Category: theatre

In the past few years, the director of Chicago’s Goodman Theatre has been generous with the scenery, covering the stage with enormous boulders for Desire Under the Elms or heaps of rubble for A True History of the Johnstown Flood. But with this fall’s staging of The Seagull, he’s dropping the fancy production values and concentrating entirely on his actors.

Back in 1992, while he was a playwright-in-residence at Juilliard (and working on Angels in America), Kushner wrote a script titled Henry Box Brown: Political-Historical-Doggerel-Vaudeville for the students there. They never performed it, but the students at NYU’s Tisch School just did.

“A year after theatre-makers complained about the dearth of opportunities for female directors in the nation’s major theatre companies, the trend has been thoroughly reversed.”

“Poetics’ fatal flaw (to borrow an Aristotelian term) is that it’s an outsider’s view of writing. All too often Aristotle’s inventory of conventions is mimicked, as if plays were no more than the sum of their parts.”

“It has played for 45,000 performances in 42 countries, been translated into 21 languages, including Mauritian Creole, Icelandic, Japanese and Hebrew. It’s all about Victor Hugo’s story. And it’s a story that’s entirely contemporary because it’s a brilliant observation of human nature.”

“West End actor David Birrell sustained an injury to his eye during a performance in London over the weekend and was taken to hospital, with newspapers reporting that he was hurt when a faulty gun went off.”

“It’s the fourth consecutive year without a deficit for Houston’s largest resident theater company. That’s good news at a time when many arts organizations across the nation are suffering negative effects of the sluggish economy.”

“Artistic types are inherently risky people, and risk is the essential element in drama itself. But if the audience does not respond, risk can be the death knell to an organization that overextends, financially or creatively. It’s already an inherently fragile life: In just the past decade, 103 Colorado theater companies have died or gone dormant.”

“Ambitious £70m plans to redevelop the Royal National Theatre have been given the go-ahead. The South Bank theatre will be “opened up”, revealing some of the workings backstage, and will provide seating for an extra 10,000 visitors a year.”

“An increasingly bitter dispute between Sir Cameron Mackintosh and Sir Trevor Nunn is threatening to overshadow tonight’s celebrations to mark the show’s 25th anniversary.”