Category: theatre

“Our love of scripts is, I think, partly to do with the fact that theatre remains haunted by the spectre of English Literature and its insistence on the importance of the written word. Too often we mistakenly believe the script to lie at the heart of theatre, to be its point of origin, which it absolutely isn’t.”

It will now be called The Broadway League. “According to a news release, the new name “more aptly reflects the composition of the League’s membership,” which is not limited to theater owners and producers, but includes Broadway presenters, general managers and other Broadway industry professionals.”

“For one week at Easter every year the northern English seaside resort of Scarborough becomes one of the most important places on Britain’s theatrical map, home to the National Student Drama Festival. Founded in 1956, the festival has provided a springboard for some of the most important and high-profile figures in the theatre. Yet a recent Arts Council funding decision has thrown its future in to doubt.”

“Prodded by fiscal necessity, non-profit theaters have become ever more entrepreneurial and star-conscious; producers are taking more risks to support serious, weighty and frequently new drama. Broadway producers are even getting into the subscription business.”

Eric Rosen is the new face of Kansas City’s premier theater company: young, smart, adventurous, creatively bold with diverse artistic tastes and big plans. He’s the man who makes it possible to mention hip-hop musical and KC Rep in the same sentence and who promises to develop and stage new work — including plays by Rosen.

After reading hundreds of new plays, Actors Theatre of Louisville has chosen the six new full-length works it will produce for its 2008 Humana Festival of New American Plays, Feb. 24 through March 30.

“There are lean times ahead in regional theatre as the Arts Council considers how best to use resources in a colder financial climate. It is clear that the Arts Council is going to have to make some hard decisions regarding not just umbrella organisations and individual companies but also buildings and how they might best benefit the wider theatre ecology.”

“In the late eighties and the early nineties, theatre was almost the only form of entertainment. But with the coming of DSTV, cheap music festivals and TV soaps, theatre’s audience has been cut almost half way. ‘You cannot put a new production when the turn up is poor, it is costly’.”

“Kids actively participate in our society and our culture to a previously unprecedented degree, whether as critics, artists and video producers on their blogs and Bebo pages, or as casting directors voting for Lee Mead on Any Dream Will Do.”

A plan to set up a national indigenous theatre company has met opposition from a group of existing companies who say such an initiative would be exploitative and likely to “desecrate indigenous protocol and respect”.