Category: theatre

The historic but dilapidated venue – the very last of England’s old music halls, and the venue for several of London’s best-known experimental productions in recent years – was in danger of having to close for safety’s sake after failing to secure Lottery funding for repairs. Now a little-known government trust has contributed £700,000, enabling the first stage o renovations to begin.

“Of all the things the play has been interpreted as – a howl of existential angst, a rueful tribute to music hall, quite deliberately about nothing at all – how it relates to race remains an intriguing, and controversial, question.”

Im Tzirtu, an organization created after the second Lebanon war which “acts to strengthen and promote Zionist values in Israel”, is running pickets and media protests against a Tel Aviv theater’s engagement (to play Bernarda Alba!) of Mohammed Bakri, who made a controversial 2002 movie about the Israeli Defence Forces’ actions in Lebanon’s Jenin refugee camp.

“The Long Wharf Theater in New Haven has replaced what it had billed as the ‘world premiere’ of the play Sophie’s Choice.” The script, by David Rintels, is said to be unready for production.

“In a new study Dr Jonathan Hope, from Strathclyde University, compared Shakespeare’s work with playwrights including Thomas Middleton and Ben Jonson.” Hope suggests that Shakespeare’s “real genius lay in the unique way he used grammar to construct sentences, adding a poetic element to English.”

“In an effort to lure prestigious, big-budget productions such as these away from cities like Toronto to Chicago – and, particularly, the employment, tourism and hundreds of millions of dollars in economic spinoffs they bring – Illinois’s new Live Theater Production Tax Credit will offer a tax rebate up to $2-million (U.S.) for commercial producers of “pre-Broadway and long-run shows” beginning in July.”

“Takings topped £528.3m in 2011 – up 3.1% on a like-for-like basis on the previous year. Due to the closure of a number of theatres while new shows were set up, the overall attendance was 13.9m – down 1.73% on 2010.”

The company had some impressive models of their starchitect’s design – but no place to show it off to prospective donors. Enter one of Signature’s alumni – Oscar-winning actor Edward Norton.

“Intiman has had a tumultuous year. Last April, the company shut down in the middle of its artistic season. An independent consultant decided the theater just didn’t have the money to keep going. In November, after months of soul searching, the Board announced it wanted to reopen Intiman this summer with a four-play festival. But Terry Jones says Intiman won’t produce the festival unless it has all the money up front: $1 million.”

“The Shaw Festival ended its 50th season with a $1.5-million deficit, the Niagara-on-the-Lake theatre company announced Friday afternoon at its annual general meeting. This is the second year in a row that the Shaw has ended a season more than a million dollars in the red.”