Category: theatre

Creative Scotland, the country’s arts funding body, is discontinuing two-year supporting grants in favor of per-project awards. “Companies and individual practitioners are questioning whether they will be able to continue under the new regime, while there are warnings that individual artists will leave Scotland.”

“While words alone can create a rich tapestry of critical response, imagine how much richer this might be with the addition of images, video, audio, geotagging, experimental forms such as Pinterest – the list goes on. Despite having such options at their fingertips, the majority of those writing theatre criticism for the web remain trapped in the conventional print review format.”

“[A]fter years of negotiations proved fruitless, a planned London musical about the rags-to-riches game show contestant is now being developed without the participation of any of the film’s key creators, including director Danny Boyle and composer A.R. Rahman.”

“The last melody in the show, after an entire night of [Bess] singing and being raped and kicked and beaten and all of this stuff, is ‘Summertime,’ … And it freaks me out that after all this, I have to sound high and pretty and fresh. And I’m always holding onto that baby, going, ‘I know you’re just a doll, but help me.'”

Dancap chief Aubrey Dan “blamed a tough economy and a shortage of Broadway ‘product’ … but he was somewhat the author of his own misfortune … Multiple sources say the problems were as much internal as external – that while Mr. Dan hired knowledgeable professionals, he frequently spurned their advice.”

Giles Harvey: “I found myself squirming in my seat from boredom and exasperation, amazed at how much glaringly conventional stagecraft Salesman was able to pack into its two acts. The rising action, the dramatic irony, the laborious, grandstanding speeches … I kept wanting to exclaim, ‘It sounds like a play!'”

The NYSX means to explore “what happens when contemporary culture is infused with Shakespearean poetry and themes in unexpected ways.” What does that mean? For starters, a Sonnet Project (154 poems, 154 actors, 154 videos), and “a Shakespearean pub crawl, where at each location, a scene breaks out. They call it … Shakesbeer.”

“We get that Shakespeare wouldn’t be Shakespeare – and unimaginative programme designers the world over would be up the proverbial creek – without Desdemona’s handkerchief or Macbeth’s dagger. … But what about the impact prop choice can have within a production? What creative freedoms, extended by the playwright to the props person, can affect the outcome of a show?

“The main reason for these pre-textual prologues, which blur the start time advertised in the papers, is presumably the pursuit of greater realism: a sense that the performance is joining a story that has begun some time before, rather than requiring a sudden suspension of disbelief. However, the strategy is risky because it creates unease in an auditorium.”

“Funding for screen-to-stage projects is getting a lift from a newly announced fund called Broadway & Vine. The fund is designed to help with the optioning of movie titles for adaptation as musicals, commissioning creative teams for script development and staging the first readings and presentations.”