Category: theatre

Back in 1999, a group of high school students in Kansas discovered a reference to a little-known Polish woman who supposedly rescued 2,500 Jews from the Nazi regime during World War II. Stunned by their discovery, they dug for more information and wrote a short play about the woman, and figured that would be the end of it. Instead, the play has seen more than 200 performances worldwide, and the rescuer, freed from obscurity, has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

“The play which lured actor Richard Roxburgh from Hollywood back to the stage, has scooped the pool at the Sydney Theatre Awards. Michael Gow’s play about a playwright with writer’s block took seven awards at tonight’s ceremony in Sydney.”

“Every time I finish a play, I consider the possibility of making up a name, sticking it on the cover and sending the play off to theatres as an unsolicited manuscript. I always say I will. I never have. This, of course, is entirely about fear. I’d like to think my work has an inherent quality that will be recognised whatever name is on it, and that I’d be offered productions in all the same theatres. But then what if I slide right back down the literary ladders and receive a pile of rejection letters?”

“Over the past decade and more there have been times on my visits to Broadway when there wasn’t a single drama it seemed imperative to see. The musical appeared ubiquitous and omnipotent. So far this season, however, it is the big musicals that have disappointed, and the plays that have been winning the plaudits.”

“The Denver Center Theatre Company is no longer hoping to become a leader in American new-play development. By launching three new world-premiere plays in three consecutive weeks, it is one.”

Legit attendance in the British capital hit a record high in 2007, rising 10.3% to 13.6 million and generating ticket sales of £469,729,135 ($926.3 million).

“Shrek, the star of the blockbuster animated movies, will appear in a new musical set to premiere at Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theatre Aug. 14-Sept. 21, before moving to New York in November. The first such venture by DreamWorks, “Shrek the Musical” could set up a new Broadway rivalry, going toe to toe with Disney musicals drawn from that company’s animated films.”

Richard Zoglin knows all the critics seemed to hate Disney’s new “Little Mermaid.” But, “all in all, it was one of the most ravishing things I have ever seen on a Broadway stage. For the record, I am not a drag queen.”

“Will Ferrell has been quietly poking around Broadway, looking for a theater for a show he’s writing and will star in next fall… The Ferrell Project will be autobiographical and include anecdotes about the comedian’s work on ‘Saturday Night Live.'”

“Broadway is often a hermetic little world, and even while several new [web sites] glory in that rarefied audience, they have also arrived with the potential and purpose of bridging the gap between the obsessed and the genuinely, but not fanatically, interested.”