Category: theatre

“With the exception of about a dozen jokes (nearly all of which were pulled verbatim from the film) and an Act II showstopper, the final product has a shockingly lackadaisical, dashed-off quality that no amount of whiz-bang stagecraft can conceal.”

Broadway’s stagehands union got strike authorization Thursday night, and a walkout not appears likely. “If the stagehands do walk out, it will be the second time in less than five years that much of Broadway has been shut down by a strike.”

Minneapolis’s Tony award-winning Theatre de la Jeune Lune is in serious trouble, running a $1m deficit and facing staff cuts and a reduced performance schedule. “Jeune Lune did not publicize a full 2007-08 season of plays and operas. Instead, it is offering fewer works, each announced individually.”

Broadway audiences have become quite used to seeing dazzling special effects on stage. But live theatre isn’t like the movies – someone actually has to make sure that all those stunning effects work seamlessly every single night. Enter Sam Ellis, the go-to guy for achieving the impossible.

“What is the Royal Court for in the modern world? Its monopoly on new writing has long been challenged by rival venues. So how, in a crowded market, does the Royal Court establish its unique identity?”

“Theatre and poetry are kissing cousins. Theatre, it seems to me, is a deeply poetic art, and poetry is profoundly theatrical. They are crucially and profoundly different, and yet there is much in each art form that can be learned from the other.”

“Twain arrives on the Great White Way – nearly a century after his demise – with the art-world comedy Is He Dead?. The lost 1898 work was unearthed by a Twain scholar five years ago and has been extensively rewritten for a $2.4 million production.”

“There’s always been a lot of great stuff in Chicago, But I think the difference now is that we’re better able to get people in from out of town to see it. More and more people are identifying Chicago as the place that generates work.”

“In a time when we are saturated by political messages I think theatre needs to realise that the form in which we say something can be as political as what it is that’s being said. And this is where theatre can be a more effective vehicle for change than film or television.”

Dirty Dancing, is a “1987 movie so beloved you almost wonder if an entire generation of females was given a VHS copy of it during their teen years with a label saying, ‘Watch this until it wears out or imprints itself permanently on your brain’.” Now the movie is coming to the stage…