“In a cold and dilapidated rehearsal room … five men in blindfolds are being led on lengths of thread by five others. On the floor are sheets of paper covered in bread arranged into sculptural shapes. … From 16 March, in a short run in a secret location, audiences will walk through an installation led by actors playing prison officers and … experience moments of tenderness in the gay prisoners’ harsh lives.”
Category: theatre
What Do You Get When You Cross Berlusconi With Putin? A Russian Theatre Finds Out
“BerlusPutin, which is based on Dario Fo’s play L’Anomalo Bicefalo (The Two-Headed Anomaly), imagines the outcome of half of the former Italian prime minister’s brain being transplanted into Putin’s head, following the former’s death from a heart attack.”
Potentially Damaging Emails Filed In “Spider-Man” Case
“A 46-page filing in federal court on Friday disclosed a trove of private e-mails among the show’s principals that put Ms. Taymor’s famous “Spider-Man” collaborators, Bono and the Edge of U2, on notice that they could face more potentially embarrassing revelations if her case goes to trial next January as scheduled.”
She Doesn’t Precisely Sleep With Shakespeare, But She Is Enamoured
The founder and director of the Chicago Shakespeare Theater sure does love her man – maybe because she fell for him in middle school.
Just Another Song And Dance Routine – About Banking, Capitalism And More
The director of the new musical Mission Drift says, “I think we’re at this moment where there really is this sense of exhaustion and this question of how do we find a new narrative that is as satisfying as this narrative of continued growth.” Now, how do you make that into a musical?
Edward Albee’s Second Chance (With Dubuque)
Albee: “If you write plays because you just want them to be liked, you have to lie too much. … People like theater that is safe, generally speaking — things that are easy, that are not too deeply troubling. In other words, people want to go to the theater and waste their time.”
Julie Taymor Sues Spider-Man Producers For Fraud
“Taymor’s lawyers claim in the document that producers ‘fraudulently induced’ her to continue working on the musical even though they were ‘secretly conspiring to oust Taymor and use and change her work without pay.'”
Are U.S. Theatres Terrified Of Politics? One Playwright Says Yes
Karen Malpede: “The McCarthy era maintains a lethal, if invisible, grip on the American theater. The bugaboo may no longer be Communism, but there are plenty of ideas forbidden, still. To be a political playwright in the United States is to be censored–financially.”
Study Suggests Theatre Can Influence Opinions On Issues
“The researchers found a correlation between this change in attitude and an audience member’s “strength of emotional response to the production.” While careful not to claim cause and effect, they found a link between experiencing an intense gut-level response to the material and shifting one’s position on the issues it brought up.”
Barcelona’s Bad-Boy Director Hits The US Stage
Calixto Bieito has become notorious for his provocative, revisionist stagings of classic plays and operas (e.g., oral sex in a brothel in Mozart, a row of men sitting on toilets in Verdi). “The tension between lurid incitement and passionate tenderness is a crucial element in [his] style, but until now” – this month at Chicago’s Goodman Theater – “American audiences have only heard the incendiary sound bites.”