Category: theatre

No, we don’t mean “Doe: A Deer.” This is “The Great American Mousical,” a new musical based on a children’s book Andrews wrote about – what else? – a musical, and its leading lady, who happens to be a mouse.

This week, a Berlin theatre company performed a play live, with real-time feedback, on Facebook. “Viewers were encouraged to vote on their favorite wedding dress, contribute to a crowd-sourced love letter between characters and three small parts were cast with audience members.”

“There is more to Václav Havel’s legacy than the shining example of brave commitment or the historical curiosity of a political artist being drafted by his fellow citizens to peacefully lead them into an emancipated era. Revivals here will be few and far between, but just knowing the plays exist, bearing creative witness to all too real political depravity, should be a comfort to us all.”

“With a stagnant economy and a decline nationally in audiences for traditional dance and theater, there is renewed interest in performances outside darkened black- box theaters. Unusual spaces are also popular with patrons of the arts, who give grants for ‘creative place-making’ — art that can reach broad audiences and help revitalize downtrodden neighborhoods.”

“Can film and theater live happily together in the same room? It’s not that they haven’t had a long relationship already, with each regularly borrowing stories and stars from the other. But now these two separate (and arguably equal) art forms are attempting to practice cohabitation.”

And the State Department, Target, hospitals … the job opportunities for playwrights could become endless.

“Oscar-nominated director Rob Marshall is reteaming with Disney for a film adaptation of Into the Woods, the classic 1980s Broadway musical written by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine. … Lapine is now at work on the script, which Marshall expects to feature new songs by Sondheim.”

“We aren’t lacking in raw materials, after all. Aren’t we the country that brought you Enya, Sinead O’Connor, Westlife and U2? … And it’s not as if we’re short of experimental playwrights, innovative directors or competent performers. … Yet sadly our island seems to be unable – or unwilling – to write, or indeed produce, their own works from the genre.”

Outgoing company director Michael Boyd, on the 975-seat replica of the RSC’s Stratford auditorium which the company set up in the Park Avenue Armory last summer: “It is perfectly positioned to be placed within some large four walls [in London] and be a temporary theatre that lasts for a hundred years.”

“Few recent Broadway seasons have had as much estate-driven handiwork as this one, a reflection of the rising entrepreneurship of heirs and the affection of audiences for song standards. Heirs are increasingly hands-on in trying to wrest moneymaking shows out of their ancestral trunks.”