The 19th century brought about the popularization of the proscenium arch: an architectural feature that effectively separates the audience from the actors on stage. Alongside this structural shift, a change in lighting also reinforced the separation between audience and performers. - The Conversation
It's not a direct adaptation: "Miranda and his co-writer Steven Levenson (Dear Evan Hansen) have added music from Larson's other shows, tweaked some of the character arcs and even removed an entire subplot about Twinkies." - BBC
Yes, the actor, the writer, and the playwright/politician/doyenne all experimented with LSD in the 1950s, when it was legal. They never did it together, though — that was the idea of writer-director James Lapine, who's rather familiar with hallucinogens himself. - The New York Times
First of all, when her neighborhood submitted a bid to be London's Borough of Culture, she agreed to participate, thinking it wouldn't win. Then it did. So she had to come up with an idea. And she did — whereupon something entirely different (a play) was announced. - BBC
It's a musical experiment that questions the long-accepted rules of theatermaking and theatergoing, established and upheld before the pandemic. For example, a percentage of the masked audience traverses a dance floor, because why must they all be seated? - Los Angeles Times
The Method's two main teachers in America, Stella Adler and Sanford Meisner, said in 1979 that they doubted it would outlive them. Well, it's still here. Neighborhood Playhouse School director Pamela Kareman and Stella Adler Studio president Tom Oppenheim talk about the Method's present and future. - American Theatre
Hank Morris was a serious player until then-New York state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo prosecuted him. His new show, A Turtle on a Fence Post, "is not journalism. It's ... easier to swallow, because the audience is given clear permission to leave believing whatever they want." - Columbia Journalism Review
Fewer people than back in The Time Before will be able to swing by the theater or concert hall after leaving the office. Will they come in from home? In no American city does the question loom larger than in San Francisco. - The New York Times
No, La MaMa in New York didn't burn down. But La Mama in Melbourne did. Founded in 1969 and an important venue for developing new Australian plays, La Mama was destroyed by fire in 2018, just short of its 50th anniversary. Here's how it got rebuilt. - ArtsHub (Australia)
Patrons attending A Christmas Carol were seated and ready for the 7:30 p.m. showtime when a woman began screaming in the crowd. According to social media posts from witnesses, the woman ranted for upwards of 30 minutes. - Bring Me The News
Charles McNulty: "A musical must establish its own aesthetic logic without apology to rational etiquette. We may think we’re living in a purely realistic drama but our inner lives are belting à la Ethel Merman." - Los Angeles Times
French theatre is massively lacking in diversity, so "Le Mois Kréyol, which was created in 2017 by the Caribbean-born choreographer Chantal Loïal, also celebrates French Blackness — and is a reminder of what the country’s mainstream theater is missing." - The New York Times
Not, in this case, the early-20th-century American genre of variety show. This is 19th-century Parisian vaudeville: popular boulevard comedies depicting simply drawn characters from the bourgeoisie — and sometimes including sharp social satire, as during the cholera outbreak of 1832. - The Public Domain Review
The Wife of Willesden is an update to Chaucer's "The Wife of Bath's Tale," transferring the setting from a carriage carrying pilgrims to Canterbury to a group of 21st-century characters doing a pub crawl through the northwest London neighborhood where Smith grew up. - The New York Times
The theatres challenged the fines, claiming it violated their freedom of expression. They argued Quebec’s ban on indoor smoking goes too far, because it forbids actors from smoking even prop cigarettes onstage. - Toronto Star
