increasing number of musical tours using Equity contracts with weekly salaries in the range of $700 to $1,100 — far less than the full production contracts that pay actors $1,800 a week, as well as a more generous per diem benefit.”

“International visitors comprised approximately 22.5% of Broadway admissions during the 2012/13 season, the highest percentage in recorded history.”

“What does it say that the biggest ‘theater’ stories at the end of 2013 were about a TV show and a movie? Has the definition of theater changed? Can you call it theater if you’re not breathing the same air as the actors?”