ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

THEATRE

Time To Get Rid Of Gendered Acting Awards?

What might an awards show that more accurately reflects the world around us actually look like? Specifically, what might an awards show that rewards actors without dividing them along the gender binary look like? - American Theatre

Long Wharf Theatre Is Leaving Its Building. So What Is My Relationship With The Company?

This forces me and so many others whose lives have included hours spent in the building to examine how we connect with a theatre conceptually, when there is no longer a fixed location. Is a theatre the building or the work? - The Stage

The Transcript Of The Emmett Till Murder Trial Is Put Onstage For The First Time

The Chicago company Collaboraction has edited the proceedings of the 1955 case — in which an all-white Mississippi jury acquitted two white men who later admitted killing the 14-year-old victim — into an immersive theater piece titled Trial in the Delta: The Murder of Emmett Till. - MSN (Chicago Tribune)

After 46 Years, San Diego Repertory Theatre’s Founding Artistic Director Is Retiring

In 1976, Sam Woodhouse and D.W. Jacobs launched a theater company "for a San Diego that didn't exist at the time" — cosmopolitan, with a vibrant downtown. After more than 330 productions, including 50+ world premieres, that helped create the city he envisioned, Woodhouse is stepping down. - The San Diego Union-Tribune

Madonna Banned Phones At Her Performance. Should Theatres Follow Her Lead?

The Queen of Pop had insisted that everyone attending deposit their phones into small pouches, which were then sealed, given back to us to hold on to, and only unlocked at the end of the show. - The Stage

What “The Music Man” Lost When The Broadway Producers Cleaned Up “Ya Got Trouble”

"Cutting the race-baiting from Harold's signature song feels like an easy enough fix, but … the elision leaves a vacuum at the show's center. Are the people of River City really that worked up about modernity? If Harold Hill isn't selling lightly coded racial anxiety, what exactly is he selling?" - Slate

Long Wharf Theatre Giving Up Its Longtime Home

As the company remade itself, it faced a real estate quandary: whether to renew its expiring lease at the New Haven Food Terminal, just off Interstate 95, where it has been performing for 57 years. - The New York Times

The Audience At This Musical Behaved So Badly That The Director Just Ended The Show

Northern Ireland Opera's performance of Sondheim's Into the Woods in Belfast last Saturday was cut short at the intermission after spectators moved around and talked so much that the cast complained to house management and ushers were abused as they tried to maintain order. - Belfast Telegraph

How Aleshea Harris Puts Black Life Onstage

Hilton Als: "Harris's aim as a playwright is to remove the kitchen sink and slather the stage with blood and celebration. … Just as Tennessee Williams made 'deliberate cruelty' a major concern of his work, Harris aims to show how love can make you a target." - The New Yorker

Does The Demise Of The Capitol Steps Comedy Troupe Say Something About How America Has Changed?

Political humor had changed. It was less lighthearted, more snarky and sarcastic. Washington had changed, no longer a place where Democrats and Republicans would rib one another without too many hurt feelings. Moreover, America had changed, probably forever. - Washington Post

Theatre was Inventive During COVID. That Inventiveness Might Make Theatre Better Going Forward

In order to survive at all during this period, theatre did need to adapt, and notable examples of genius materialised, reimagining the genre entirely. The survival of theatre has depended on the creation of these new formats, and its future depends on further innovation. - The Conversation

Watching ‘Slave Play’ With An All-Black Audience Makes For A Qualitatively Different Experience

"The communal understanding that this is our space, our work, our shared awareness is an incomparable feeling. ... Every joke hit. Every cultural reference resonated. I remember thinking, why don’t we do this more often? Seriously. Why don’t we?" - Los Angeles Times

A Re-Delayed Reopening On Broadway

The musical Mrs. Doubtfire closed temporarily because of Omicron and will not reopen until April. "The hiatus left the show’s cast, crew and musicians without work ... but said he thought it was the best way to attempt to preserve their jobs longer term." - The New York Times

What ‘Slave Play’ Means To The Actors In The Play

Antoinette Crow-Legacy says the Jeremy O. Harris play "gives me freedom to be messy and complicated and blur the lines between right and wrong." - Los Angeles Times

Playwright Sanaz Toossi On Language, Representation, And The Comic Potential Of Bleeding Onto The Furniture

Toossi wrote one her plays going up in New York in white-hot anger after the Trump Muslim travel ban. "If all that ever gets produced of my work is just my stories about Middle Eastern people, I don’t think I would ever be upset." - The New York Times

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