Category: theatre

London’s National Theatre, Royal Albert Hall and Royal Opera House wanted more power for, well, power – so they joined the Arts Basket. And that’s just the tip of the collaborative effort among the city’s biggest arts groups.

“The site was formerly used by Crosse & Blackwell to make Branston pickle until they moved out in 1927. The theatre will be operated by Nimax which already runs five others in London, including the Apollo and Lyric.”

“Playwrights working for the National Theatre, the Royal Court and the Royal Shakespeare Company are to benefit from an increase of just under 8% on their total minimum fee. The Writers’ Guild of Great Britain has secured a rate of £11,500 for writers of original plays used by the three venues.”

Playwright Gwyneth Lewis: “In Aeschylus, Clytemnestra is a wicked man-woman who upstages her husband, takes a lover and is later killed by Orestes, her son. Fiona Shaw pointed out to me that Clytemnestra is the only character in this family whose death isn’t avenged, so I decided to explore why not and to tell the story from her point of view. Imagine you were at home and you heard that, in order to win a war, your husband had allowed your daughter to be killed.”

“[This] season’s revival of “Godspell” has introduced a new breed: shareholders who have put as little as $1,000 each into the $5 million musical and in return have gotten a rare inside look at show business, including the ear of the lead producer.”

“Spring has clearly sprung on Broadway, with a rising tide of spring-break tourists helping to fuel a strong week that saw every single show in the top 10 break the $1 million mark.”

The play, which premiered at Hartford Stage Company in October, depicts “a wounded Hispanic soldier returning to his Philadelphia neighborhood after serving in Iraq … as family matters scuttle his grand plans and feed his issues of guilt, anger and dependency.”

“Mark Rylance has cribbed from the work of Louis Jenkins long enough. Having twice recited compositions by Mr. Jenkins, the mischievous poet of Duluth, Minn., in lieu of more traditional acceptance speeches at the Tony Awards, Mr. Rylance will give him proper credit on a new play they have written together and which will make its debut at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis next year.”

The musical sets a record for youngest awardee and wins seven of the ten awards for which it was nominated.

Both black and white actors in the play Clybourne Park had to deal with the shock of rehearsing scenes from 1959 Chicago – the time (and characters) of A Raisin in the Sun. As the play transfers to Broadway, the actors recall the ways they dealt with the pain and revelation of that somewhat different past.