Category: theatre

“[The theater’s] new executive director, Stephen Eich, said that it needs a ‘cash infusion’ of more than $1 million by year’s end to begin the coming 2010 season confident that it can improve the ‘hand to mouth’ existence it has fallen into since the economy soured.”

“Last June, Actors’ Gang artistic director Tim Robbins and his colleagues at the Culver City theater company received some paradoxical advice.” Due to the global recession, the troupe’s best bet “would be to save money by not putting on plays. A theater company that doesn’t make theater? Robbins’ none-too-subtle response gave birth to the festival title.”

“London’s Donmar Warehouse has revealed that its West End season at the Wyndham’s Theatre recorded average attendances of 98%, including 13.5% of first-time theatre bookers. … According to Donmar artistic director Michael Grandage, the season needed to play to 85% capacity to break even.”

“The producers canceled a Sunday matinee so that the cast and crew could attend and perform at a march for gay rights in Washington on Oct. 11. That unusual — and expensive — decision to skip a popular weekend performance at the beginning of the theater season originated with the show’s star, Gavin Creel.”

“[T]here is some hope out there for the business we call show. Our very own Steppenwolf Theatre Company has been named on of the top 15 places to work by the Wall Street Journal‘s Top Small Workplaces 2009.”

“It would be foolish to argue against Mamet’s genius.” But do his plays still measure up?

“Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig have become the latest actors to tackle the toughest theatrical challenge of all: the mobile phone that simply won’t shut up.” As they told the culprit to make the ringing stop, the confrontation was caught on video.

Stephen Eich, a veteran of the Steppenwolf Theatre and the Geffen Playhouse, likened his first weeks as executive director of the Pasadena Playhouse to “lifting rocks and finding another problem under each one.” The theatre’s money troubles are worse than he’d expected.

The Broadway show’s winning campaign “involved a retelling of the show’s narrative in tweets attributed to the tuner’s characters (as penned by book writer Brian Yorkey).”