Category: theatre

“Two prominent Canadian playwrights – Florence Gibson and Brad Fraser – are protesting against the Canadian Stage Company’s recent decision to suspend its play-development program… The letters come against a backdrop of deepening crisis for the 20-year-old company, the largest regional theatre in the country.”

“A year after a much-criticized decision to cut in half its free Shakespeare production on Boston Common, the Citi Performing Arts Center announced today it will restore some of the lost shows, and travel to Springfield for three performances.”

” Their performances are forbidden by Belarus’s restrictive regime, which controls every aspect of life in the country, in a manner that has barely changed since the days when it was part of the Soviet Union. So the Free Theatre has to keep one step ahead of the authorities.”

The 5kw hydrogen fuel source, “which operates almost silently and produces nothing but electricity and clean water, will run the theatre’s cafe-bar and selected main house productions. It has been installed in the foyer of the theatre, accompanied by displays describing the benefits and challenges of the new technology.”

A musical stage version of the hit film franchise, Shrek, is scheduled to open on Broadway this fall after a summer tryout in Seattle. But casting the two lead characters is apparently quite a challenge – producers have yet to find a pair of actors who can both fit the roles of Shrek and Donkey physically, and reproduce the onscreen chemistry of Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy.

“Is live theater still relevant in a society where computer users can create high-quality video and distribute it almost instantly via the web?” Two Seattle critics have been debating the issue, and a new area production titled “How Theater Failed America” is more grist for the mill.

The National Council of Jewish Women Seattle office tried to advertise their show in the paper. “Much to the group’s chagrin, the Times declined to run it unless the sponsors altered the artwork — which they refused to do. ‘The artwork was something we didn’t feel was appropriate for our audience’.”

Mike Daisy’s new monologue “begins in high dudgeon, as Daisey cozily insists we all know why American theater is, in his view, abjectly failing. It’s not the scant federal arts funding that’s to blame, nor the trend for techno-tainment via iPod and laptop, nor even the fault of critics…”

Citing “irreconcilable artistic points of view” among the key collaborators, the Goodman Theatre has cancelled its upcoming summer production of the musical “The Boys are Coming Home.”

“With the purchase, Key Brand acquired Broadway Across America, the presenting organization that began booking shows at the Music Hall last fall. Key Brand’s new assets also include eight theaters in North America owned or managed by Broadway Across America and Broadway Across Canada and investments in 13 current and upcoming Broadway shows and eight touring productions in the U.S.”