Category: theatre

“Broadway, by comparison, is stocked with trivial playthings, diversions quickly consumed and promptly forgotten at prices that encourage amnesia.”

“Intiman recorded a $518,000 deficit in 2008-09, the most recent year for which Intiman’s tax records are available. It owes Seattle Center about $285,000 in back rent and utilities. It was late in paying some union dues; its endowment has fallen from $3.6 million about two years ago to about $1 million now; and it’s renegotiating its $1 million line of credit.”

“Companies who choose to do corporate work are often criticised for selling out, but in a period when tough funding cuts are soon to desecrate the arts, is making an honest buck from one’s work – even from a major commercial brand – really such a crime?”

“The eventual location of the show had been a mystery after Cirque du Soleil announced it would be moving into the 6,000-seat Radio City and debuting a new show that couldn’t accommodate the time the Tonys would need to set up, rehearse and televise the live event.”

“As regional playhouses wrestle with funding cuts, touring companies are more crucial than ever before.”

“Stella Artois is launching its new lager brand, Stella Artois Black, using a piece of immersive theatre created by Punchdrunk artistic director Felix Barrett. The Night Chauffeur … takes audience members through London in a Citroen DS and is designed to make them feel like they are in a film.”

It will be “founded by 20 of the brightest lights in the country and modelled along the lines of Soulpepper Theatre.” This would be the first artist-run company in North America, if not the world, run on a large scale and devoted exclusively to the art of musical theatre.

“Carlos Moore, [Fela Kuti’s] only official biographer, claims the producers of Fela! breached his copyright by failing to credit his book, Fela: This Bitch Of A Life, as a source for the production.” Moore is asking for $5 million in damages.

“A new media studio in Bristol has commissioned six theatre companies “to explore working with ‘pervasive media’ – basically defined as mobile- or sensor-activated technology, from text messaging to the RFID chips used in Oyster cards on London’s public transport.”

“On Monday the Harry Ransom Center, a humanities library at the university, said it had acquired Gray’s archives, comprising more than 40 years of work dating to the 1970s. Among the materials in the archive, the center said, are more than 90 performance notebooks and more than 100 diaries.”