Category: theatre

“[The] Royal Shakespeare Company is risking fresh controversy by staging a ‘sensual and erotic’ version of the Bible’s Song of Solomon from the Old Testament.”

No. After all, “both poems and fiction (novels and short stories) have their origins as performances, as oral traditions.”

What do theatre directors miss when they don’t include women playwrights? It’s hard to tell if you don’t even look at what you’re doing. The Forum Theatre thinks it might be time to step up.

“It is the sort of play one imagines a play ought to be if one has seen very few. It lends itself to an elaborate if conventional set design: dark wood, chintz chairs, a large bay window, a staircase, and multiple doors allowing for the entrance and egress of the various suspects from kitchen, cellar, parlor, and upstairs bedrooms.”

“Theatregoers who seek a warm communal chuckle have never been so well served by the West End. Rival comedies are selling out across the capital. … But this glut of consoling fare is provoking unease in some quarters.”

“According to research into the legacy of the Olympics published by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, London is expected to benefit from increased tourism after the event. The report states: ‘By 2013, the displacement effect is expected to be eroded and tourism into London should increase due to the 2012 games’.”

Lyn Gardner: “We keep being told that women are about to storm our stages and there are certainly many more than there were 20 years ago, but the female playwright with an original main-stage play in performance is still the exception rather than the rule.”

Ben Brantley: “You might even argue that in this age of instant celebrity – in which fame for its own sake is regarded as both a feasible career choice and a democratic right – the lives of the excessively famous are more relevant than those of struggling sample-kit schleppers like Willy Loman.”

“Bristol Old Vic, Shakespeare’s Globe and Sadler’s Wells will be among the first companies to create theatre content for a new online arts channel being launched by Arts Council England and the BBC.”

“Mike Daisey has made his critically acclaimed monologue “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs” available free of charge under an open license. The move means that anyone who wants to perform or adapt the play for performance can do so without paying royalties.”