Category: theatre

Jacqueline Moscou, artistic director of the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center, has been placed on paid leave. Officials say that a “fact-finding investigation” is ongoing. Details aren’t being released, but some at the center are reported to be quite upset by Moscou’s removal.

“Broadway is bracing for a $135 million loss in ticket sales if the strike isn’t settled soon – and shows that were already on the brink may close even sooner… And if it continues, the most lucrative time of year for Broadway may be squandered.”

There are actually still eight shows running on Broadway, despite the stagehands’ strike. But Caryn James says the problem with what remains is that it’s all puffery and movie-based musical dreck. “Serious drama and its chance to make a powerful return to Broadway may be suffering.”

“Yes, we’ve inherited a working definition of ‘William Shakespeare,’ but no one can pin it to an individual in Elizabethan England with absolute certainty.”

“Although there were significant early concerns about dark theaters and too many venues in the same hands, Broadway in Chicago has recently been a rip-roaring success.”

“If the publication of his modest volume fills the annual Shakespeare quota and prevents another deranged academic from printing proof positive that Shakespeare’s plays were written posthumously by Geoffrey Chaucer, then more power to Bill Bryson.”

“The city comptroller’s office estimates that lost revenue from disappearing ticket sales, shopping, dining, and other theater-related activities, is costing the city roughly $2 million a day.”

Limited-run plays. “The audience for a non-musical comedy or drama has shrunk to such marginal proportions that producers of straight plays almost never book big Broadway houses anymore for the traditional open-ended run.”

Havel insists the work is not autobiographical and says he began working on the five-act play back in the 1980s.

“The new stage scions, though, profess a desire to prove themselves independently and avoid charges of nepotism, which isn’t the easiest matter in the small world of the theater.”