Category: theatre

Tree, inspired by Elba’s 2014 “character album” Mi Mandela, is debuting this week at the Manchester International Festival before a run at London’s Young Vic, where Kwei-Armah is artistic director. The current script is by Kwei-Armah, but Tori Allen-Martin and Sarah Henley argue that they worked on a script for four years before being “pushed off” and “bullied and silenced.” Kwei-Armah claims — backed up by Elba, MIF and the Young Vic — that, following workshops, the Allen/Martin-Henley script was not “artistically viable” and that they were unwilling to meet with Kwei-Armah to “discuss the future of the show.” – The Guardian

“The production was staged by the Gogol School theatre lab during the Tavrida Festival, an annual art event organised by Russian state youth agency Rosmolodyozh. Reaction has been mixed, with some praising the audacity of the director, Ilya Romashko, and others calling it pure provocation. Given Russia’s 2013 law banning the spread of ‘gay propaganda’ among under-18s, the festival’s organisers have since issued an apology.” – BBC

Yikes: “How does a white man from New York City tell a Southern Gothic about a young girl growing up in the Depression Era South, a story inspired by the female author’s lived experience? For Sorkin, it’s easy—you just silence her voice.” – LitHub

Musicals can help young men, especially (but not only!), come out, and lord knows they’re often campy enough … but where are the happy gay musicals? Other than Bill Rauch’s happy and gay Oklahoma! at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2018, really, where exactly are they? – The Stage (UK)

Rauch, who came into the festival wanting to change the audience and the acting company demographics (and who has succeeded in the latter; the former is stickier, as he also acknowledges in the interview), says, “I have, throughout my career, been very concerned with how marginalized voices can be put at the center of the art and the discourse in our field, and throughout my years at OSF, … I have been challenged by colleagues, audiences, and guest artists.” – HowlRound

Terrence McNally’s Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune begins with noisy sex in the dark, then the lights come up on the actors getting out of bed naked. It’s always been a delicate scene to stage, and the current New York revival is the first Broadway production of any kind to use a professional intimacy coordinator. Laura Collins-Hughes talks with her — Claire Warden — and stars Audra McDonald and Michael Shannon about how they make it work. – The New York Times

Joseph Haj: “When I see artistic directors who have a five-show season directing three of the shows, I think: nobody’s that interesting, nobody. I don’t care how beautiful and thrilling a maker you are, your community deserves and wants a variety of aesthetics and voices and approaches. I don’t want a season that looks too much like me.” – HowlRound

“As if dominating movie theaters weren’t enough, Marvel is about to move into high school theater as well. The publisher has announced a partnership with theatrical publisher Samuel French to offer three one-act plays featuring Marvel characters created specifically for the high school market under the umbrella banner Marvel Spotlight.” – The Hollywood Reporter

“Liberal Democrat peer Patrick Boyle started the debate, in which he asked the government what ‘assessment they have made of the operation of the theatre market in London’ and what steps it had taken to ‘ensure theatre is accessible to as wide an audience as possible’. He used his speech to demand greater transparency from the theatre industry about where money from ticket sales went.” – The Stage