Category: theatre

His 11-year tenure as artistic director of the London venue “has seen the theatre overturn a sizeable deficit while producing more than twice as many premieres as his predecessors.”

Over two decades, under the collective title “Undesirable Elements,” the veteran American theater artist and his company have put together what he describes as “seated opera of the spoken word.” Each original program features members of a marginalized group – Congolese refugees in Syracuse, Native Americans in Kansas, disabled people in New Mexico – telling their own stories in a theatrical setting.

His work “has been described as depicting ‘life with all the boring parts taken out.’ It might also be described as life with all the ghastly extremes – incest, pedophilia, rape, racially motivated murder – added back in, and depicted in a deadpan style that has prompted both big laughs and angry walkouts.” In a Q&A, he explains how and why.

“It looks like Breakfast At Tiffany’s will finally reach Broadway, some 46 years after a musical adaptation became one of the most legendary flops in theater history. ‘Truman Capote’s Breakfast At Tiffany’s,’ a new play version by Tony Award winner Richard Greenberg (Take Me Out), will begin performances on Broadway in February 2013.”

“The lawyer for the lead producer of the Broadway musical Rebecca, which collapsed after the reported death from malaria of a mysterious investor, said on Sunday that he had confirmed that the investor and three others brought in by a middleman with a history of civil fraud complaints never existed.”

“Comedy nights are rarely well-lit, but this is taking things to extremes. Tonight, while the comedians are on stage, every light in the room will be off. This is Comedy in the Dark at the Soho Theatre in London’s West End, the first date of a month-long tour. As the blurb on the website puts it: ‘We’re talking pitch, pitch black’.”

Matt Wolf: “‘My God, there are a lot of women directors working in the theater these days in London,’ a female theater director who happens not to be from London remarked to me the other day. It’s true. More women directors are proffering their work in London than I can ever recall and at a level lately that has often eclipsed the men in their midst.”

“Deckchair Theatre will close after its board ruled falling box office numbers, sponsorship and government support had rendered the 30-year-old company unviable. … Deckchair’s departure leaves Black Swan as Western Australia’s only state theatre company.”

“[A] scene is repeated several times before both actor and director are satisfied; meanwhile, a young stage manager, a sprawling plan of the complicated show spread out in front of her, delivers instructions via a PA system. ‘What we’re working out here is which of the 30 characters we should concentrate on,’ Lepage explains. ‘Some we might get rid of. Some take a more relevant place in the show, and gradually, the big shwobble of ideas gets clearer the more we work on it.'”

Director Neil Bartlett: “I know exactly what [a hunky model on an A&F billboard] is peddling. It’s the idea that sexual shamelessness – by which I mean not Saturday-night recklessness, but a genuine freedom from shame – is something that you can buy. … [The] diabolical, corrupting contract between beauty and shame is exactly what Wilde is anatomising in Dorian Gray.”