Category: theatre

A generation that has no memory of the time before anti-retroviral drugs gets a glimpse the real fear, panic and determination with which their predecessors faced down the plague in the mid-1980s. (Most of them had no idea …)

“As a visualist, she is every bit the genius and visionary one has so often heard praised over the years; everyone seems to agree on that. … [But] Taymor’s most successful works, such as The Lion King, are based on simple, literal stories already fully fleshed out, like a readymade armature that can be adapted and clothed to suit her purposes.”

“The Wednesday night performance of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying on Broadway was canceled after a stagehand died from what the police said was a drug overdose he suffered backstage.”

“Israeli and Palestinian police have not identified the gunman who shot and killed Juliano Mer Khamis in April, but on Tuesday students from Jenin’s Freedom Theatre performed Shu Kamam, or What Else, as a defiant message that they will continue his work.

“Like food, music and sex, theatre acquires something extra when it’s enjoyed in the open air. There’s a special chemistry between actors and audience when they can make eye contact in daylight, and nowhere, I think, is this more true than at Shakespeare’s Globe on London’s South Bank.”

Financial statements submitted this month to New York State by the production detail how the show spent $9 million — a sum equal to the entire production cost for the hit musical “The Book of Mormon” — on sets, costumes and shoes. (Remember that dance number, now jettisoned, in which the six-legged spiderwomen flashed a lot of footwear?)

Jenny Gersten “has good reason to savor the milestone moments that occur in a relentless schedule that often leaves her responding to e-mails at 2 in the morning. This season marks the start of her second act at Williamstown, where she cut her teeth as a theater producer from 1996 to 2004 under Michael Ritchie.”

“This Company was, in part, an experiment in accessibility designed to continue the ongoing exploration of the potential for live theater to make money by filming performances for display in movie theaters.”

“Setbacks that weren’t in the script for the outdoor festival — the recession, a West Nile virus scare and a summer of heavy rainfall — all contributed to the decline in revenue over the past few years.”

“This interactive feature, compiled by Erik Piepenburg, a producer for NYTimes.com, and Michael Nagle, a photographer, includes portraits and selected audio interviews with 43 girls waiting in line to audition.”