Category: theatre

Launched last summer, Shakespeare im Park Berlin takes place in Görlitzer Park “in the heart of the alternative scene, multi-ethnic Kreuzberg, an increasingly trendy district in the throes of gentrification.” Longtime locals saw the bilingual troupe as the enemy, though this year the actors are welcomed as regulars.

“Experimental theatre company Shunt are to create a version of the ancient Greek labyrinth in a London warehouse as part of their first new show in three years. The Architects, a contemporary retelling of the Minotaur myth, will play in a former biscuit factory in Bermondsey from 27 November.”

In director Christoph Marthaler’s Meine Faire Dame: Ein Sprachlabor, “the setting is a language lab; Professor Higgins has become Professor Karpathy, not an English phoneticist but a Hungarian one; and there are three Eliza Doolittles, each played by different actors.”

“Theater producers are pursuing a possible Broadway transfer of the Central Park staging of [Sondheim’s] Into The Woods in spite of several negative reviews last week that would usually put a damper on such plans.”

“A Stratford native, [Anita] Gaffney, 43, has been a festival employee since 1991, most recently as its administrative director … She succeeds another Stratford veteran, Antoni Cimolino, 50, who, after serving as executive director 1998-2007, then general director starting in 2007, was named the festival’s artistic director in March.”

“We’re not a shop. It’s unfortunate we need people’s money, but we’re not selling something. That’s why I hate the word ‘production’: it’s not produced, it’s a ceremony, it’s a ritual, it is something which is very important for your mental strength, and you should go out of the theatre stronger and more human than when you went in.”

“The Manchester festival has been a fixture on the north-west arts circuit for 10 years, drawing thousands of people to more than 200 shows in 30 venues every October. It was set up by Don Ward, founder of The Comedy Store in London and Manchester.” But the city council has withdrawn all funding, so organisers have cancelled the event.

With a growing population of Latinos across the U.S., those involved in theatre say it’s time for a plan – and concrete ideas to make the dream of the Latino/a Theater Commons a reality.

“I was told from the very beginning that the writer of a musical is the lowest man on the totem pole. People… were very polite in telling me to stay away. But in the US that would never happen. You would need to fire the writer first.”

Stratford’s Shakespeare Festival “is now one of Canada’s largest cultural institutions, doing at least a dozen shows each year on a $60 million budget. But in the early 1950s, Stratford was on the verge of becoming a ghost town. The town’s chief industry was repairing steam locomotives, a trade that was all but dead by the time hometown reporter Tom Patterson flew to England to plead with stage legend Tyrone Guthrie.”