Category: theatre

“9 to 5: The Musical includes Parton’s original score as well as 20 new songs, and stars Allison Janney, Stephanie J. Block, Megan Hilty and Marc Kudisch. It is due to open on Broadway on April 23, 2009.”

“How well prepared are young actors to succeed in a profession in which 80% earn less than £10,000 a year, and is three years at drama school still the best way to enter that profession? It’s a question worth asking when it increasingly seems that the entirely untrained can just stroll up for an audition and get a shot at stardom in a reality casting TV show.”

The Edinburgh Fringe Festival offers comedy, dance, theatre, music, “and other weird types of performance that are unclassifiable but tend to involve eastern Europeans wearing snorkel masks.”

“Building a 2,400-seat, Broadway-class theatre in downtown Salt Lake City would cost $81.5 million, according to a draft report just prepared by the city’s Downtown Theatre Action Group.”

“They used to say most actors in Colorado perform for gas money. But with the cost of fuel these days, not even that’s true anymore. Colorado has 97 theater companies, but only seven that belong to Actor’s Equity, the union that mandates minimum salaries for its actors, of whom 327 live (but not many gainfully work) in Colorado. Only about 150 people can claim to make full-time salaries in the theater here.”

“Time was when the musical was one of Hollywood’s most reliable genres. Whether adapting Broadway successes or creating original musicals for the screen, the studios pumped out tons of tune-filled films throughout the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. But sometime in the late 1960s, the audience appetite for musicals began to wane.”

“The week gave substance to the claim that the Washington area, with some 60 professional theater companies, may rank third in the country, ahead of such well-established theatrical hotbeds as San Francisco and Minneapolis-St. Paul. To hear Washingtonians tell it, it’s even closing fast on No. 2, Chicago (which itself claims to be closing fast on New York).”

[title of show] proclaims its meta nature with its very name…

The film version of the stage version of the music of ABBA is set to hit movie theaters next week, and everyone involved is hoping that Mama Mia becomes the breakout hit of the summer. But more than just lining a studio’s pockets, the film has the potential to seriously boost the profile, and tourism industry, of the tiny Greek island where it was filmed.

“David Koch, recently called the wealthiest resident of New York City, has agreed to contribute $100 million toward the renovation of the New York State Theater, which is home to the two companies. His gift will be the largest private capital donation in Lincoln Center’s history and a triumph in a period of growing economic uncertainty.”