Category: theatre

“Breaking her silence about” the troubled, expensive musical from which she was fired, the director “tacitly criticized her former producers on Saturday afternoon for relying on audience focus groups and said that the rise of Twitter and blogs for instant theater criticism was damaging to shows.”

The London theatre collective called Duckie – “renowned for raucous, boozy cabaret nights at its residency space at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern in Vauxhall – had never really had audiences of their own nodding off. What if they tried to encourage it?

“Imagine that two powerhouse teams come to Broadway, each determined to put on a musical.” Patrick Healy offers a chart comparing the basic ingredients – script, talent, producers, venue – that went into each production.

“What is clear is that the problem begin long before the nomination and awards process. With very few women writers and directors represented in the 39 productions that opened on Broadway last year, the miniscule number of woman nominees was a given.”

“TV and theatre is [sic] suffering from a talent drain of black British actors, with many looking to the US for work because of the lack of opportunities in the UK, leading figures have warned.”

“There was nearly a full moon over Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn on Monday night, when the cast of the cemetery’s latest theatrical performance gathered for a full run-through … of The Spoon River Project, a dead-serious adaptation of Edgar Lee Masters’s 1915 masterpiece, Spoon River Anthology.”

“The proximity of theaters to Hollywood talent agencies doesn’t constitute an advantage, according to some panelists.”

“I guess the question is, `Can they just skip over those reviews and get to the tourist population and continue to do the kind of numbers they’re doing?’ Most musicals that overcome critics — like `Wicked’ — have great word-of-mouth or get a target audience that just adores it.”

National Theatre executive director Nick Starr: “That War Horse couldn’t be done without subsidy is an obvious point, but it also couldn’t be done without subsidy being applied at the earliest stage, when no one could imagine what might come of it. … It could not have been created in the US.”

The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World “draws not only from one of the most obscure recording acts of the 20th century, but also one of its most unlistenable.”