Category: theatre

“Atwood, 67, has written 11 novels. The Blind Assassin won her the Booker in 2005, her fourth nomination. She has published some 40 books as a poet, children’s writer and essayist. Many of her novels have become plays, from her first, The Edible Woman (1969), to her most famous, the postapocalyptic The Handmaid’s Tale, which Harold Pinter also adapted for a 1990 film and which even became an opera by the Danish composer Poul Ruders. Now Atwood’s first play will be seen from July 27, when her adaptation of her own The Penelopiad begins in Stratford. Can she succeed where Dickens and Eliot did not?”

Coming off of several record box office years on Broadway, producers and stagehands are negotiating a new contract. “Producers want to rewrite provisions that they say inflate the price of capitalizing and running shows by at least 15 percent. Bruce Cohen, a spokesman for Local 1, declined to comment on specifics of the negotiations. However, stagehands have insisted that they are determined to protect terms of the contract that were hard-won during previous negotiations.”

Minneapolis’s Guthrie Theater is considering suspending a series devoted to diverse productions from around the world, if it cannot find a dedicated funding source for the presentations. “Since moving into [its] new three-stage complex last year, the theater has presented only one event under the program,” and the director of the series has just been moved out of his full time position and into a consultant role.

The aborted run of Tony-winning musical Grey Gardens on Broadway has some of the show’s stars fuming, and the husband-and-wife team of producers are taking the brunt of the anger. “Production sources describe them as dilettantes who spent lavishly on parties and gifts but were clueless about marketing and advertising. Sources say they ignored the advice of theater professionals (some of whom were fired during the run of the show) and alienated not only their leading lady but also most of the creative team.”

Lately, curtain calls in London’s West End have been getting shorter and shorter. “What difference does it make, I can hear sceptics grumbling, how long the curtain call lasts? Surely the luvvies deserve a quick clap or two and then off to the pub. But such an attitude misunderstands how essential the bows are as a shared act of closure. Don’t believe me?”

“The Stratford Festival of Canada is restoring the word Shakespeare to its name in a bid to cement its image as North America’s leading classical repertory theatre. Beginning in November, the theatre festival in the southwestern Ontario town of Stratford will be known as the Stratford Shakespeare Festival.”

Minneapolis’ Guthrie Theatre saw its budget rise 30 percent this season. “The Guthrie met that challenge by increasing the number of performances among three stages (and Dowling said he will add 90 more performances in the next year) and by fundraising. Ticket income rose 26 percent, to $10 million, while contributions shot up 59 percent, to about $8.5 million.”

Pasadena Playhouse artistic director Sheldon Epps has won a $125,000 Leadership Award from the James Irvine Foundation. “The citation noted that Epps, ‘one of the few African American artistic directors of a major regional theater in the country,’ has succeeded since 1997 in engineering a ‘remarkable renaissance’ in which the Pasadena Playhouse has increased its audience while diversifying it by age and race.”

The increasingly important role of cast albums as marketing tools–both for musicals that are currently on the boards and those hoping for post-Broadway runs–spurred Kurt Deutsch to devise a new approach to financing Original Cast Recordings, which often cost between $350,000 and $400,000 to produce.

“If any actress of her generation seemed fated to play Momma Rose, the juggernaut of a stage mother in the musical ‘Gypsy,’ it was Patti LuPone, the juggernaut of a Broadway star.” And yet, writes Ben Brantley, LuPone doesn’t quite seem to fit the role in a huge new Broadway revival.