Category: theatre

Charles Isherwood: “[An] ongoing conversation about the size and structure of the not-for-profit theater world is definitely a necessity at a time when the collapsed economy has left every organization scrambling for grant moneys and private funding” and conservatives in Congress are demanding elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts.

“Andrew D. Hamingson has resigned as executive director of the Public Theater after only two-and-a-half years as the company’s top financial executive, citing personal issues.”

“The Royal Court has weathered plenty of turbulence, but for the moment the theatre seems to have found, if not quite paradise, at least an earthly equivalent. Last year began with not one but two consecutive transfers to the West End – for the first time since 1968.”

“The Pasadena Playhouse will take over the programming of its 75-seat second stage, the Carrie Hamilton Theatre, after parting ways with the Furious Theatre Company, which had been the upstairs room’s resident company since 2004.”

Michael Billington: “If box-office revenues increase while attendances show a marginal dip, it can only be for one reason: higher ticket prices. … All the same I worry that we shall soon reach the point of no return, that the gap between the commercial and subsidised sector is growing ever wider.”

The British Council and the company Digital Theatre (which offers online showings of performances by the RSC, Young Vic, Almeida and the like) have launched a website offering (with subtitles) six productions, from six Arab countries, recorded at a festival in Qatar last October.

“A new writing award in honour of Harold Pinter has been launched today by London’s Royal Court Theatre. The Harold Pinter Playwright’s Award is a new bursary for playwrights and has been granted by Pinter’s widow Antonia Fraser.”

“In 2002 the National Black Theater, a cultural anchor of Harlem, invited the owners of Nubian Heritage, a growing beauty-care company with an African pedigree, to invest in its sprawling building at Fifth Avenue and 125th Street. … Nine years later, though, the store is closed; the partnership owes nearly $1.8 million in unpaid property taxes; and the theater is facing foreclosure yet again.”

“More than 14 million people attended the theatre last year and total box office revenues reached £512,331,808, according to figures published by the Society of London Theatre.
About 8.4 million people went to see a musical, 3.7 million attended a play and two million turned out to watch opera or dance.”

“The Icelandic ash cloud, the Fifa World Cup and the worst winter in three decades could not hold audiences back from the West End last year, which continued to defy the economic climate and smash box office records.”