Category: theatre

“Chalk up the rise of the phenomenon to better technology and a desire on the part of movie theaters for so-called alternative content — a way to attract new customers with interesting offerings other than movies.”

“Broadway had another billion-dollar season between late May 2010 and Sunday, with shows grossing $1.08 billion – 5.9 percent more than the total for the 2009-10 season – and playing to more than 12.5 million people.”

“Publishing houses Bloomsbury and Faber and Faber are to launch an online digital archive giving access to more than 2,000 years of drama. Drama Online, which will launch in October 2012, will offer access to digital versions of plays ranging from Greek dramas to recent hits.”

Murray’s Mills in Manchester – “littered with the odd bit of old machinery, broken wheels and great textile hampers” – will be “the venue for what promises to be a memorable stage adaptation of Charles Dickens’s grim industrial novel Hard Times.”

“With the tag line ‘giving your unwanted set a new home’, Set-exchange.co.uk has been launched with the aim of encouraging production companies to share unwanted sets, costumes and props with other theatre organisations across the UK for free.”

“Ask Yvonne Brewster how much the theatre industry has changed in 60 years, and the founder of Britain’s most high-profile black theatre company says: ‘Darling, when I started out, people would rub my skin to see if the colour came off’.”

“In a bid to broaden its theater program and to bring additional polished, diverse theater uptown, City College of New York is lending critical support to an effort to open a new professional theater in residence uptown at Aaron Davis Hall.”

The original rock opera isn’t the 1970s relic some of us may think: Superstar has been resurrected in one form or another numerous times since its debut as a concept album some 41 years ago.

“Not only are we seeing the fast rise of micro-festivals but regional theatres are increasingly throwing open their doors to companies that, in the past, they might have deemed a risky box-office proposition that didn’t fit in with the rest of their programmes.”

“Not only are we seeing the fast rise of micro-festivals – events such as the Junction Sampled, Harrogate’s Two’s Company or the Basement’s 5×5 in Brighton – but regional theatres are increasingly throwing open their doors to companies that, in the past, they might have deemed a risky box-office proposition that didn’t fit in with the rest of their programmes.”