Category: theatre

“Traveling Jewish Theatre has surmounted the first of three financial hurdles it had set for itself this summer – raising $100,000 from its supporters by June 30 – and appears to be on track to meet the rest. A small company with a large national reputation, TJT has never been on firm financial footing.”

“It used to be the norm that children would automatically go to the theatre at school. There used to be a time when that would be a child’s first experience of theatre. There are still some theatre groups that go into schools, but they are becoming rarer. An increasingly restrictive national curriculum puts teachers under more pressure than ever. That, together with the red tape over school trips, makes it harder for children to experience theatre.”

The recipients of the “Next Generation” grants are composers in their 20s and 30s whom Signature identified as songwriters of considerable potential and who already have had their work produced or recorded.

The actors’ union and Broadway theater producers reached a tentative agreement for a new contract Wednesday, averting the possibility of a strike such as the one that shut down Broadway for almost three weeks in November.

There should be no problem identifying a writer as black, but identifying a play as “black” (as in “black theatre company” and the like) seems to suggest exclusion, in the same way as “disabled theatre company” almost appears to start with special pleading, each modification seeming to enforce the idea that theatre companies are, unless otherwise stated, white and able-bodied.

“City officials fired Palo Alto Children’s Theatre Director Pat Briggs on Monday, her attorney said. Effective immediately, the decision ends Briggs’ 47-year career as the theater’s top official.”

If film and TV producers get tax incentives to make their product in Gotham, why not legit producers?

“Could the theater have been saved? Do theaters have a natural life cycle, as some in the company have suggested? Is this closing an anomaly, or a cautionary tale with implications for other arts groups?”

“The theater’s family businesses stretch well beyond those who put on the shows. Name a trade tangentially related to the stage, and you can find its version of the Booth clan. Here are a few.”

“In the midst of another artistically successful season, with box office figures just about matching expectation, the Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theatre has seen the recent mass defection of the five-person executive committee and another half-dozen members of the board of directors.”