Category: theatre

A polite crowd of about a dozen future service dogs attended an August performance at Ontario’s Stratford Festival as part of their training. While a silent curtain call might disappoint actors, the dogs’ spellbound stillness is a great sign for their future handlers. – CNN

Wait, what? “In the first act, the principal presides over a ‘Community Activated Conversation’ with parents (also known as a Facebook Live chat) to talk about an outbreak of mumps. The conversation does not go well. ‘We’re all threatened by your ANTI-SCIENCE DEATH CULT,’ one parent offers. ‘Do what you want,”’comes the reply, ‘just keep your POISON off my kids.'” – The New York Times

The reports are to the BBC and other media, and to an actors’ union as well, but not to police. A lot of the harassment takes place on the Royal Mile as women flyer for their or their companies’ shows. And this is just disgusting on the reviewers’ part: “Another woman said many like her felt pressured into putting up with the unacceptable behaviour of show reviewers – who can make a great difference in getting more people to watch their performances.” – BBC

“As a recent graduate with a BFA in acting, I could have been stuck lip-synching to Buddy Holly at an amusement park or being cast as a Native American in a problematic outdoor drama in Chillicothe, Ohio. But here I was doing something respectable; noble, even.” Jeremy D. Larson recalls the three-hour load-ins for 8 a.m. shows. The flu passed from cast member to cast member when no one could sit out a show. The drink and drugs. The streaking. And the time they made the mistake of uttering the title of The Scottish Play out loud – The Outline

“Given the trend over the last few years to use comedy as therapy, to use laughter to counterpoint pain, a complicated subject like abortion is no less likely to be a topic for comedy than mental health, toxic masculinity or sexual abuse. … [And] in the face of [a wave of restrictionist] legislation, comedy is being used as a weapon.” – BBC

There are still transformiste cabarets, with what might be called female impersonators (talk about old-school) lip-synching impressions of famous chanteuses for an audience little different from the one at the Moulin Rouge. There’s also a booming new RuPaul’s Drag Race-influenced scene of drag queens (and kings) who invent their own characters — and, writes Laura Cappelle, “the joie de vivre at most events I attended was practically un-Parisian, with no neutral colors or existential gloom in sight.” – The New York Times

“I understand that this is a live-theater town. Parents move to this school district just to get their kids in front of a director to potentially get cast as Meg. The JV boys haven’t had new uniforms in 10 years and yet the school spends $250,000 on dance training for Newsies. Football has value—it’s an outlet for so many misunderstood kids, and to see it constantly pushed to the side like this is disheartening.” – The Onion

Nottage is the only woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice: for Sweat and Ruined. The former reached Broadway, while the latter – a story about women in war-torn Congo – played a sustained Off-Broadway run. As a result of where they were first staged, the plays have had somewhat different lives after their New York engagements. – The Stage