Category: theatre

“During its four-year collaboration with REDCAT, the Wooster Group intends to participate in a series of residencies of two weeks or more, during which time it may present works in progress as well as installation art. It will also interact with CalArts faculty and students through in-person talks and Web-based activities.”

“Theatre Royal Stratford East is to give audiences a free rein to choose its programme for the first six months of 2012, in the run up to the London Olympics. The move, which is thought to be the first time a major producing theatre has given the general public an open say about what is put on its stage for an entire season, is seen by officials at TRSE as an extension of the company’s long tradition … of being a ‘theatre of the people’.”

“Starting June 1, all American citizens will have to present a passport to enter Canada. Perhaps the same regulation should have been placed on American plays years ago. … All too often, what sizzled on Broadway fizzles here. Why does this happen? Well, if one were to oversimplify things, there are two reasons….”

“Desperate times call for desperate text messages. In a bid to attract a younger audience — well, any audience maybe — promoters of [Neil LaBute’s Broadway play ‘Reasons to be Pretty’] have introduced a texting game in which audience members are invited to rate their own attractiveness as well as the attractiveness of those seated next to them on a scale of Carrot Top to Angelina Jolie.”

When Next to Normal, a new musical about bipolar disorder, ran Off-Broadway last year, “the tone of the show was off,” says director Michael Greif. “Big moments just weren’t landing.” So the producer decided “to take an unusual step: he moved a show that had already opened in New York to an out-of-town theater (Arena Stage, in Washington) for an overhaul.”

“When it comes to manufacturing utterly ridiculous problems out of thin air, you’d have to travel miles to top the earnest folly that academics can get up to. Take, for instance, the adult supervision at the College of Staten Island, where a mildly ribald farce entitled ‘The Well of Horniness,'” by Holly Hughes, “will be staged this week by a talented senior named Robert Mahoney.”

“Not content with performing in 271 cities in 32 countries and attracting 11 million customers last year, Cirque du Soleil, the Montreal-based circus empire, will establish a permanent presence in New York City next year. … But dashed for now are the company’s plans to build a New York City space that would give it a permanent home in Manhattan.”

“Mainstream theatre has a penchant for spotting bright shiny things and appropriating them like a magpie, but it is often less generous in helping other art forms to really develop in their own right. Circus artists are striving to understand what choreographers and theatre directors may demand of them and to help the latter appreciate the real possibilities of circus – in particular, to look at the metaphor and meaning that can lie beneath the tricks.”

“Musical ‘9 to 5’ racked up 15 noms for the 54th annual Drama Desk Awards, the most of any Broadway or Off Broadway production ever nominated by the legit org. … The Broadway revival of ‘The Norman Conquests’ and the Off Broadway preem of ‘Ruined’ led the pack of plays with five mentions each.”

“The last few years have been a boom time for regional theatre buildings, but has it been a boom time for regional theatre itself? Behind the glossy new facades, there are growing concerns…. [I]f these theatres are no longer at the heart of training, and are increasingly expensive to run, do they still serve a purpose in our theatre culture?”