Category: theatre

“Tickets for a six-performance run of Shakespeare’s King Lear, starring British actor Ian McKellen, at UCLA in Los Angeles are fetching as much as $1,700 online.”

“Christopher Ashley officially took over as artistic director of [San Diego’s] La Jolla Playhouse Oct. 2. And he’s hit the ground running,” announcing three shows that will play in his first season and beginning the process of charting a new direction for the theater.

Plays and musicals focusing on gay culture have been a part of the theatre world for decades. But the very nature of the subject matter means that such plays tend to be products of a specific era, and even a few years on, they can seem unfamiliar and dated. “A farce set in a gay bathhouse where the hero is hiding from a trash-talking Mafioso was probably a lot funnier before… AIDS and The Sopranos.”

“With contract negotiations between producers and stagehands at a standstill, the union representing almost all of the stagehands on Broadway yesterday scheduled a strike vote for Oct. 21… Local One has never called a strike on Broadway, and a strike vote does not necessarily lead to a strike. The union decided to call a vote because producers have been contemplating a plan to impose the terms of a new contract on the stagehands.”

Although the producers feared the barrage of stories about ‘Broadway going dark’ would depress business this weekend, ticket sales are in fact holding up pretty well.

“Cate Blanchett, due to become co-artistic director of the Sydney Theatre Company, does have famous friends. It was announced today that she has secured the services of the fashion designer Giorgio Armani as its patron. He will make a large, one-off cash donation to Australia’s pre-eminent theatre company and is also likely to collaborate on costumes for future productions.”

“These days, there seems to be only two ways to make money on a straight play on Broadway. One is to ride across-the-board raves and a clutch of awards (including the Tony and the Pulitzer) to a long, healthy run, as Proof and Doubt did. The other is to secure the services of a name star and nail him or her down for a run of anywhere from 10 to 20 weeks. Open runs of plays that lack rave reviews or multiple trophies rarely show a profit.”

“Next Thursday, the Nokia Theatre, a 7,100-seat venue billed as one of the most acoustically sophisticated spaces anywhere, will open” in downtown Los Angeles. “The Nokia is a centerpiece of the deliriously ambitious project called L.A. Live, which is nothing less than an attempt to tilt the city’s skyline to the south.” But can a single new venue, no matter how ambitious, really help to transform a city?

A lockout may be days or even hours away, but officially, the League of American Theaters & Producers is still talking to the union representing Broadway stagehands. Meetings are scheduled for this afternoon, even though an impasse appeared to have been reached Tuesday night.

The union’s latest offer “made no progress on any of the issues we have identified as crucial to these negotiations,” Charlotte St. Martin, executive director of the League of American Theaters and Producers, said in a statement. “In fact, the union’s offer has made the situation worse for all productions, particularly dramatic productions.”