Category: theatre

Director Tom Morris’s Juliet and Her Romeo, planned for next spring at the Bristol Old Vic, “uses Shakespeare’s text, but casts the lovers in their 80s, with their anxious children, not their parents, seeking to prevent an imprudent and costly match.”

In an uncommon agreement with the producers of “A Steady Rain,” the Shubert Organization will invest in their projects and guarantee them a Shubert house. The deal gives the producers “a strong advantage on the Main Stem, where real estate is a hot commodity and numerous incoming productions vie for a limited number of available theaters.”

“The National Theatre has confirmed the initial details of its £50 million plan to modernise its Grade II-listed London home. The scheme, designed by architects Haworth Tompkins, will aim to improve the ‘transparency’ of the building.”

“While hardship will not necessarily produce better art, standing outside official patronage might at least encourage artists to kick against the establishment rather than adorn it. The art we have enjoyed over the last 12 years has been wealthy, and wealthy art is supine.”

“The company’s move last season from the tiny 50-seat Capitol Hill Arts Workshop (a.k.a. CHAW) to the much larger Sprenger Theater in the Atlas Performing Arts Center on H Street NE proved more than its budget could handle.”

“Chicago-based dramatist Marisa Wegrzyn has won the 2009 Wasserstein Prize for her new play, Hickorydickory.” The award, which also includes a reading at New York’s Second Stage Theater, is given “for an outstanding script by a young woman who has not yet received national attention.”

Synchronicity Performance Group planned an extremely tight budget for 2009-10, and the company couldn’t sustain the loss it took on its children’s play Bunnicula, about a vampire rabbit. “As a result, Synchronicity has cancelled the last two shows of its season: Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone and The Brand New Kid, a family show.”

“With a $1.25 million policy in force and just an $85,000 mortgage on the building,” the owner of the Pocono Playhouse, which burned down last month, “could be in line for a million-dollar payout.” It wouldn’t be the first time Ralph Miller cashed a big check after a fire at one of his theaters.

“The theater’s creators and overseers, the Mayfair Community Development Corporation, announced over the weekend in letters to about 700 subscribers that a state budget cut left the agency with no money to create productions from scratch.” It will go dark after its current production closes next month.

“The only thing that could keep me alert through three hours of Brecht – however good the production – on a Monday evening is the fact that I could topple 20 feet if I nodded off. Theatre demands effort from the audience, and by God, the West End makes us work.” But will audiences keep putting up with the toil the venues exact?