Category: theatre

“The financially troubled African Continuum Theatre Company has lost its new artistic director, Benny Sato Ambush, before he was to begin the job full time.”

“The Broadway theater strike has found its latest victim – travelers on JetBlue airlines have begun canceling flights to New York.”

Of the 35 shows on Broadway, all but eight were shut down. The unaffected shows, including the new musical “Young Frankenstein,” by Mel Brooks, have separate contracts with the 3,000-member union. The strike left Times Square markedly less packed with tourists Monday.

The conference of the League of American Theatres and Producers, slated to begin Wednesday in Chicago with an address by Mayor Richard M. Daley, has been postponed indefinitely due to the ongoing strike by Broadway stagehands.

“Look on the Writers Guild of America strike not as a painful crimp in your earnings potential but as a heaven-sent opportunity to return to your first love, the theater, where the writer is still king, albeit of a relatively dinky kingdom. Fate has given you another shot at artistic redemption. Don’t let it slip away.”

Staging the show at the Guthrie, director Fancesca Zambello said in a release issued by the theater, “allows us to fuse together an integral part of American culture with unique theater writers of today in the heartlands where the ‘Little House’ began its life.”

“It’s worth remembering, particularly in an age of ‘inclusion’, that most good drama is not multicultural. It’s created by exploring singular worlds, where there is no allowing for the interplay of gender, race, sexuality and class.”

“Successful theatre companies are almost always run by talented, charismatic individuals. Whatever their primary theatrical talent, their skill is in creating an environment where writers, directors, actors, designers and technicians can do their best work. To limit the pool from which these leaders might be chosen to writers, directors or actors is to miss that crucial point.”

“It’s unclear whether the labour action has already had an impact on Canadian box offices. Americans are leery of heading to Toronto’s entertainment district as it is, Karastamatis said, because of confusion over passports and fear of hassles at the border.”

“Baldly designed to rake in the dough, this latest jukebox effort provides less pleasure than one has come to meagerly expect from the form — even with a catalog that can more than hold its own against any pop-chart icon’s.”