Truly, if you’ve seen the movie trailer, there’s no missing the multitude of jokes just sort of … oh, let’s say it … hanging there to be batted around. However, Angels in America won the competition long ago with Roy Cohn making a joke about the musical: “It’s the rare Cats joke that successfully makes fun of Cats and also punches back at people who think they’re interesting for making fun of Cats. It’s appropriately as chaotic as Cats itself.” – Vulture
Category: theatre
How Did Tony Kushner Try To Fix His Problematic First Play? By Writing Himself Into It
“For the revival of his first professionally produced play, A Bright Room Called Day, open now at New York’s Public Theater, Kushner has in classic Kushnerian style wildly rewritten the script … In so doing, he’s created an impossible play that circles two impossible problems — how the left could have responded to the rise of Hitler, and how art can respond to our present moment — and offers no easy solutions.” – Slate
Broadway Musicals In Paris? Yes!
For English-speaking creative teams, there are obvious benefits to opening in Paris. The market is far less crowded than in New York or London, and star casting isn’t much of a factor, since most musical theater performers are unknown to the French audience. – The New York Times
Arthur Miller Did An Adaptation Of ‘Pride And Prejudice’ (Who Knew?)
“In the Theatre Guild Archive of the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas survives a script, marked ‘as broadcast,’ of Miller’s adaptation of Jane Austen for radio. Miller’s radio play, with Joan Fontaine as Elizabeth Bennet, aired on Thanksgiving eve, 18 November 1945.” – Los Angeles Review of Books
‘What I’ve Learned From 10,000 Nights At The Theatre’: Guardian Critic Michael Billington’s Farewell Essay
“British theatre is incredibly resilient, yet radically different from when I took up my post at the Guardian in 1971. Even the job of being a critic has altered in all sorts of ways. … But if the process – and the people who get to write the reviews – has changed, the role of the critic remains much the same.” – The Guardian
What Broadway 2019 Looked Like
In some years, narratives emerge, about innovation or stagnation, retrenchment or inclusion, celebrity, politics, source material. But 2019 seemed especially all over the map. Shows were big and small, hopeful and cynical, wired and tired. If you believe in theater as relational to real life, then life in America right now is fractured, disordered, with occasional dance remixes. – The Guardian
At The Theater Olympics (Where Russia Is Not Banned)
Like its more famous athletic counterpart, this international gathering, founded in Greece in 1994, happens (roughly) every four years in a different city. This year, for the first time, it’s in two locations, St. Petersburg, Russia and Toga, Japan, and it’s the longest and largest Theater Olympics yet, with 104 productions from 22 countries. – The New York Times
Founders Of Chicago’s Halcyon Theatre Abruptly Quit And Leave City
“On Tuesday, the co-founders of Halcyon Theatre, Tony and Jenn Adams, said that they have stepped down [after 14 years] and have moved to Maine. Effective immediately, Arlicia McClain will become the company’s new artistic director. … Halcyon Theatre was founded in 2006 in [the] Albany Park [neighborhood] and describes itself as committed to connecting people, transforming borders and ascending toward a more just union.” – Chicago Tribune
At ‘Slave Play’ Q&A, Woman Shouts That Playwright Is ‘Racist Against White People’
“According to witnesses, the woman, whom [playwright Jeremy O.] Harris has nicknamed ‘Talkback Tammy’ on Twitter, stood up from her seat and loudly interrupted the Q&A just as it was finishing up. She accused the queer black playwright of being ‘racist against white people.’ At one point, she complained that she didn’t want to hear that white people are the fucking plague all the time.'” Harris patiently responded to her and even sort of defended her reaction afterward, saying “Rage is a necessary lubricant to discourse.” – Gothamist
Nine Black Actresses Have Now Been Cast As Hermione In ‘Harry Potter And The Cursed Child’, But The Producers Refuse To Discuss Race
“The play’s producers, Sonia Friedman Productions, declined to comment for this article, noting that the subject of Hermione’s race had been discussed at length when the play opened in London. But that was eight Hermiones ago. When asked to discuss the cultural significance of the casting decision in the era when diversity and inclusion have become priorities in theater, the producers rebuffed The Times‘ attempts to speak with the show’s director, actors or anyone else in the production.” – Los Angeles Times