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THEATRE

Plagued By Internal Turmoil, American Shakespeare Center Cancels Fall Season

"(With) the Staunton, Va.-based troupe, known for its Elizabethan-style, no-frills approach to the classics, … convulsed by defections and division, it has abruptly canceled its entire fall slate of in-person productions." - MSN (The Washington Post)

San Jose Theatre Posts All-White Cast, Apologizes, Then Cancels

In attempting to defend itself, San Jose Playhousemade more perceived mistakes, including posting, then deleting, a note that was meant to be private; as well as by recasting one actor with multiple others. That only further inflamed opposition. - San Francisco Chronicle

After COVID: NYC Artists Testify About The State Of Things

“The illusion of reopening is that we’re back where we were in February of 2020. The reality is that in the meantime, there’s been incredible damage that has happened.” - New York Theatre

Playwright Jeremy O. Harris Withdraws “Slave Play” From L.A. Run

The 12-time-Tony-nominated play was to open in February at the Center Theater Group's Mark Taper Forum. But the CTG has only one play by a woman in its entire season; in response, Harris suggests filling his slot a work by a female playwright. - Yahoo! (Los Angeles Times)

25-Year-Old New Play Incubator Closes

According to a press release, the decision to shutter the 27-year-old play development mainstay was a “unanimous yet painful conclusion” of the organization’s board after “many long months of responding to pandemic-related crises and seeking paths to sustainability.” - American Theatre

Pondering Masks As Theaters Reopen And Theater Workers Meet Their Colleagues Again

Playwright Sarah Ruhl: "To ask 'How are you?' no longer felt like small talk. We relied on our eyes above our masks to make connections. … If actors have always been avatars for what we cannot express, they seemed even more so now." - The New York Times

As Six Reopens On Broadway, Who’s It For?

The hip, fannish crowd is almost the same as it was at shutdown, with a large fillip of relief joining the giddy thrills. "The color pours down your eye holes right into your serotonin receptors — all that warmth without heat triggers something deep in your lizard brain." - Vulture

Aladdin, Finally Back On Broadway, Halts For Two Weeks After Breakthrough Cases Emerge

"After only one show, Aladdin was paused again because COVID-19 cases were detected within the company." Testing allowed the show to resume for one more performance before multiple new positive tests led to a two-week shutdown. - CBS

He Acts And Directs In Four Languages. Actors Say He’s Gentle To A Fault. He’s Taking Over The Avignon Festival.

Says Tiago Rodrigues, who's coming to Avignon from Portugal's Teatro Nacional, "I really love to see what happens to a play when you did it in one language, and then you do it in another. … I've visited a lot of embassies in Portugal." - The New York Times

Are Theatre Critics Being Too Kind?

Emerging from its forced hibernation for live performance, theater appears to be in trouble, so our compassionate reviewers/publicists/reporters feel duty bound to come to the rescue. The rah-rah is uninhibited: troupes must be supported... - Arts Fuse

Drama League’s Directors Project To Get Multimillion-Dollar Overhaul

"The broadened Directors Project will offer fellowships for early-stage directors, programs to help mid-career theater directors transition into film and television, and assistantships for young BIPOC creatives to shadow established BIPOC directors." - Variety

Assessing The Pause On Broadway

"I always say the pandemic was the universe telling everyone to go to their room and think about what they’ve done. And while we’ve been in this season, it’s gifted—at least for me, it’s gifted me the opportunity to truly reflect on the why I wanted to do this in the first place." -NonProfit Quarterly

The New Hotness In Theater Set Design? Glass Boxes

"Even before COVID-19, many ambitious productions had been taking place … in elaborately engineered glass cubes that evoke high Modernism. … There wouldn't seem to be a more flagrant violation of dramatic immediacy. And yet the design is, as of late, ubiquitous." - T — The New York Times Style Magazine

This Year’s Tony Awards Show Was In A Difficult And Delicate Position

Helen Shaw: "Looking back while looking forward was the impossible job of this year's (ceremony). Instead of razzle-dazzling us, the host Audra McDonald (and, in the second half, Leslie Odom Jr.) had the job of surveying the pandemic wreckage, all of it still piling up." - Vulture

A Tonys Ceremony Full Of Apprehension

What you had all night was a temporal mash-up: Broadway’s past jockeying for space with Broadway’s future — a future that at the moment looks frightfully uncertain. - Washington Post

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