Category: theatre

“British playwright Chloë Moss has won the 2009 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for This Wide Night. A sympathetic portrait of imprisoned women, their friendships formed in confinement and their struggles to start life anew upon release, the play premiered at London’s Soho Theatre and toured regionally in the United Kingdom — including performances at four women’s prisons.”

“After a flap that raised the ire of the gay community and ruffled feathers across the Newport Beach campus, drama students will be allowed to stage a production of ‘Rent,’ a musical about struggling artists in New York City.”

“Kath Mainland, newly appointed chief executive of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, has said the body must put the ticketing woes of last year behind it and vowed to keep the festival as an open-access event for performers.”

“National Theatre associate director Tom Morris has been appointed as the next artistic director of the troubled Bristol Old Vic as it gears up to full reopening over the next year. In the post, which has been vacant since May 2007 when Simon Reade resigned prior to the regional playhouse’s shock closure that August, Morris will be reunited with his former colleague Emma Stenning, who has been appointed as Bristol’s executive director.”

“The economy has claimed another play: Center Theatre Group is postponing until next year Martin McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore, part of its 2009 season at the Mark Taper Forum. Rather than name a show to take its place, the Taper will go dark after David Mamet’s Oleanna closes in July.”

For two years, at one matinee performance of each production, the Theatre @ Boston Court gave audience members “an envelope on the way in, to be returned after the show with whatever payment seemed a fair value for the experience.” But they started getting too many empty envelopes, so tickets to the matinee will now have an “economic stimulus” price of $5 each.

“The Baltimore Theatre Project is teetering even more on the brink than usual. Buffeted by the grim economy, an official at Baltimore’s premier venue for cutting-edge productions is hinting for the first time that the theater might be in danger of shutting its doors in the fall.” The company “always has lived hand-to-mouth, so even a relatively small drop in revenues has big consequences.”

“The names on Broadway marquees this season read like homework for a seminar in high-flown dramaturgy. … Do producers think theatergoers have been given brain transplants? Not really. Broadway is just as cynical as it always was. In part, this wave of intellectualism is a reflection of the fact that tourist business is down.” It’s theatre for New Yorkers — and it comes without the expense of paying an orchestra or a living playwright.

“For 25 years, the company has functioned on a parity pay policy. From the bar and box-office staff to the general manager and artistic director, everyone receives just over $25 an hour. For full-time employees, that means an annual salary of $52,156.”

“Newspapers are fading away, and the critics don’t know where they are headed next. There really can’t even be a conversation about criticism right now, period, until there are no more newspapers. The truth is that print media is going away, and in almost every city, word of mouth now really rules the day.”