Category: theatre

“Last season included two coproductions in the region, one more than the year before. This season, at least five plays are a result of sharing by 10 theaters – with two out-of-town companies in the arrangements.”

“Nearly 40 years on from the heady days of the early 1970s, yet another new generation of political playwrights is emerging to confound the Jeremiahs. Why has such a frequently unfashionable form proved so resilient?”

Theatres should realise that women’s writing for the theatre had reached a “tipping point”, he said. “I don’t think the repertory of most theatres at the moment is reflecting what seems to be happening in terms of the most interesting new theatre,” he said.

“In response to objections from a group of disabled artists, the National Arts Centre has posted an explanation for a reference to “legless cripples” that appears in the NAC’s online promotional material for a just-opened play. But the Radical Disabled Artists Network is still waiting for an apology for language the artists consider offensive.”

Video projection has for years been used in experimental theater, notably in companies such as the Wooster Group in New York, and in Europe and in Australia. “But in terms of the mainstream theater scene – Broadway and the regular theaters – it’s really been a last-decade phenomenon.”

“Five years ago “solo show” wasn’t even marketed as a separate category at the summer New York International Fringe, the city’s biggest theater festival. In 2006 submissions of solo works jumped to 125, a 20 percent increase over the previous year.”

“Clearly trustees take the risk, and therefore must be the people to decide whether it is viable to continue,” but the financial condition of Exeter’s Northcott theatre, like the decision to put it into administration, “raises issues about the quality and expertise of the people acting as regional theatre trustees.”

“In a tight economy, playwrights have emerged as key writers for episodes that feature only one or two locations–a cost-saving device known as a ‘bottle episode.’ These episodes have become increasingly necessary as producers are told to rein in costly, multiple-location shoots.”

“The city’s largest nonprofit theater said in a bond disclosure yesterday that ‘single ticket sales for the fall season have been very strong,’ offsetting a decrease in annual subscription sales. … Contributions to the Roundabout ‘are showing across-the- board increases over the same time last year,’ the company said.”

“After transforming Wuthering Heights into a Bollywood-style musical last year … British Asian theatre company Tamasha will stage a Pakistan-set interpretation of Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba at Hampstead Theatre later this year, as part of their 21st anniversary season.”