Category: theatre

“But the increased quality of sound reproduction, coupled with reduced technical expense and higher personnel expense, have revived the argument over theaters utilizing digitized orchestras instead of the real thing for musicals.”

“Sky has launched a £1.2million fund aimed at supporting arts organisations – including theatre and dance companies – to create new projects. The fund, called The Sky Arts Ignition Series, plans to award six arts organistations up to £200,000 each over the next three years.”

Ben Brantley: “An acridness hung in the air during the New Group’s revival of Wallace Shawn’s Marie and Bruce the other night, something I don’t often experience at the theater. It was the thick, curdled aura of an audience’s collective discomfort … that palpable unhappiness that arises when an audience feels utterly ill at ease with what’s happening onstage.”

“But to accommodate its A-list performers – who, with their multitude of day jobs and existing commitments, will not be all in the same place until Thursday – the production has resorted to a grab bag of strategies, shortcuts and cheats, some old school and others newfangled, to get its far-flung cast up to speed as quickly as possible.”

Justin Hamilton “launched his own app that ties into the material in his show. Audience members can download the app, which will serve as something of an instant search engine with ready-made links, offering information on topics Hamilton touches on.”

Playwright Athol Fugard and Shubert Organization executive Philip J. Smith will receive lifetime achievement honors at this year’s Tony Awards.

“And yet talking to [company artistic director] Natalia [Kaliada] feels like stepping into a DeLorean and speeding back 30 years in time. “Longer. … This isn’t like Russia in the 80s. It’s Russia in 1937. These mass arrests. People being disappeared. It’s the purges.'”

“A quiet revolution (or is it an evolution?) has been unfolding in Seattle theater. On stages and in rehearsal halls, more and more women directors are running the show — and, in many cases, the theater too.”

“Marc Cassivi, a culture critic with La Presse newspaper, said Cantat has served his time and deserves a second chance. Others said the theatre’s choice could send the wrong message to offenders and victims of such crimes.”

The Polish port city, for centuries known as Danzig, was “the site of the only Shakespearian playhouse to have been constructed outside England during the Bard’s lifetime.” In 2013, a rebuilt version of that theatre will open as the Teatr Szekspirowski, home of Gdansk’s Shakespeare Festival.