Category: theatre

A theatre company whose artistic director “generated an outcry” by choosing only one woman director for its 2010 season “is devoting its annual industry forum to a discussion about the absence of women in key creative roles in Australian theatre. It has pulled together a panel of women, none of whom is in a key decision-making position.”

“West London’s Bush Theatre has this week launched a pioneering social networking website which allows playwrights to post their work online for producers and directors to read and commission.”

The prominent regional theatre “is opening its house to an outside production by another Orange County theater. … David Emmes, South Coast’s producing artistic director, sees the run as a ‘pilot project’ that could lead to further imports of shows mounted by the county’s small theaters.”

The decision to close Sunday rather than Jan. 3 “underscores the fact that while big-name tuners and star-vehicle plays can count on an influx of tourist biz to boost sales during holiday frames, many plays (as well as medium-range musicals) can get left out of the cold.” Stars Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles have not “proven a major draw for playgoing auds.”

“When George Bernard Shaw died after falling off a ladder while pruning an apple tree at age 94 in 1950, he had finished five of six scenes of what would be his last play. Nearly 60 years later, a New York theater group will offer not one but five [newly-written] endings to that play, Why She Would Not.”

“Three years after it abruptly shut down with more than $4 million in debt, Miami’s historic Coconut Grove Playhouse has a new operator — the award-winning GableStage and its producing artistic director, Joseph Adler — and plans to build a new theater.”

“Unlike adult audiences, children come with no expectation of what they’re about to see. That makes for a deliciously free space in which to create work, in which innovation, experimentation and risk can thrive.”

Timberlake Wertenbaker, whose new play, “The Line,” got mixed reviews, “believes that the actors were not given a fair crack of the whip because many of the critics had spent the day being liberally wined and dined at the Evening Standard theatre awards – a four-hour affair … that involved a champagne reception followed by lunch and as much wine as they wanted to drink.”

“With luck,” Rhode Island theatre owner William Hanney “will offer a road map for other struggling arts organizations in Massachusetts, injecting some business savvy into enterprises that suffered from an excess of vision and a deficit of common sense.”

John P. Connolly has left the union “four months before the end of his term. Longtime Equity officer Carol Waaser, who had been set to retire in February, has assumed the role of acting exec director, serving in the post until a new exec director is selected next year.”