Viswa Subbaraman, founder/director of Houston’s contemporary opera troupe, Opera Vista, takes over at Milwaukee’s opera/operetta/musical theater company at the start of next season. He succeeds the widely-admired Bill Theisen, whose eight-year tenure included being fired and rehired (following a community and performer rebellion over his dismissal) over the summer of 2009.
Category: theatre
Discovery: Ancient Mayan Theatre Was Political Tool
“Found at the archaeological site of Plan de Ayutla, in Ocosingo, Chiapas, the 1,200-year-old theater did not seem to be a place for art and culture, but was rather used by Mayan elite to legitimize their power and subjugate local minority groups.”
A Eurythmics Musical? Dave Stewart Is Thinking About It
“We’re not talking about a reunion right now, but never say never. Annie and I wrote so many songs together, and they keep popping up in different places, and I have this idea of putting them all together in a theatrical piece in the not too distant future.”
San Francisco Loses Some Of Its Funny, And History, As The Purple Onion Closes
“The famed 60-year-old nightclub that began as an influential Beat-era music venue and became a defining voice in the city’s comedy scene is closing.”
War Horse Heading Out
The Tony-award winning play about World War One will leave Broadway in January.
Mashing Up Shakespeare And His Green World
Director Calixto Bieito on his play Forests: “Shakespeare’s words are out of context, but they are much more free. They are not a slave to the plot – they get a new dimension.”
Public Funding Would Ruin Theatre – Until It Saved Theatre
“People would REALLY stop coming to the theater. And we’d realize that it wasn’t ‘risk’ we were missing all along, but connection to our audiences. And we’d start re-thinking things.”
Calixto Bieito Mashes Up The Forest Of Arden, Birnam Wood, Etc.
“A huge pile of soil has been tipped over the floor; actors writhe and squirm through the mulch beneath a blasted tree festooned with red balloons. It looks like a cross between a garden centre, a children’s party and one of Samuel Beckett’s bleaker visions. It is in fact the setting for Bieito’s latest work, Forests – a piece for which the unpredictable but often brilliant Catalan director has scoured the works of Shakespeare for every mention of a wood, a copse or a bosky glade, and cut-and-pasted them into an epic, arboreal mash-up.”
Where Big-City Actors Stay When They Perform Out-Of-Town
In the old Judy Garland movie Summer Stock, they got to share a farmhouse and a barn, but Actors’ Equity won’t allow such arrangements these days. Here’s a look at the accomodations that theaters and festivals provide, from stylish urban lofts to old Victorian houses to cabins in the woods.
The Scots Like Their Theatre, But Not As Much As Their Libraries
“Theatregoing has dropped from third favourite cultural activity in 2007, behind cinema-going and library use. It is now fifth, having been overtaken by live music and museum-going.”