Category: theatre

“Geir Ove Kvalheim, a Norwegian scriptwriter and actor, … claimed to have discovered fragments of a previously unknown Ibsen play, The Sun God, a find that would have changed Norwegian literary history.”

“Last season, in fact, the Broadway showgoer was whiter than ever: Caucasians accounted for more than 82% of the season’s 12.5 million theatergoers vs. 76% of the 11.9 million attendees in 2009-10. The average age downticked from 45 to 44, although the change is likely too minor to prove terribly encouraging to those in the biz who worry about the graying of legit auds.”

“A figure of about £60 has become the basic stalls and dress-circle benchmark for musicals, but even that figure is dwarfed by the “premium seat” option, a “deluxe” price band that has crossed the Atlantic from Broadway.”

“Nobody’s going to go to the theatre at all,” the composer told Radio 4’s Today programme, predicting that “most of the theatres in London will shut. It’s going to be very tough,” he said, revealing advance bookings were “about 10%” of their normal level.

Stefan Kaegi’s Berlin theatre collective, Rimini Protokoll, “makes professional theatre without trained actors. Its performers are instead described as ‘experts in daily life'” – muezzins in Cairo; underpaid hotel maids and truck drivers in Singapore; an undertaker, a stonemason and a funeral musician in a piece about death.

“In a boost to Emerson College’s ambitions to be a force in theater, the two leaders of the American Voices New Play Institute – an influential national player in conversations and research about playwriting – will move next year from Arena Stage in Washington to become part of ArtsEmerson, the Boston college’s two-year-old theater programming arm.”

“Wicked” is the rare — maybe even unprecedented — show rich enough to effortlessly carry multiple meanings for multiple demographics, all of them valid, even if the messages that endeared it to my cynical heart are different from a 10-year-old’s take-away.

“[It] is therapy for the middle classes who stopped protesting on the streets long ago, choosing instead to sit in the dark, watch a political display, and reassure themselves that they are doing something. In case that’s not enough, many are accompanied by lectures and conferences to ram the point home.”

“Of the 14.1 million people who went to a West End show last year, 8.4 million chose a musical. Since 2000, ticket sales have increased by almost 25 per cent. Last year, we spent more than £305 million on them – and probably not much less again on parking, and drinks and snacks at the interval.”

“Political Theatre? No thanks. There is too much of it, and too much that is just no good. This is therapy for the middle classes who stopped protesting on the streets long ago, choosing instead to sit in the dark, watch a political display, and reassure themselves that they are doing something.”