“That was me being able to look certain people in the face and say: ‘You’re wrong.’ So many people have dictated what my intentions were with Slave Play. One of the things they’ve always articulated is that I wrote Slave Play for white people and that it’s not written for a black audience. That’s so bizarre to me. … It was amazing to sit in a 99.9% black audience and see that 99.9% of the play worked. And the parts that exhilarated the audience on other nights still exhilarated the audience that night.” – The Guardian
Category: theatre
Ceiling Caves In During West End ‘Death Of A Salesman’, Five Injured
Shortly after the start of Wednesday evening’s performance of this production — well-known for casting Black actors as the Loman family — audience members began to hear dripping water. About half an hour in, the sound got louder and then a portion of the ceiling crashed into the auditorium. The 1,200-seat Piccadilly Theatre was quickly evacuated, the show was cancelled, and star Wendell Pierce met the audience outside to apologize. – WhatsOnStage (UK)
Trigger Warning: For Theater In 2019 America, Guns Aren’t Only An Issue For The Prop Shop
One night at Hamilton in San Francisco earlier this year, right at the moment of the Hamilton-Burr duel, an audience member had a heart attack; the commotion made some people believe there was a real shooter in the house, and the audience stampeded. A real shooting during a play could happen, as it has at cinemas and rock concerts; live-shooter training for theater personnel is now a thing. And since art reflects life, we’re seeing more guns onstage as well. Lisa Lacroce Patterson writes about how theaters are dealing with guns, onstage and off. – American Theatre
Anna Deavere Smith Hands Over The Docu-Play That Made Her Famous — And For Which She Did All The Interviews — To Another Actor
A revival of Fires in the Mirror, Smith’s 1992 solo show about the riots in Crown Heights, Brooklyn and the tension between Caribbean Blacks and Hasidic Jews there, is opening in New York next week. For the first time, all 29 parts are being played by another actor: Michael Benjamin Washington. Salamishah Tillet interviews both of them about the handover. – The New York Times
After 48 Years, Guardian Theatre Critic Michael Billington Is Retiring
Says Billington, who began at the paper in 1971 and has written roughly 10,000 reviews, “I shall shortly be 80 and, with the years, the stress of writing to a deadline doesn’t get any easier. Giving up will be a wrench but I feel now is the right time to do it.” (And yes, the paper will hire a successor.) – The Guardian
How Theatre Helped Bring Down The Berlin Wall 30 Years Ago Today
What is intriguing is that the collapse of East Germany was, in many ways, a piece of theatre. The Alexanderplatz demonstration, one of the largest in GDR history, had been planned by actors and directors from leading East German theatres. They invited playwrights and actors to address the crowds, alongside dissidents and politicians. They even had a baddie: the former deputy head of the Stasi secret police spoke – and was booed. – The Guardian
Minneapolis’ Children’s Theatre Company Settles With Remaining Plaintiffs In Sex Abuse Cases
At the announcement of the settlement, theatre administration and survivors stood side by side. “The moment brought a close to a decadeslong ordeal and underscored the pain of those whose childhoods were taken away, their lives scarred by abuse. It also saw theater management publicly acknowledge the abuse committed by former employees, and offer an apology and commitment to continue working with survivors.” – Minneapolis Star-Tribune
Students At Scotland’s Royal Conservatoire Say The School Ignored Claims Of Systemic Abuse
Both students and alums want a public apology, an independent investigation – and change. “Their allegations include claims of physical intimidation and inappropriate remarks about students’ mental health issues and about sexual abuse.” – The Stage (UK)
Actors In Canada Go Through A Lot Of Emotional Wear In Their Training
Student mental health, teacher favoritism, inequities in class makeup and in casting … it’s all stressful for the young actors of Canada (and there are ways that some of these things could change … if performance instructors wanted them to). – HowlRound
Extinction Rebellion’s Street Theatre, And How Climate Change Is Treated In An Actual Theatre
Before it lost public sympathy with a badly misjudged action on the London Underground, the British activist group’s agitprop had had a good deal of success, thanks to its “instinctive understanding of public theatre.” Critic Kate Maltby looks at Extinction Rebellion’s successes and missteps alongside the current Old Vic production of Duncan Macmillan’s Lungs, starring Claire Foy and Matt Smith as a couple of climate-anxious white millennials. – The New York Review of Books