Category: theatre

“Because even if you say to an actor, ‘This character was beaten up as a child’, what can they do apart from say, ‘OK’ and then just get on with it? It serves them nothing. Writing is a lot more organic than that. It’s not at all intellectual.”

“On the face of it, few things seem more remote to 21st-century Britain than the world of Jacobean tragedy … So what is it about these violent and baroque plays … that haunt our contemporary imagination? What kind of culture did they spring from? And why are they once again filling our theatres?”

“One thing that helps to make Shakespeare watchable is not condescending to your audience, not making your audience feel stupid. Seriously.”

After a successful six-year run as co-artistic directors at the Sydney Theatre Company, Blanchett and husband Andrew Upton will end their run at the close of the 2013 season. What will happen to the theatre after its celebrity directors leave?

“The dozen or so speakers are expected to discuss how data will be collected in the future, how marketing and customer service will change, the role of cultural institutions, audience demographics and how technology will alter live events. A principal at a public school from an impoverished section of the city will talk about the importance of arts funding.”

“It has been interesting to note how people are reacting to the show in different ways according to their familiarity with the score, and more particularly their history (or not) of hearing it in the opera house, where it has most regularly been performed since its Broadway debut in 1935.”

Despite the film taking more from its opening weekend in the UK and Ireland alone than the National’s annual profit on the stage version, Nicholas Hytner told Sky News: “I’ll stick my neck out and predict the play will be more profitable to us than the movie will be to DreamWorks.””

The proposals, which would have seen charging extended until midnight from Monday to Saturday and introduced between 1pm and 6pm on Sundays, were deeply unpopular among theatre staff and managers. Theatres had warned that the charges could lead to millions of pounds in lost ticket sales, while actors and musicians had united to protest against the proposals which they described as “a tax on their work and a tax on entertainment”.

“Outside the capital, total audiences have fallen by more than 10% over the period, while theatre audiences at non-national companies have fallen by nearly 13%. At the national companies such as the National Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company, audiences have actually increased over the two-year period by around 400,000 people.”