Category: theatre

“Although not a massive margin of gain for an organization with a $59 million budget, it still represents a change of pace from other large Ontario arts institutions like the Shaw Festival and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, which posted substantial deficits on their seasons.”

Director Nicolas Kent tells the story of how his company for The Great Game – a day-long, 12-play examination of foreign wars in Afghanistan – gave command performances for more than 1,200 Pentagon staffers, military officers and diplomats.

The heroine of the 1965 original musical is “Daisy Gamble, who discovers with the help of [a] psychiatrist … that she was, in a past life, Melinda Wells, a woman who lived in 18th-century Britain.” The new version, starring Harry Connick Jr. and opening this fall, turns Daisy Gamble into David Gamble and Melinda Wells into a 1940s jazz singer.

Speaking at the TED conference, she said, “Anyone who creates knows – when it’s not quite there. Where it hasn’t quite become the phoenix or the burnt char. And I am right there … in the crucible and the fire of transformation.”

“The identity of the Prince of Denmark has fascinated scholars for centuries, with disputes about the name’s Jutish, Icelandic or Latin etymology jostling for academic pre-eminence.” Now a Scottish professor “has published research which traces the unusual word to a little known Gaelic mystery tale from the dark ages.”

“The award-winning Broadway musical Fela! celebrating the life of late Nigerian afrobeat legend Fela Kuti will be staged in his home country in April, … The performances are set to take place at an upscale hotel in Lagos, but organisers say they want to hold one show at his family’s iconic New Afrika Shrine club.”

“Flying helps sell tickets. People in the industry like to point out that flying onstage with some mechanical assistance is almost as old as theatre itself. But it’s becoming much more common in live performances, from Broadway to awards ceremonies to Super Bowl shows.”

Steven Hoggett discusses how he and his actors develop and execute the “coordinated sparring set to music” in the National Theatre of Scotland’s production of Byrony Lavery’s Beautiful Burnout.

“Among the ideas under consideration are again postponing the opening, which is scheduled for March 15, until as late as June, and turning the performance on the 15th into a celebration of sorts for the work done so far.”

“We’ve always had our challenges, but we found discrepancies in the financial department that had significant implications. If we’d known about this, we could have taken steps to remedy the problem.”