Category: theatre

“Judy Craymer, producer of Mamma Mia!, is now the 38th richest music millionaire in the UK, according to the Sunday Times Rich List. She is worth £62m since remortgaging her home to finance her idea of a musical based around Abba’s hits.”

The days of high-stakes, energetic theatre collaboration are long gone in Adelaide, asserts the man who just won the Premier’s Lifetime Achievement Award. “People must be given the opportunity to fail in the arts. Samuel Beckett said: `Try again. Fail again. Fail better’. That’s the way theatre gets made.”

Things have changed since Paul Nicholson took over as executive director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival 17 years ago. “Under Nicholson’s tenure, the OSF grew from a pre-professional theater and a place where people could begin their careers to a professional theater where people could have a career and raise families, and once-itinerant actors who stick at OSF now have insurance and retirement plans and earn enough to buy homes.”

“Essex-based Bruce James Productions is offering auditions at an as yet unspecified autumn workshop to qualified and professional performers who send their Spotlight/agent details to the company, along with the ticket stub from a previous show.”

“Theatergoers, especially the kind who regard Broadway as Mecca, expect their seats to come with a breathtaking view. I mean of scenic scenery that gives its own spectacular performance … But for me, the most visually magical productions are often those in which the stage is a blank canvas, waiting to be written upon by the performers who inhabit it.” Ben Brantley offers some examples and asks readers for more.

The key is “an extraordinary safety net provided by the British government: an annual subsidy that today provides 28 percent of the National’s income: £19.6 million.” NT director Nicholas Hytner says that support is crucial “because we knew we could create work that we believed in without worrying 24 hours a day about ticket sales like so many American theaters have to.”

“And on Tuesday, they’ll be doing just that – writing a play, together, in real time in front of you on Culture Monster. … LaBute and Rebeck won’t know what they’re writing about before they start. We’ve put together some characters and scenarios, and we’d like you to vote for your favorite.”

“High-minded theatergoers don’t let a little nudity distract them from the narrative developments onstage; but the rest of us have brains that can easily wander and wonder. Isn’t it difficult to perform in the buff? And how awkward is it when an actor’s friends and family come to see the show?”

“Anne Wareham joined the Laguna staff last fall as associate producer; the artistic director’s job had been vacant since August 2010, when Andrew Barnicle resigned after nearly 20 years.”

“Equity devised the survey after members of the union’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Committee raised concerns that, contrary to common assumption, the industry is not one in which it is easy for performers to be open about their sexuality.”