Category: theatre

“The Yale School of Drama and Yale Repertory Theater announced on Wednesday that they had received an $18 million gift – the largest in their history – to finance the creation of new plays and musicals through commissions to writers, developmental workshops and productions at both Yale Rep and other theaters that stage the work.”

“Tiago Klimeck, 27, was enacting the suicide of Judas during a Good Friday performance in Itarare, southern Brazil. The audience and his fellow actors didn’t realise anything was wrong for more than four minutes. Kilmeck died this week after being in a medically induced coma for the last 16 days.”

“The actors performed a short piece to challenge the Royal Shakespeare Company’s decision to accept sponsorship from BP after the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The group then asked the audience to tear the BP logo from their programmes.”

“We’re seeing the rise of a permanent class of hobbyist comedians; weekend warriors who do five minutes of material once or twice a month at alternative rooms. Heckling is forbidden. These guys shouldn’t be charging their audience, any more than club tennis players should be charging people to watch them hit. But neither should they be singled out for scorn for daring to play tennis.”

“There is a conundrum. To remain relevant, the theatre must be more artistically adventurous. But the radical new methods appear less likely to throw up a major commercial hit.”

“The Tony deadline is now the central organizing event that drives Broadway, for better and for worse. A perverse twist on the laws of supply and demand now exists in the theater world because of the Tonys and several other theater awards, all given out in the spring.”

The historically important black theatre reopens after years of work. One of its cheerleaders says, “at a time when apathy dominates much of the civic scene, when activism is associated with acting out, not acting together, the relaunch of the Howard Theatre is a magnificent reflection of America’s ‘can do’ spirit.”

The National Youth Theatre “will unveil an overhaul of its operations this week, potentially including job cuts and the closure of several productions. This comes after the Arts Council had to step in with an emergency £200,000 grant to allow the organisation to meet its financial obligations.”

“What I think really worries Burr (and I admit I share his concern) is not that comedy nerds aren’t reverent enough to stand-up traditions. It’s that they’re too reverent — and that all this reverence, this study and dissection, this niceness, threatens to ruin a form of entertainment that has stridently avoided being declawed. That comedy nerds, like overexuberant fanboys, will effectively love, nurture and respect stand-up comedy to death.”

“Symphony orchestras, regional theatres, ballet and opera companies across North America are feeling stiff competition to lure ticket buyers who they believe are increasingly distracted by interactive entertainment and social media. But when those sought-after new audiences do show up, they don’t always behave the way that venerable institutions and veteran audiences expect.”