Category: theatre

She became a playwright – and got Sarah Jessica Parker to star in her play.

“Not one word is spoken, and not one lyric is changed, technically making the musical an opera.”

Julie Taymor’s playwright, who says he worked on multiple secret scripts in the men’s room: “Every now and then, you’ve got to put manure on the fields. This was high-grade manure.”

We’re in a heyday of very-long-form performance these days, from Robert Lepage’s epics to Einstein on the Beach to The Peony Pavilion to the Ring cycle. “It’s not only that epic plays are fun, special occasions. … One becomes aware of a grand plan unfolding in theatre-time, so that the hours and minutes of the outside world seem to disappear.”

The biennial festival Performa 13 is presenting Amiri Baraka’s ferocious 1964 drama Dutchman in the saunas and steam rooms of the Russian and Turkish Baths in the East Village.

Ruben Santiago-Hudson, who has won major awards for both acting in and directing Wilson’s plays, talks about starring in the playwright’s autobiographical one-man show, How I Learned What I Learned.

“Do other theatregoers feel short-changed if the play lasts less time than it takes to get to the theatre or have a pre-show cup of tea and a slice of cake?” (Does it depend at all on how much they paid for tickets?)

“All eight venues that took part in the Relaxed Performance Pilot Project – in which shows were adapted for families with children who have autistic, sensory and communication needs or learning disabilities – have now adopted a policy to stage relaxed performances on a regular basis. Organisations including the National Theatre, the Unicorn Theatre and Ambassador Theatre Group have committed to at least one relaxed performance a year for each of their main productions.”

David Sabel, who runs the National Theatre’s NT Live: “The track record of filmed live performance is quite bad – the fear is that it becomes the antithesis of what the art form is. … The idea that you go along, get a piece of paper like a programme and hopefully watch with a sold-out crowd feels more akin to the DNA of theatre than staying at home and pausing while you go off to make a cup of tea.”

“This horrific chapter of American history – nine black teenagers pulled off a train and falsely accused of raping two white women in Alabama in 1931, then subjected to Southern justice at its most criminally graphic – was far too serious to be presented in so cavalier and racially volatile a format, let alone by a white creative team.” Candace Allen – with reference to her grandmother and Aunt Billie, who remember the case – says that Kander & Ebb pulled it off.