Category: theatre

The BECTU union has requested a 5% pay increase for its members, while the Theatrical Management Association is calling for a pay freeze. With talks having broken down, the union has written all of its local representatives, asking “whether they would be willing to engage in a campaign of industrial action, up to and including strike action, to achieve an acceptable pay increase.”

The piece, to be titled Vaudeville, would be the troupe’s first attempt at a Broadway-style show; “The idea is to create a 90-minute hybrid of a Cirque circus-style show and a more traditional musical-theater production.” Cirque plans to rehearse the show in Chicago with an eye to opening in November; a run of six months at New York’s Beacon Theatre is anticipated for next year.

Here’s one of a half dozen possibilities: “Green is considered a soothing color, advantageous for someone about to go onstage or to someone who has just performed.”

“‘Suspension’ would be a decent title for describing the period of confusion and hiatus that followed the hasty and injudicious 2007 ousting of artistic director Simon Reade. […] Ambitious dreams about renovated buildings are all very well – but you need a strong and well-supported artistic director in place if they’re to come to meaningful fruition.” Such a director may just have been found.

“[W]henever I hear of any play causing protests, I rejoice. Offending the audience is part of the function of theatre, as is its ability to test the limits of freedom in general and free speech in particular. […] The play’s deliberately crude, Carry On-style of humour has also offended some… Vulgar raucousness is very much a part of the British character, however.”

“Protesters invaded the stage at London’s National Theatre to object to what they view as ‘racism’ in the new play England People Very Nice. Two men carrying placards interrupted a talk by the playwright Richard Bean for 10 minutes until removed by security. … The protesters plan to picket the sponsor of the comedy, described by the theatre as ‘a riotous journey through four waves of immigration’.”

“Anxiety kills theatre. I reckon that audiences are almost always willing to embrace risk, just as long as they are confident that they are in safe hands and have faith that the company is taking them somewhere interesting, and for good reason. … But anxiety is something else entirely….”

“Faced with a cratering economy, skittish funders and uncertain support from the state (Gov. Pawlenty proposed a 33 percent cut for the Minnesota State Arts Board in his biennial budget), theaters are being forced to shrink budgets midway through their fiscal years even as they attempt to maintain their traditional audiences and draw new patrons.”

The operators of the Foothills Theatre Company in Worcester say they need to raise $200,000 in two weeks or the theater will close.

“The city plans to close several blocks of Broadway to vehicle traffic through Times Square and Herald Square, an experiment that would turn swaths of the Great White Way into pedestrian malls” — and do what, exactly, to Broadway theatres? “A theater industry executive who was briefed on the plan this week said the reaction among Times Square business leaders was largely favorable” but noted that “one worry was whether taxis and other vehicles would have difficulty leaving people in front of theaters.”