Category: theatre

In Florida, Plantation’s Mosaic Theatre has pulled the play “My Name is Rachel Corrie” from its schedule. Mosaic’s board of directors agreed to drop the play after phone calls, e-mails and comments on a special Rachel Corrie blog — which has now been removed from the company’s website — made it clear that an impassioned, vocal minority strongly objected to the play.

Brian Logan argues that Sam Mendes, who will bring classic plays to both sides of the pond with the BAM-Old Vic Bridge Project, is wrong to believe that such dramas are underserved. “Uniquely, in theatre, old is the default and new is seen as risky. The idea is perpetuated that audiences don’t want to see new plays (although they never seem to struggle with new films or new TV). But I’d say directors are more to blame – they prefer classics because they get to demonstrate their interpretative genius.”

“Grow up, Americans. That’s one theme of the 31st Humana Festival of New American Plays, which invited critics and industry people to Kentucky’s state theater, the Actors Theater of Louisville, last weekend for its annual drama marathon. The event is as ebullient as it is exhausting.” Nonetheless, in Philip Boroff’s estimation, “The Kentucky Derby of American theater didn’t produce any clear commercial contenders this edition….”

“As the group’s name makes plain, Alcoholics Anonymous members do not hang neon signs outside their church-basement meetings. The group never, according to its own literature, ‘endorses, supports’ or ‘becomes affiliated with’ anything.” So if you’re marketing “Bill W. and Dr. Bob,” an Off-Broadway play about the founders of A.A., how do you reach your audience?

“The Brooklyn Academy of Music, in its first foray into producing plays in two decades, has announced a three-year joint venture with the director Sam Mendes and the Old Vic theater company in London to produce two plays a year, which will run in repertory for limited engagements on both sides of the Atlantic.”

“Video is often used as a sophisticated set element or backdrop. But it’s flat, and no other element onstage is flat. Here we’re trying to make all elements fully dimensional — to manipulate time, light and image the same way I would manipulate clay as a sculptor.”

“The curtain has come down for the last time on the vast space at the heart of the RST – perched right on the banks of the River Avon and just a few hundred yards from the grave of the bard himself – as it prepares for a £100m rebuilding programme. While the theatre world generally acknowledges that the 1930s Art Deco building needs updating, there will be many a nostalgic tear shed at what is the end of an era.”

John Lahr: “Joan Didion is not an unreliable narrator; on the contrary, she is a scrupulous, obsessive observer of the delirium that sometimes makes her act unreliably. As a result, there is no dramatic irony or tension in the theatrical exchange; there is only narration.”

“Live Nation’s ‘theatrical business assets’ have changed names more often than P. Diddy. They started 25 years ago as a division of a pioneering company called Pace Management, which was bought in 1997 by an aggressively acquisitive company called SFX Entertainment, which was in turn bought by the colossal public company Clear Channel, which then spun off all its live entertainment business as Live Nation, also a public company. What that company grew into over those 25 years — and what is now on the auction block — includes the country’s largest subscription series for touring theatrical performances…”

As far as getting attention goes, it doesn’t hurt if your theatre company is led by a famous movie actor. “Few would argue the appeal of an A-list name when it comes to selling tickets, although most of the actors maintain a relatively low profile — their names are no bigger on marquees than those of their fellow company members.” But ultimately, of course, the work has to speak for itself.