Category: theatre

The Roundabout Theatre is reopening the 89-year-old Henry Miller’s Theater, a stamp of old Broadway on 43rd Street that will be “surrounded by the glass modernity of the new 54-story tall Bank of America Tower. The Roundabout Theater Company is in the final stages of negotiations for a 20-year lease with the Durst Organization and Bank of America, the owners of the theater, which will have around 1,000 seats.”

The stage version of Lord of the Rings, which had a fairly short and unsuccessful run in Toronto last summer, is headed to London, and producers are hoping that a number of changes will put the hugely expensive show on the right track. “Gone are the long speeches, some minor characters and one intermission. It has been trimmed, crucially, to three hours, a length designed to test neither patience nor posteriors.”

“The family of former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has forced [the Boston-area based] New Repertory Theatre to cancel a planned run next spring of a one-act play about a 1976 hostage rescue mission because it was to have been paired with the story of a pro-Palestinian American activist.”

“When August Wilson’s ‘Radio Golf’ opens tonight on Broadway in a $2-million production, investors won’t be relying solely on rave reviews to fill the Cort Theater’s 1,000 seats. In an unusually aggressive move, the producers hired five marketing firms to promote the show about an African American businessman who wants to run for mayor of Pittsburgh.” Wilson’s “plays have had mixed success on Broadway, whose nickname, the Great White Way, can sometimes be taken too literally.”

“‘Spring Awakening’ and ‘In the Heights’ tied for best musical last night at the 22nd annual Lucille Lortel Awards for outstanding achievement in Off Broadway theater. … The Lortel Awards, administered by the League of Off Broadway Theaters and Producers with the Lucille Lortel Foundation, named David Hare’s ‘Stuff Happens,’ a scathing satire about the Bush administration that was produced at the Public Theater, as the best play of the season.”

“The Coast of Utopia, by Tom Stoppard, was named Best Play of the 2006-07 season by the New York Drama Critics’ Circle, the membership announced May 7. The Best Musical award was given to Spring Awakening, which features book and lyrics by Steven Sater and music by Duncan Sheik. The late August Wilson’s Radio Golf was named Best American Play.”

“Since 1999, Jack L. Herman has been acquiring the scripts of Canadian plays, putting his own name on them, claiming copyright over them, and sometimes staging his own productions at his amateur theatre company, as well as authorizing productions of the stolen plays by other companies.”

Live Nation is America’s largest Broadway touring company. But now the company is being sold, touring Broadway seasons in many seasons are in jeopardy. Not in Pittsburgh, however, where the home team books the local season and gets the A shows…

“For most white actors today, roles of color — from the classics to some of the sensational writing that is currently being done for the theater — are not even an option for them, and I’m not sure why. For a time this idea was given the name ‘color-blind’ casting, but the only thing it seemed to be blind to was the fact that it wasn’t a two-way street; it was obviously designed to provide opportunity for minorities rather than put the best person in a role, regardless of color. I suppose this is the notion of equal opportunity rearing its fearsome head again — and if it is, can we stop using the word ‘equal’ in that phrase?”

“Online acting classes are emerging as an up-and-coming trend, spurred by the popularity of YouTube and MySpace and the wide availability of inexpensive digital video equipment.”