Category: theatre

Katori “Hall, the author of that Broadway-bound play, ‘The Mountaintop,’ called this a time of renaissance for black playwrights, with more [of] their plays produced and acclaimed. ‘Still, there are new voices that need to be cultivated and supported,’ she said[.] ‘These mainstream theaters tend to latch on to one of us.'”

When Mackintosh decided to produce a 25th-anniversary touring production of the blockbuster musical, he bypassed Nunn (who directed the original production) entirely in favor of two younger directors. Mackintosh says he wanted “a new production that reflected the contemporary appeal of the musical today”; Nunn insists that the touring show is not a “new production” at all, but rather a slight adaptation of his work.

The star of the TV series The X-Files and Californication did his only theater work early in his career, in the small-scale “showcase” plays whose actors are lucky if they get paid enough for a taxi ride home. (He describes the shows as “Not professional. Very unprofessional.”) Now MCC Theater in New York has cast Duchovny in the lead of Neil LaBute’s new play, The Break of Noon, which opens this fall.

Okay, it’s more like a circus tour, crossed with IMAX. “As the opening of what the producers hope will be a 20-month-long U.S. run – beginning with a stay of several months [in San Francisco] – a visually dazzling, London-born production of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan opened in May in a round white tent … [with] a circular, convex video screen” on its ceiling.

“We are familiar with storms in Shakespeare, and Ibsen was fond of a near-unstageable disaster direction or two – see ‘the avalanche buries him, filling the whole valley’ from Brand. But how do writers and directors stage a response to contemporary natural disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina?”

“NYMF had altered its contract with participants this year to guarantee the festival 2 percent of the applicant and author’s gross ‘on all income received from the play in excess of $20,000 over 10 years.’ The Dramatists Guild complained that such rights exceeded what NYMF was entitled to as a nonproducing partner.”

“The production, which will be directed by David Esbjornson, marks the first time that Alfred Uhry’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1987 play will receive a Broadway staging.” Opening is set for October.

“Artistic success has never been Harlem Stage’s problem. … But financially, the group, incorporated as a nonprofit in 1983, sometimes struggled. By the end of the 2009 season, its accumulated deficit stood at $737,000.” Rejecting advice to scale back, the organization’s director cut her budget but expanded programming, fundraising and artistic partnerships. It all worked.

“Venues participating in Arts Council England’s A Night Less Ordinary scheme can continue to offer free tickets to under-26 year olds until next March, despite the government’s announcement that the scheme is to be ‘curtailed’.”

“Cohen spent six years as director of new play development at Hartford Stage,” while his predecessor at the Playwrights’ Center transformed that institution “from an organization with a local focus on developing scripts into one that invites national writers to have their work staged in the Twin Cities.”