Category: theatre

“Shakespeare Center artistic director Ben Donenberg said employing veterans stemmed from another of the company’s outreach programs, Will Power to Youth, which hires young Angelenos to study and perform Shakespeare plays. After seeing alumni of the program serving in the armed services and later seeking jobs at home, Donenberg said, the company decided to extend its employment program opportunity to veterans, starting last year.”

“Artists have a lot of imagination,” says Benoît Marini. “Sometimes they want effects that aren’t possible.” So what happens when the dancers ask for something they can’t create, like holograms that can interact with the audience? “You say, ‘wow,'” Tayoubi laughs, “Then you begin to find a solution.”

“Six nooses hang above a group of teenage inmates, who are making chairs in a prison workshop to be used as platforms in their own hangings. The audience gasps. This is theater that’s raw, edgy and political — and it’s all been cleared by the Iranian authorities, even though they have tightened controls on speech.”

“The audience is the camera floating around this dream,” says Barrett. “All we are doing is presenting loads of content like the unedited rushes for them to cut together.”

The Song of Spider-Man: The Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History, written by Glen Berger, who co-wrote the show’s script, promises to recount the backstage drama surrounding the gestation and birth(s) of Julie Taymor’s notoriously troubled and expensive project.

“Cathy Rigby, the former Olympic gymnast turned stage actress, is being sued for millions of dollars by a composer who claims that he hasn’t been properly paid for his work on a production of Peter Pan that her company presented … [beginning] in 2004.”

“However, as a number of new initiatives funded by Arts Council England’s strategic touring programme are exploring, there might be ways for these companies to reduce the risk involved for their audiences without having to become artistically conservative.”

Charles Isherwood: “Having a real forest (or what can pass for one) portray the role of the Forest of Arden in As You Like It sweetens the atmosphere of that play. Ditto A Midsummer Night’s Dream … And, for many, seeing Shakespeare outdoors frees it from the suffocating air of elitism – or cultural homework – that can often cling to it.”

Although playwright Henry Ong claims that his script for Sweet Karma is faithful to the life of Haing S. Ngor, “the estate of the late Oscar winner has come out against the play, threatening to take legal action against the writer.”

“Dominic Dromgoole has announced he is to step down from his position as artistic director at Shakespeare’s Globe … He will leave the company on April 23, 2016 after a decade in the post. This will coincide with the end of a global, two-year tour of Hamlet, which the London venue announced this week.”