Category: theatre

“The quirky low-budget comedy film ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ and the 1989 Laura Esquivel novel ‘Like Water for Chocolate’ are this year’s choices to be adapted as stage musicals at the annual Sundance Institute Theatre Lab at White Oak in Yulee, Fla., the institute is expected to announce on Tuesday.”

“Charlotte St. Martin earned $340,105 in salary and benefits in her second year as executive director of the Broadway League,” and while that amount reflects a 5 percent raise for her, it’s “down a third from what her predecessor, Jed Bernstein, made in his final year.”

“In the arts, the only direction ticket prices usually go is up. But Curious Theatre and the Denver Center Theatre Company are slashing their lowest ticket prices in the hope that more people, paying less money, will translate into higher attendance and, therefore, equal or greater overall revenue.”

The Phantom of the Opera, already the longest-running show in Broadway history, hits another milestone when it becomes the first Broadway show to reach the 9,000 performance mark.

“Construction on the Minnesota Shubert Center will begin this autumn, a decade after the historic theater was hoisted up on rollers and moved onto Hennepin Avenue and following a series of delays and revisions.”

When Oskar Eustis, Martha Lavey, André Bishop and other theater luminaries tried to decide who should get the Steinberg Trust’s prize for “emerging playwrights,” things got complicated. “Defining ’emerging playwright’ turned out to be like grasping Jell-O.”

“The Russian-born Spektor, whose latest alt-rock album ‘Far’ was released earlier this year, currently is writing the music for the show, collaborating with playwright Tina Landau, whose one-act play ‘Beauty’ provides the inspiration for the production.”

“In 1982, Samuel Beckett dedicated a new play, Catastrophe, to Václav Havel, then a political prisoner in Czechoslovakia, serving a four and a half year sentence for ‘subversive activities’. … When Havel was released the following year, he returned the honour by dedicating a play, Mistake, to Beckett.” The two one-acts are being produced as a double-bill in London.

“In a deal that may mean better times for two of downtown Orlando’s attractions, Sak Comedy Lab plans to move to CityArts Factory, in the heart of downtown. The arrangement is expected … to mean a steady tenant for CityArts’ struggling parent, the Downtown Arts District (DAD).”

“Broadway money will never be Hollywood money, of course. But with a hit show, a big star can do quite nicely — especially when the lifting, in a production like ‘A Steady Rain,’ isn’t especially heavy.”