Category: theatre

“The four-day run of a 10-minute play later this month in Washington has raised a very large philosophical question: Where does the art stop and the politics begin? … ‘My druthers would be to critique this play dramaturgically, not politically,'” says Ari Roth, artistic director of the Jewish Community Center’s Theater J. But that’s not a realistic option right now for Caryl Churchill’s “Seven Jewish Children.”

The Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, handing out its awards for 2008, shrugged off the notion of shining the spotlight on a single artist per category. “Take the category of lead performance. They couldn’t just name one winner, they picked six. Three of the five nominees in the director category were named winners. And a trio of shows took the honors for best production (or would that be ‘one of the best productions’?).”

“Producers of the Broadway jukebox musical ‘Rock of Ages’ will offer an unusual perk starting tonight to attract audiences and loosen them up in a bad economy: in-seat alcohol service during performances. ‘Sometimes theater is perceived as something antiseptic,’ said Carl Levin, a former Morgan Stanley investment banker and a lead producer of the off-Broadway transfer. ‘We find when you have drinking, people are more likely to sing along.'”

“The Chicago production of ‘Mary Poppins’ (which is becoming the first national tour) is to feature a new song by composer George Stiles and lyricist Anthony Drewe, replacing the number ‘Temper, Temper,’ which has been seen in all the other global ‘Poppins’ productions to date.”

“There is a certain bond between playwrights. I suppose it’s because we have such a strange job: paid to put words into the mouths of people pretending to be someone else. And our shared concerns as playwrights – finding a good director, dealing with theatre managements, ducking the brickbats of critics – mean that we always have far more in common than our plays would suggest.”

“Actor and comedian Steve Martin has offered to pay for an off-campus production of his play Picasso at the Lapin Agile, which was banned from a high school because parents objected to what they called adult content.”

“Maintaining one of the largest repertory companies in the United States while staging an 11-play season on three stages lasting eight months, the festival will operate its 2009 season on a trimmed-down budget of slightly more than $24 million. That’s down from last year’s $26,689,500.”

“The business of theatre educators is to export a ‘quality product’ that will be accepted by New York headquarters. Once there, if the product is ‘lucky,’ it is plucked from the big conveyor belt and shipped to the specific theatre that needs that particular product, wherever those theatres are. Once that product is plucked and successfully consumed at its final destination, the call is communicated back to the student’s originating theatre department to create another one like him or her.”

“Vienna has a theatre museum. Warsaw has one. So do Ljubljana, Oslo, Helsinki, St Petersburg. Brisbane, Australia, for heaven’s sake, has one. But London, where the whole world comes to get its theatre fix, has been left without a showcase for its 400-year heritage of show business. How myopic is that?”

“Brian Dennehy, Robert Falls and the Goodman Theater are already planning their next stint on Broadway. A Dennehy double bill of one-acts, slated for the 2009-10 season at the Chicago regional, has been pegged by the theater as a pre-Rialto engagement.” The plays are O’Neill’s Hughie and Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape.