Category: theatre

Playwright Lynden Harris talks about working with condemned prisoners — first, to develop scripts for them to perform before fellow inmates and prison staff, and second, to create theater pieces for the general public in which actors portray men on death row talking about life inside. – HowlRound

Actor and educator Kila Packett writes about the Los Angeles Drama Club’s Shakespeare Youth Festival (active year-round in Watts and East L.A.) and the trip by four students and six teachers, at the invitation of Dr. Auma Obama, to give a week of workshops to disadvantaged young people in the Luo heartland of western Kenya. – American Theatre

Producer Greg Nobile: “Just north of 30 percent of our audience were what we call ‘new to file,’ which means they were actually first-time ticket buyers, which is an incredible number. Usually that’s in the single digits, if anything, especially for plays.” – The New York Times

When the actor playing Lady Macduff injured her knee a few minutes into a performance at the Watermill Theatre in England, the production stopped – until a woman who toured nationally as Lady Macduff last year, and who happened to be in the audience, stepped in. Emma Barclay “will continue in the role for the next few performances” as well, the theatre announced. – The Stage (UK)

The St. Paul’s Park Square Theatre had a budget issue due to expected donor funding shortfalls and lackluster ticket sales. Now it has a leadership issue. “For ‘at least two years,’ Park Square will be in the unusual position of being an arts organization without a full-time artistic leader, Mattessich said. Board members plan to arrive at a solution this weekend at a retreat, he said. The plan is to create an ‘artistic committee’ — made up of Park Square staffers and Twin Cities theater artists — that will be involved in season planning, … working with collaborators and overseeing productions.” – The Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

“In a field that so far has relied largely on show-by-show contracts for intimacy directors, a salaried position with benefits is a significant step. … ‘It confirms that the company has made a promise to keep their actors emotionally and mentally safe — that they have made that a priority.'” – The New York Times

Despite his success with revisionist productions of Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller plays, Ivo van Hove seemed an unlikely choice to direct a major revival of the Bernstein-Laurents-Sondheim musical. Even less likely was the selection of austere formalist Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker to choreograph the first production whose dance wasn’t based on Jerome Robbins’s exuberant movement. Yet their participation was blessed by Stephen Sondheim, the only one of the show’s creators still living. Writer Sasha Weiss spent several months watching them cast and develop the production — and then rework their ideas (in one notable case, at the cast’s insistence). – The New York Times Magazine