“The question that no conference could resolve and that still lacks a ready answer is how far theaters can go in embracing new methods without jeopardizing their own values, tastes, and mission. As anyone who works in the newspaper, publishing, or music industries could tell them, there’s really no script to follow when you’re utterly transforming your business model while simultaneously running for your life.”
Category: theatre
The Book Of Mormon Tour – Will It Play In Peoria?
“The show, with its profanity-laced songs and irreverent take on religion and poverty, has grossed more than $90 million on Broadway and picked up nine Tony awards. The racy material will stay unchanged for the tour, say sources close to the show. But will it work in the heartland?”
Composer Blocks Slumdog Millionaire Musical From Using Film’s Hit Song
“If an executive producer for 2008’s Slumdog Millionaire pushes forward with a musical adaptation sans Academy-Award-winning director Danny Boyle, then the film’s composer” – A.R. Rahman – “will tighten his grip on ‘Jai Ho,’ the song that also scored two Oscars, in protest.”
British Equity Says Publicly Funded Theatres Have Too Few Female Roles
“Too many plays performed in theatres subsidised by the taxpayer are dominated by male roles, with female actors often struggling to find work … The union has sent out letters to 43 artistic directors of subsidised theatre companies highlighting the need for better employment of women in the theatre and asking for their plans to improve the situation.”
The Next Vagina Monologues? Eve Ensler Has A New Testimonial Play
Emotional Creature, to open Off-Broadway in November, will feature six young actresses “perform[ing] monologues, stories, and songs that render the pressures and rites of passages of growing up female in disparate cultures.”
Is It Possible To Keep The Entire Plot Of A New Play Secret?
“Two London venues – the Royal Court and the National Theatre – have, though, recently gone further and tried to keep quiet the entire content of a play until audiences were able to see it … [The principals] seem to have felt, in common with many other creative professionals, that the intensive multimedia publicity business is increasingly disabling two of the most powerful tactics of narrative art: surprise and suspense.”
Helping Refugees Turn Their Tales Of Flight Into Theatre
In a workshop this week near Glasgow, Dutch theatre artist Annet Henneman and a group of refugees from Africa, Sri Lanka and Kurdistan acted out a “Refugee School, in which pupils learn such skills as how to barter for a passport, how to hide money inside their own body and how to sleep upright in an enclosed space crammed with other asylum seekers. All of these, it transpires, come from real-life experiences.”
Comedian Louis C.K. Decides To Ticket His Own Shows
“On Monday, he announced that he would not use a ticketing service for his new tour and instead charge $45 for every ticket, with no added fees, through his own Web site, louisck.net.”
Old Jews Telling Jokes, The Nunsense Of The ’10s (Only Funnier)
The new show – whose title describes the contents more or less exactly (not all the cast is old) – has had so much success in its first month Off-Broadway that plans are already in the works to open versions in other cities.
Obsidian Theatre Dominates Toronto Theatre Awards
“Canada’s leading black theatre company was the big winner in both the play and musical theatre categories with a pair of co-productions of challenging contemporary American works.”