Category: theatre

“Performer Harrison Knights is behind the venture, called Trans Voices Company, which aims to help address a lack of casting opportunities for non-cisgender actors.” – The Stage

Lauren E. Turner, founder of the New Orleans theatre company No Dream Deferred, says that she was deeply lucky as a kid. “I was taught creating space was my duty. The idea of what was out there and available for performers of color was accessible, and I knew there was power in being able to tell a different story in different ways. Had I not had that experience, I would have just assumed theatre was strictly for white people.” – HowlRound

And that’s true in weapons and swordfighting theatre classes as well. Ask one student-turned-devotee: “In theatrical swordfighting, you’re following choreography and working with your partner and trying to avoid contact unless it’s part of the routine. It’s just like dance. Except there are more pointy objects.” – San Diego Union-Tribune

Nottage: “Yes, I have to go sometimes to where my audience is, rather than being confined by the proscenium—which forces us to have a certain level of engagement, which means I have to sit very quietly in the dark while these people speak at me. There isn’t always a conversation.” – Vogue

Chilean playwright and director Guillermo Calderón: “After the curfew was over, a few theatres came back to do shows and a lot of people went to see them. … People were yearning for a sense of community and space to talk and vent and try to find some sort of solidarity … [Even so,] there has been an overwhelming sense here among theatre artists that it’s impossible to do theatre right now. … How can we say anything that’s going to really mean something at this moment? I mean, we’re in the context of a quasi civil war, right?” – HowlRound

A new study, commissioned by the mayor’s office and released on Wednesday, finds that the city is home to 748 Off Broadway and Off Off Broadway theater organizations responsible for 3,000 jobs. But there is also quite a bit of churn: The study reveals that more than 280 theater organizations were established in the city since 2011, while more than 100 closed. – The New York Times

Kwame Kwei-Armah, artistic director of the Young Vic in London (and former artistic director of Center Stage in Baltimore): “People are listening in a way they didn’t 10 years ago, 20 years ago, and history has taught us that they certainly didn’t listen any time before that.” – Backstage

The Times Square area was never the exclusive preserve of theatergoers, but Broadway culture elevated the neighborhood’s rough and raffish character. Today, not even all Broadway theaters have Broadway theater happening inside them. – Los Angeles Times

The production presented this week at Suffolk University in Boston, is, according to Wilder’s estate, the first time all seven one-acts will be performed together in a single program.” – American Theatre