Category: theatre

“Unlike Sydney or Adelaide, where theatre awards are decided by critics, [Melbourne’s] Green Rooms are peer-based – judged by panels of artists, academics and commentators, with artists predominating. Artists rewarding artists immediately raises questions of conflict of interest, transparency and accountability, and competence to judge on merit.”

“All the way through the first run of One Man, Two Guvnors – even at the National [Theatre] – we had a war against ticket touts. We had a returns queue, and people were sending agents to queue – they would pick up their tickets and they’d sell two £30 tickets for £100 each to American tourists.”

“More than one in ten companies that are losing 100% of their core funding from Arts Council England this week are closing as a result.”

James Cromwell talks about the time he directed Beckett’s script and played Pozzo – in blackface, with the black actor playing Lucky in whiteface – in an SNCC-sponsored production that toured Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia.

“In a movement that some critics are calling ‘technodrama’ and ‘mixed reality’, shows across the globe have been embracing the latest digital technology. 3D projections, virtual-reality masks for actors, stop-motion camerawork and computer animation have all been put to use. And as the hardware and software become ever cheaper, the methods are trickling down to fringe theatre too.”

The Old City-based company, arguably the region’s finest, “will expand into a building three doors from its current space on Second Street, just north of Market, where it will focus on its programs for students and children and install an 80-seat theater and rehearsal hall.”

“For more than 90 years, Exorcism was believed to be lost forever. Then Yale’s Beinecke Library got a call from a dealer who said he had a copy of the manuscript.”

“Twitter will not solve your problems. It won’t solve your declining patronage. It won’t update your unhip image. It won’t make your aging subscriber base young again. Worked as part of a coherent strategy, by a staff and creative leadership that is not petrified by the very things that social media enforces (two-way communication, natural voice, access), it can certainly help. But as long as the generation of art tyrants who have the nation’s theater in crabby lock-down retain their positions, this is unlikely to happen.”

“Before shows open on stage, the audience gets to interact with characters on Facebook, Twitter and Flickr accounts. The theater company works with actors to develop the fictional characters on social media accounts.”