The reaction to Center Theatre Group's 2021-2022 lineup came quickly. "CTG had received a torrent of calls, emails, and criticism on social media ... and was in the midst of crafting an official response. And then the other shoe dropped." - American Theatre
Little Amal, whose name means hope in Arabic, was created by Handspring, the company that made the equine puppets in War Horse. She stands 3.5 metres (11ft 5in) tall and is operated by a team of eight puppeteers working shifts to control her legs, arms and facial features. - The Guardian
The schedule is famously wearing, especially for leads in demanding roles. (Come the holidays, they sometimes do ten shows a week.) As Broadway returns from the pandemic shutdown, some performers are asking that their standbys go on more frequently, and some producers are obliging. - TheaterMania
Broadway shows stopped dead in their tracks in March 2020. The production teams simply had to hurriedly depart their stages with scenery still in place, costumes hanging on racks and dressing rooms abandoned — leaving behind a kind of theatrical Pompeii. - Washington Post
The show 12 Last Songs at Leeds Playhouse consists solely of dozens of people talking about, or actually doing, what they do for a living: a midwife lecturing about the birth process, an astrophysicist talking about stars, a chef making dinner, a decorator hanging wallpaper. - The Guardian
Shakespeare North Playhouse is on course to open next summer, joining only a handful of historically accurate, wooden-framed theatre auditoriums in England. - The Stage
"How are theater fans feeling about this new normal? Has the pandemic changed what they're seeing, and how they're seeing it? We spoke to theater enthusiasts to find out." - The New York Times
Art at its Shakespearean finest isn’t a repository for wisdom but an interrogation of what we think we know. It’s one of the rare opportunities in our polarized world to contemplate how we live and might live as a community. - Los Angeles Times
"Coming back has entailed a few adjustments: the ability to deftly juggle proofs of vaccination and photo IDs and tickets to get inside; preshow announcements that now urge people to keep their cellphones off and their masks on." - The New York Times
Bryan Doerries, director of Theater of War, "Dozens of Marines of every rank had stood up and quoted lines from the ancient plays from memory, as if they had known them their entire lives, and then related them to personal stories they had never shared." - Literary Hub
That's what Keenan Scott II did to attract new people to his recently opened Broadway play, Thoughts of a Colored Man, one of eight shows written by Black authors (a record) that will be on Broadway this season. And the tactic may be working. - The New Yorker
Milagro Theatre's artistic director: "It brought home the value of what we do — that we are practitioners of live theater. ... How do you convey meaning to a stranger? How do you convey emotion to a stranger? That’s what we do in theater." - Oregon ArtsWatch
The designation, more typically given to universities, makes the RSC eligible for government research grants and will allow it to expand its work as a "teaching theatre." - The Stage
Suni Reid, who's done the show in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, alleges their contract wasn't renewed because they requested a gender-neutral dressing room. Producers say they supported Reid, financially and otherwise, and withdrew the contract only after learning they were being sued. - The New York Times
"Within the theatre industry itself, and in education, we’ve elevated him as sort of a pinnacle. We have an opportunity to understand why and when we’ve done that—when we’ve done that well, when we’ve done that wrong or we’ve used it to hurt other people." - American Theatre
