Category: theatre

Théâtre du Soleil collective was started in 1964. “The Cartoucherie quickly made its own myths. People came from miles away and had to be fed. The actors had no dressing rooms so made up in public. [Founder Ariane] Mnouchkine herself took tickets at the door. Now the theatre’s food is famous in its own right, an integral part of a theatregoer’s day or evening there, and the company has swollen to 70 members spanning 22 nationalities. It tours widely, films its major productions and holds Unesco’s Picasso medal for its outstanding contribution to culture.”

LA’s comedy scene is being reinvented. “Seemingly every week brings a new night of performances in restaurants, bars and theater spaces, and with none of the rules and restrictions of the major clubs, competing for stage time has been replaced by a sense of community. As a result, the worlds of sketch, improv and stand-up are mingling like never before.”

The National Theatre of Scotland is only finishing its first year. Question: should the company get its own theatre? “What they’ve got going there is too good to be nomadic for ever. That’s not how the theatre’s ever been. The NTS is not good because it’s peripatetic, it’s good because it’s a golden age for Scottish writing, there are some brilliant directors and it’s being run extraordinarily well. It should remain flexible and it should go around a lot, but they should be given the security of a place they can call their own.”

“The administrative leader of one of the nation’s hippest theater companies will become managing director of the Cleveland Play House, the country’s oldest professional regional theater. Kevin Moore, now managing director of Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., was named on Monday to replace long time Play House managing director Dean Gladden, now at the Alley Theatre in Houston.”

Jane Krakowski is the producers’ choice to play the lead in Xanadu, the hotly anticipated new Broadway musical scheduled to open this spring. “Even with Krakowski’s name above the title, Xanadu, which will cost $5 million to produce, will be one of the riskiest ventures of the spring season.”

Sitting in his cramped High Street office, Paul Gudgin, who has run the Edinburgh Fringe for eight years said “the lack of affordable accommodation in the city was the Fringe’s Achilles Heel and by far the most difficult challenge the event needs to overcome in future years. He also called on the Fringe’s public funding to be dramatically increased, from the current level of £65,000 a year to around £300,000.”

“Pub theatres stage anything from comedies, pantomimes and musicals dreamed up by promising new writers to established works like Shakespeare and Arthur Miller in often tiny rooms. Enthusiasts say the intimate relationship between actors and the audience in confined spaces makes for an exciting experience.”

“Stanford University and the Public Theater in New York have announced a long-term partnership that includes an annual residency program at Stanford for playwrights developing work for the Public, joint commissions for one playwright a year, and three annual fellowships for Stanford undergraduates and graduates with the artistic staff of the Public.”

Paul Gudgin has resigned as director of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe after leading the institution for eight years.

“Spring Awakening” has become the surprise hit musical of the season while being hailed as tastefully erotic. “Adapted from German playwright Frank Wedekind’s then-scandalous 1891 play, ‘Spring Awakening’ looks at the angst of high school students and their sexual awakening in repressed 19th-century Germany.”