Category: theatre

“A Los Angeles revival of Ira Levin’s “Deathtrap” has been canceled after the estate of the late author expressed objections to the use of nudity and some of the production’s gay content.”

“Unlike the many one-off Beckett celebrations that have intermittently taken place around the world,” the Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival, held in the town where the playwright went to secondary school, “reaches well beyond Beckett’s theater pieces. It is the first multiarts appreciation of Beckett, … and the first to aspire to be an annual event.”

“Des McAnuff has unquestionably raised the festival’s profile, in Canada and around the world – but that hasn’t stopped certain observers from wondering whether he was the right man to run it.” His controversially free-wheeling approach to Shakespeare, going for visual stimulation and flash even at the expense of the text, differs wildly from the work of his successor, Antoni Cimolino, which “is known for its fidelity to what the playwright set down on the page.”

“On a steamy afternoon in Dili, I am heading to a rehearsal of an East Timorese-Australian co-production when my phone rings. The caller has instructions about the route to take to the venue on the capital’s outskirts. ‘Ask the taxi to come by Banana Road. There’s rock throwing and gunfire the other way,’ he says.”

“If we remove drama from the curriculum as a statutory feature then, although teachers could still choose to put drama into the curriculum, it is likely that only those who are passionate about it will want to provide it.”

“First up in the studio’s extensive catalog? The 1982 comedy “Tootsie,” which starred Dustin Hoffman in drag.”

“The current curriculum for English contains a dedicated section for drama with statutory guidance on how it should be taught, within the ‘speaking and listening’ strand. However, in the new draft national curriculum for English key stages 1 to 2, there is no explicit speaking and listening strand, which means the taught drama framework has been removed.”

For his final audition for the lead in a musical about the silent film legend, Rob McClure was asked to bring in “a two-minute Chaplin-y thing.” He wound up working out a fly-and-flyswatter routine, performed to “The Flight of the Bumblebee,” on the Amtrak train.

“The $200,000 Steinberg award for playwriting, the most generous prize in theater, has been presented to Tony Award winner David Henry Hwang for 32 years of provocative satires and dramas (Chinglish, M. Butterfly) that brought more Asian and Asian-American characters to Broadway and other stages.”

“In As You Like It, … he introduces an explosive subject: the murder of his great contemporary, Christopher Marlowe. The references are coded, but would have been easily understood by clued-in playgoers.”